What police work actually looks like — and what that tells us about ‘defund’ politics

One thing that doesn’t come up in television shows and movies focused on police work is driving to a house where an alarm went off and finding nothing wrong. Or a scene in which the protagonists are called out to investigate an abandoned vehicle, quietly file a report and leave.

These aren’t exciting things to depict, of course, so they don’t even turn up very much on reality shows such as “Cops,” which was recently canceled in light of a renewed focus on the treatment of black Americans by the police. What Americans generally see of police work in popular entertainment are shootouts, doors being kicked down, officers engaged in chases. On the news it’s much of the same — with the addition of incidents in which police have been recorded abusing or injuring suspects.