I never understood why anyone working for the justice system has any kind of immunity. Shouldn't they be held to a higher standard than an average person?

"You have the right to an attorney" *officers projectile vomit*

"I want to convict this *kid* too" is an awesome thing to write for the good guys of your show.

Gotta love the trope of: "Scumbag attorney", like yeah scummy lawyers do exist but what about prosecutors? They do the same shit and get innocent people thrown in jail.

Where I live in rural Texas, local governments are trying to get "probable cause" to encompass "heading west, woman in car". Any woman going west could be pulled over on suspicion of traveling to New Mexico for an abortion. About 5 years ago, the local police were disbanded (for the second time in a decade) because an officer was pulling women over to assault them and the rest of the department were covering it up. Really cool and good place to live! Can someone please give me five thousand dollars or a couch to sleep on in Minnesota

I'm not one for punitive justice (because we should be focusing on rehabilitation), but 5 days for intentionally taking away 25 years of an innocent person's life is absolutely insane. In what world does a person learn anything from that?

I never really watched L&O but I always remembered my favorite episodes were the ones when one of the main cops gets accused of a crime. It was always hilarious to me because the cops would get arrested for something they didn't do. They'd get told they have a right to a lawyer and need to use that right, but they would always revoke that right and jump straight into the interrogation thinking they knew the system and could clear themself. But NO! The interrogators would always completely grill them and make them look more guilty. It always made me laugh when the cops get that shocked reaction to the very interrogation techniques they regularly used against suspects and not once did they stop and think "This is unjust! Is this how we were treating our suspects all this time?"

A technicality is a rapist getting off because on the court document when the paper said "do not write here" the prosecutor wrote "ok" Not "you with held evidence from. The defense and the jury was not able to make an informed desition based on all of the evidence."

I will never understand how people can be gleeful about a person dying... the fact that their offices send each other themed presents whenever someone faces the death penalty is disgusting and downright creepy. And considering that over 40% of the condemned are black people (compared to the 14% they make up of the population), choosing *lynching iconography* with the nooses is particularly dark

"Did you know you have rights"

Look, we're just withholding evidence that injects reasonable doubt into our case.

My father was arrested back in '93 after being falsely identified as part of some drug operation, all because of someone he knew. His lawyer friend came in clutch, but he never managed to retrieve the $12k the cops just grabbed from his home during the arrest, which set him back for years.

In any sane normal show, McCoy would be the villain.

I would like to point out, the concept of "Law and Order" did not emerge with Nixon. It actually emerged much earlier under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, and was popularly used as a slogan during the Vice Presidential campaign of Calvin Coolidge. In the context of Coolidge, it was specifically an anti-labor phrase developed as a response to union strike action (specifically the Boston police strike). Shortly after the election of 1920, the 2nd Ku Klux Klan adopted the phrase as a catch-all for defining what seperates the American zeitgeist from that of its immigrant, black, and minority classes. I am a historian currently leading a research project on the 2nd Klan (specifically Indiana Klan) if anyone would like more info.

I recently replayed the original Ace Attorney games, and being 15 years older and far more cynical, they really hit different. The judge is like a caricature of Kyle Rittenhouse’s judge, the prosecution commits Brady violations frequently, and you’re only allowed access to crime scenes through trickery, or (later) by having a friend on the police force. I know that the games are based (loosely) on the Japanese legal system, not the US, but seeing how similarly due process works in a super simplified system is still upsetting.

Here's the issue I have with the violation of these Civil Rights - Cops and Prosecutors have a DUTY to obey these Rights BUT suffer NO CONSEQUENCES when they persistently violate such Rights - so why would they EVER respect such Rights? If Cops and Prosecutors face Criminal Charges after failing to respect these Rights, how many of them would "forget"? - How many would end up in Jail, the same Jails they LOVE to put possibly innocent people in?

There should be a separate show: Law & Order: Court of Appeals, where every single case McCoy has ever tried gets overturned.

