beat cops they work with
Not nearly often enough.
Oh, you meant the other meaning of ”beat cops”.
There are no bad apples in a barrel of good ones. Only good apples in a barrel of bad ones, and they quickly rot when they stay silent.
What a great way of putting it. All cops are bastards.
Yeah, they're cops. Theoretically you could have professional detectives that weren't cops, but that's a ways out.
Also worth remembering that a lot of forensics is psuedo science bullshit and a huge number of convictions, the ones that aren't coerced plea deals, rely on confessions of some kind.
Where else is bullshit evidence getting conjured from to secure convictions but the detectives?
I'd say yeah when you look at the way cases can be closed with circumstantial evidence. The lack of effort is telling. It's personal biases within policing as an institution.
Even with something like apprehending serial killers, you gotta take into account the way the victims are treated. Sex workers, members of the LGBTQ community, people of color, homeless people, etc. If police in general mistreat those groups, detectives would likely not put in the same effort unless the victims were part of a privileged group.
(Unsure if I should cw below, but I still just in case.)
spoiler
I think of stories about witnesses being ignored or cases going cold because the victim was gay or an immigrant. Even recently in Canada, the investigation into a series of missing men didn't go anywhere until a white man went missing.
I think that indifference is a form of state violence - to consider certain groups part of the "less than dead" and take away a basic expectation of safety for so many people. It's why trans people of color especially face higher rates of homicide.
But really it all comes down to what an institution does in relation to capital. Detectives are part of the police and they both serve the wealthier more than any other group. That makes them bastards.
Yes unless they get their gun and badge taken for not being enough of a bastard.
Why wouldn't they be? Because they don't shoot people on the streets themselves? Politicians and capitalists don't either. Yet first pass stupid laws that make it possible, all on behalf of the second, and much more.
Yes, what they do might not be as visually striking as a cold blooded execution in the middle of the street, but they are irreplaceable part of the oppressive system. Same goes for any kind of police bureaucrats. More directly, every time minority person sentenced to a decade of literal slavery for forgetting to pay for a bag of chips, here is a detective behind it.
Under capitalism and our current regime of authority, definitely. However, my understanding is that they're also one of the few aspects of policing that would still be socially necessary in a post-capitalist and post-cops-as-we-know-them world (at least, detectives for major violent crimes).
Detective noir movies are somewhat socialist, but most detectives I know are securitas and pinkerton employees who also spy on union workers.
Police detectives? Yeah of course. Private detectives? Not necessarily, though most of the time probably.
Dirk Gently? No. Harry Dresden? It pains me to say it, but yes. The jury is still out on Hercule Poirot.
I support his "sending '20s aristocrats/bourgeouisie to be hanged for murder" policy, but I oppose his "preventing '20s aristocrats/bourgeouisie from being murdered" policy.