I was in the car with a “friend”, didn’t know he was doing a pick-up before we went to the store. Turns out the cops were watching the house and had a sting planned. I was arrested with a perfectly clear record and work clothes on since I was on the way to a job. 2 ounces in the car, 1 known drug dealer (who was the main suspect of the investigation) and 1 guy in work clothes; they split the weight and put felony distribution on both of us. My public defender tried to get me to sign a plea deal and they’d give me PTI. I looked him in the face and told him if you ever suggest that again I’ll walk out and represent myself. Ended up getting the charge dropped and expunged by the police before it even made it to trial.

1:03:37 I've never been able to look at SVU the same way after i realised that I'm pretty sure enough suspects have died in Stabler's custody for him him to legally qualify as a serial killer.

Hold up, this 16 year old kid dressed up as a cop, handed evidence in to the cops, was congratulated by another cop, but he's somehow not a cop? Like... all these cops were treating him like a cop and just *nobody noticed?*

there's that scene in Se7en where brad pitt wants to kick in john doe's apartment door but morgan freeman knows they don't have legal standing to do so. he kicks it in anyway and they work backwards by giving a homeless person a few bucks to make a statement that they saw someone being weird by that unit.

As a recovering SVU addict, I watched for a few reasons: 1. The wild will they/won't they chemistry between Stabler and Benson 2. What you said about the cathartic nature of watching sex crimes actually be prosecuted 3. It scratches a specific drama itch that only Criminal Minds and Cold Case also scratched - this weird fine line between mystery, suspense, and soapy drama, maybe? Idk. I stopped watching SVU (and Criminal Minds, and Cold Case) when I realized how badly it hurt my mental health. Regularly consuming that kind of violence upped my paranoia, anxiety, and depression to the point where I was able to stop therapy for a whole year after cutting these shows from my media diet 😅 Working in SSD/SSDI law during that year off also completely changed my view on cops, the justice system, and crime, so now I can't watch any serious cop shows without getting super angry lol

That story with John Thompson alone made me have to pause the video, and pace around my apartment in absolute rage! And that's not even a one and only scenario. Too many people have been victims of wrongful decisions in court only to have someone say "Twas but a booboo no hard feels now it was only a 1/4 of your life gone after all"

McCoy feels like an Ace Attorney villain with the way he hides evidence from the defense

I saw someone comment on John Oliver’s Law and Order piece and it stuck with me. Basically the gist of the comment is that they used to work in a home with vulnerable people who loved to watch Law and Order and to victims of real world crimes who never actually got the justice they deserved love the show because that’s how they wished they were treated. They wish they were believed, they wish people cared, and they wish the person who did it to them was prosecuted and maybe roughed up a bit by the cops.

Olivlia Benson killed a kid and i will never forget that. an episode where a doctor forged organ donation olivia found out and as the helicopter pilot was leaving, she went up to it and took the heart meant for a dying kid. even Finn was like "Maybe we got here too laye Liv, maybe he took off" and the pilot was like "Ill turn myself in" but she takes the heart due to it being evidence. So they are willing to break the law to put someone behind bars, but not to save a kid?

On the topic of "sex crimes being taken seriously" comfort media: I have a particular fondness for Netflix's "unbelievable", which actually depicts an instance of the police retraumatizing a young victim through refusing to believe her case. It's really harrowing

This is why I can’t stand these shows: they want us to root for the people who clearly don’t care about constitutional rights. Still not as as bad as Blue Bloods, though.

Thank you so much for saying "freedom from social consequence." I cannot believe how many people forget that it's social consequences, not just consequences. I have legitimately seen people argue you can and should be legally punished for speech based on the "freedom from consequences" argument when that is not remotely what that means.

Looking back on Law and Order, I never realized the police bias is so heavily ingrained that the presumption of guilt is built into even the opening monologue. "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders." Prosecute the >Offenders

The standard isn’t even that it’s exculpatory. It’s that it is possibly exculpatory. It’s to avoid exactly the situation the DA describes at the beginning of this video

For those who don't practice or work in the system. Harmless error is, essentially, just what she said. Your rights are violated, but the appellate court thinks the evidence is strong enough that they - the jury of your peers - couldn't have possibly changed their minds. Of course when the defense tells the jury they have a right to nullification it's a mistrial and sanctionable.

cops in some states require less training hours than a cosmologist yet get paid 3x more and are expected to know and enforce laws lawyers spend over a decade learning to be qualified

Looking back, you realize a lot of the cops in these shows along with the DA are fucking assholes.

To me the funny thing with the "it is inevtiable that we would have found it!" Argument is the cops telling on themselves. If it was inevitable you shouldnt have broken the law to find the evidence!

32:11 Wait why is he dressed like a cop if he's just some 16-year-old? wouldn't that be like a super big deal and a crime to impersonate officers? he even broke into someone's house after impersonating a cop, that's insane.

I live in Toronto, and we're getting our very own L&O spin off and I'm terrified that it might be well done and people will watch it. The Toronto Police Service has been under more scrutiny lately than they ever have been, and I can't help but think that this new show will launder their reputation.

You wanna know what it *really* is about Law and Order that's so enthralling? Why it's got such an iron grip on our syndicated cable schedules? Reasons more unique than it's self-contained stories & narrative simplicity? It's the aesthetic. No other show before or since has really looked or sounded like Law & Order does. The lighting, the camera work, that iconic minimal score, the **dun dun**, the super serious and dry way everyone talks, it's all so pitch perfect in that execution that when you see the newer seasons, the magic is just gone. Whether it's new creative staff, or more likely budget cuts, Law & Order may be back but it's far from being the same. So give it time, the show will undo itself with the rest of what remains of cable TV.

I’ve heard the argument from people saying “If judges and prosecutors could be sued, every convicted person would sue over their conviction!” To which I say… GOOD! Make judges and prosecutors think twice about pursuing cases.

The good 'ol algorithm recommended you to me a few weeks ago, and so far I have binged almost all of Copaganda. The way you perfectly mix fact, entertainment, TV footage, and cited sources are something to be proud of. You got a sub from me, and keep it up man. Its an important topic that most people don't even realize when watching their favorite guilty pleasure network TV shows.

34 not guilty verdicts out of 450 episodes. Assuming it's one case per episode, that's a 7.5% acquittal rate. Which is a *better* acquittal rate than real life, given plea deals.

I swear, sometimes watching these videos is more frightening than a horror movie.

I used to love L&O, Criminal Minds, and CSI. The George Floyd incident changed all that. The cops defending Chauvin eventually broke me of that habit.

Do we have rights? Like do we really... They are taken away everyday

I binge watched all of SVU from season one to whenever Barba left in just a couple months after I got out of an abusive relationship because I didn’t have any validation or support in real life, and seeing stories similar to my own being treated seriously was cathartic. In retrospect it’s disgusting how SVU in particular uses the most horrific crimes imaginable to prop up the police because the only way for them to be the good guys is if they’re only ever targeting the absolute worst of humanity.

52:17 I think that was also the case where he declared that "while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and *while there is a soul in prison, I am not free* ."

"badge mommy" I feel personally attacked.

i would love to see you cover the shows psych and monk. those shows are so intensely popular even though they don't seem to spend much time in the public eye. i always thought it was weird that psych specifically is so apparently anti-4th ammendment but no one ever, like, calls them out.

The best joke in L&O came from SVU... Ice-T said, "I'm a Republican," when asked what his "deep, dark secret" is. I stopped watching Law & Order, all versions, after graduating law school, and working for a public defender office.

I like the mileage you've been getting out of the daddy cop song, but it's always stuck in my head for the rest of the day

"Say, aren't you a public servant? Why don't you get me a glass of water?" - George Carlin, Attorney at Law

My mom and I watched hours of law and order together when I was a kid--really a kid, as young as 5 or 6 I think. I've has law and order nightmares my whole life. Especially svu. It's a mesmerizing show (especially if someone is playing it loudly in the only room you can do homework.) I asked my mom once why she thought that was appropriate for a kid and she shrugged and said "it's law and order. How would I know it wasn't okay?" We watched every single episode. She saw the content of the episodes. I think this learned helplessness, this inability to stand up for our children and assert our own boundaries, this willingness to accept whatever we are told is okay, speaks to the core of why people watch law and order.

“sometimes i wonder what the 1915 supreme court would think of euphoria…” you are the voice of a generation

I remember my mom watching law & order one day and I remember a guy asked for a lawyer, and one of the detective says to his friend "he said the magic words" while exasperated. That always stuck with me. also I don't know if it was law and order or Burn notice or something but I do remember somebody letting a little kid drive a car somewhere, and someone else telling him not to say anything always thought that was cool

9:49 you can't just say "we know this man is innocent but we're gonna try him anyways cuz he's a bad bad dude in other ways."😂 could you imagine how horrific this principle would be were it applied in other ways?

I feel like these Brady violations are “how you create the Joker”…. I got to get me a robe or a badge at minimum… only service jobs that can’t be held accountable. 1 day for every 5 years… that’s nearly 2000:1 ratio.

I'd like to encourage all those who like proceedurals and how-catchums to watch Columbo and or Murder She Wrote. Both are fun. And MSW is often the type of show to determine cops as incompetent, sexist morons

My local cops are a bunch of sellouts, been complaining about how we don't bribe them from the public coffers hard enough. What happened to the love of the game, man?

I would love to see somebody make a show where the first episode is a typical one-hour cop procedural, and every episode in the rest of the season is the court case tearing apart the entire case because of how egregious the violations always are

Also one reason I used to watch SVU is, depressingly enough, to feel like the multiple assaults I've experienced 'weren't that bad'. And sometimes, there was even a GUY survivor I could see myself in.

Bold of you to assume I’ll have rights for much longer 😎 -sincerely, a trans man living in America who is terrified for the future of queer ppl 🥲

I REALLY would be interested in hearing you cover Hill Street Blues. It's a BIZARRE case example because generally it's one of the few cop shows I see that emphasizes victim's rights and vilifies police overreach (and not in that "there's a few bad apples" way, but in a "all cops WANT to beat the crap out of you and make their jobs easier" kinda way) and the moral core of the show is a public defender, but then that all shifted, ever so slightly in season 6 when Dick Wolf started working on the show and it's not blatant, but suddenly the tone of the show just changed EVER so slightly. Joyce, who was unabashedly anti-cop, like *SUPER* anti-cop is suddenly much more respectful and friendly towards the cop characters. Among a bunch of other weird tonal shifts.

Does anyone else remember Chris Meloni playing the gay concierge in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? You know, where he goes on a lengthy and passionate tirade about police bullying and harassment? It seems he took the lessons of being victimized, added a dash of "if you can't beat 'em...", gave himself 3 minutes at High in the moral majority microwave and out of the exploded remains emerged elliot stabler.

You haven't talked about Chicago P.D. I stopped watching that show as I watched it with new eyes. I found it was giving the ok to torture, stealing drug money for greed and occasionally for charity. Criminals are punished, not cops. Another thing that I hate is that we are spoon-fed the idea that Internal Affairs is an evil department that seeks to punish good 👮🏼‍♀️ 👮🏼‍♂️ and rarely gets bad cops because there is no such thing 99.1% of the time.

Still liking the shirt! I used to watch OG Law & Order and SVU a lot 20 years ago, when I was younger and stupider. Not as a regular habit but just when it was on and I was bored. I think the appeal was the characters and their sardonic quips, especially Lenny Bristoe (RIP), seeing how tangled (or ridiculous) the episode's case got, and the satisfaction that the bad guy gets caught and punished most of the time. There's pretty much always a rerun on some channel at any given time, and I'll admit that while I actively try to avoid the shows now, sometimes I'll still flip to them for background noise or just to kill time. Since the majority of episodes are self contained, it's easy to dip in and out of the series without worrying about overarching plot threads. I've known for years that It is a deeply problematic show, and I see that the well goes even deeper than I realized after watching your (extremely enjoyable) breakdown. But it's also an entertaining show, and that's a big part of the problem with a lot of copaganda, isn't it? When even a cop show as nakedly bad as Blue Bloods can run for seven seasons (holy shit), you know that there's something about this kind of media that reliably attracts viewers (and advertisers). The networks aren't going to change running with "safe" options like cop shows until the "safe" options no longer sell. Depressing!

Usually with longer videos, i just put them in the background and play my video games, but with yours i try to pay attention beacause i find them interesting and fun to watch. Keep up the good work man!

Every time i find myself enjoying True Crime shows or stuff like Law and Order. I go back to this channel to remind myself what reality is. Also this channel slaps.

Listened to this while sorting my old bin of Lego so I can rebuild sets, I found a police baton and thought, hey wait a minute isn’t it kinda weird how there is civil unrest in Lego city? Idk maybe I’m overthinking or maybe I just came up with the next copaganda video topic 😅

I loved watching law and order when I was young. As I got older though I realized that there was a lot of crimes against a certain age demographic. And once I did and I wasn't like 16 years old it became really disturbing to me. At like between 10-16 years old I was like "oh yeah all of these are all horrible" and then I got just a little older and I was like "ok this makes me feel bad but life is bad so ok". But I was 19 *a very long time ago". So then it just got more and more disturbing because apparently the writers didn't think that just normal sex crimes were entertaining enough on SUV for example they were like "what if we make it worse than real life? *And we've already told you real life is baaddd*" So suddenly I was like in my early 20s and just like "why would I watch this?". I had already been skipping the episodes with younger victims. So then what I had left was episodes where it was just the most horrific sexual violence (like you said, you couldn't talk about it here) I understand that there are these crimes out there but to make it so extreme in *an entire weekly series* meant for TV if kind of strange.

i don't know if it's still the case but USA network would air Law and Order SVU marathons all the time, giving anyone flipping thru channels something to consistently land on. people also like mysteries and seeing how they get solved. also Ice T just being on the cast must tickle some sort of irony sensor.

We need an “internal affairs” show that has cops and DAs and judges investigated, evidence brought up and the corrupt cops, DA, and judges get away with it. That show would have people up in arms. As a society the stories we tell are important. And these stories will help change society.

I watched Law & Order: SVU because it was part of a 4 hour weekday marathon of crime shows that I watched so I had something to do while waiting for Buffy reruns at 3 am.

I work as a courtroom transcriber (in Australia) and I have to say the talk about the leeway the prosecutors get from the courts rang true from a recent case I was on. This was an appeal, where a lady who was found not guilty was suing the Prosecutors office for some sort of restitution for trying her without sufficient evidence. The judge ordered closing submissions in a limited timespan, and if any written submissions were to be provided they were to be a single page of dotpoints to contain discussions. The prosecutor's office filed 32 pages of written submissions on the day of closing submissions and did not disclose them to the other side before the day in court. The plaintiff asked for these submissions to be struck out since it clearly breached the orders the judge had given, but the judge disagreed and let the filings stand. The plaintiff's counsel asked for extra time to address the points they had only just read, but were limited for extra time since the judge had another matter on in the afternoon. The judge offered them the chance to file written submissions in reply, but the lawyers explained that they were already committed to more trials in the next week and would no longer be on retainer for their client (as they understood no more filings would be necessary). Part of me wondered if the prosecutors had looked at the lists and realised the timetable meant no one would be able to respond to their filing, but the upshot is they flagrantly ignored what the judge said and were just allowed to do it with no consequences.

You should make a video about reacher. I know the main character isn’t a cop but they basically just gun down unarmed suspects because ‘a good lawyer would get them out’

why's this video so good?! I started it thinking I was gonna watch a little and come back to watch the rest and now I'm hooked. Thank You for letting me be a part of it!

Honestly I am a CSA survivor and watching Olivia benson reaffirm that survivors matter every episode is something I need

Sometimes I enjoy watching shows like Law and Order for pure entertainment value. I watched a show Mare of Easttown where the main character Mare used her position as an officer to plant drugs on the mother of her grand son. Of course she got a slap on the wrist and all was fine. It's nice sometimes to detach fiction from reality but your content helps open my eyes to copaganda.

You’re absolutely right my guy. I love olivia benson. I love elliot stabler. I love munch and tutugola. I love svu because it really gives me the fantasy that these guys care and they will try their damn hardest to get justice. But its all fantasy i live in nyc and svu nypd irl is a fucking joke

I appreciate you and so many other creators who work tirelessly on videos like this. I used to love these shows when I was younger and could live being ignorant to the world. Having grown up and learned so much, all these clips you show make me feel so slimy and gross for enjoying these shows. Love 5-4 Pod and thanks for introducing me to Olayemi Olurin!

The only cop/legal shows I watch are SVU and Criminal Minds. Essentially I’ve watched the shows so long and are invested in the characters. I also think like you said there’s something for me, particularly as a woman, in seeing predators get punished by our legal system because I know that’s not reality.

What some people get out of Law & Order is what people get out of mystery novels - the sub category here is Mystery - Police Procedural. Of course, it's low-quality mystery, since it inevitably telegraphs the denouement early in the first act. That's what I used to watch it for; was a big fan of Murder She Wrote ( Little Old Lady/Nosy Neighbor sub category) and Spenser for Hire (Hardboiled Private Detective sub category) back in the day, too. Also was a member of a Mystery Novels Club thingy that mailed me three novel mill books a month, a quarter of them actually good.

23:15 it's giving "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"

Michael Connolly’s Lincoln Lawyer series is really good about bringing up routine Brady violations and is clear that Mickey Haller doesn’t usually win against this tactic.

It's a common misunderstanding that the prosecutions job is to convict people. However the actual job of the prosecution is to present the truth as the state has found it the best they can and allow the judge/jury to make a decision based on ALL relevant evidence. To make it worse however, the misunderstanding that prosecutors are there to convict is even a common thing among lawyers. I would know, I am one and I know plenty. These videos are great, and you're doing a fantastic job!

32:00 I just saw an episode starring Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 where he spent several years in prison for raping a young girl. The arresting officer was waiting for him outside the gate telling him he'll be watching him because he'll definitely do it again. Terminator tells thr detective he's changed and proceeds to board a bus to the halfway house where he's required to stay. He sits next to a girl who looks to be maybe 15 then they cut to a slightly similar looking young rape victim and although she can't identify who attacked her, the cop that was harassing the newly released Partick tells Stabler *eyeroll* his suspicions to which he decides to pose as a parolee to gain this guy's trust and coerce him into offending again. The whole time the guy keeps insisting that he's changed and he just wants to follow the rules bur Elliot keeps pushing. The whole time I'm watching, I'm screaming internally because Elliot is actively entrapment him to get sent back to prison. It was truly disgusting

So, I am honestly curious on your thoughts on the Ace Attorney franchise. I feel like it shows just how absurdly stacked the legal system is against the defendant.

There was one specific reason why I got into law and order even just briefly and that was the time that it airs. It’s the middle of the day, the only thing that is on is toddler shows, infomercials, tv evangelists, and the trashiest of trash tv. I’m stuck home from school on a snow day or sick day and there’s not much to do but marathon law and order. But that was back in the mid to late 2000s when my parents limited my internet time. No clue why people watch it now when there’s other options.

These have been my favorite video essays on KZfaq. I'm entirely caught up, just got a new job and I'm finally gonna support on Patreon

Omg I've been binging the Copaganda videos while doing art and homework etc. and was so excited to see this!!! I love these videos and they've made me start thinking about systematic issues like this a lot more than I had been and I've learned a lot! Keep doing good work

Another great video! Also I agree with your end point. I'm kinda getting sick of people who "agree" but "just like the show" because honestly they're just turning a blind eye to the harm it causes and I don't have much patience left to entertain their lazy hypocrisy.

I'm also surprised that "Fruit of the poisonous tree" isn't expressed in Latin in legal proceedings. "Fructus arboris venenatae" has the same letter count and has two less non letter characters (the spaces) because there are two less words.

Wasnt expecting River Song

1:02:40 I've never been able to get over the implications of the Rookies "daddy cop" song, like what's the next scene if they don't close the garage? Nolan arrests them for signing a song inside their garage? The more playful they make it the worse the implications seem to me

Have you watched Gotham? A large focus of the show is Jim Gordan's evolving outlook and practices as a police officer. It honestly gets to confusing by the end that I can't even tell what the show's message is supposed to be so it would be cool if you did a video dissecting it

Wait SVU had a 16 year old batman that the Copa just kinda hang out with and know? That's silly as hell

Been rewatching your old vids yesterday so the new upload is much appreciated

I once got pulled over for _having my brights on at night._ Asshole made me late for work.

1:00:58 I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I still watch Law & Order is that there's NOTHING else on TV worth a damn on a Thursday Night!

What Mark Rasch describes at 44:45, to "get consent from someone else" is also called the "Third-party doctrine", a practice that gained some public awareness through Edward Snowden.

Law and Order confirms that the general belief that the purpose of the legal system is to destroy and take the lives of the "other," whoever those in charge decide the "other" to be.