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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''
'''Lieutenant Carter Blake:'''
The Rabid Cop is a specific character in police procedural shows who's usually the most prominent portrayal of [[Police Brutality]] in fiction.
Compare [[Sociopathic Soldier]], a person in the military who commits war crimes. Contrast the (presumed) moral [[Cowboy Cop]].
▲The [[Rabid Cop]] might be [[Dirty Cop|casually dirty]], or [[Knight Templar|overbearingly self-righteous]], or anywhere in between, but they all have two things in common: a reckless disregard for civil rights, and an unwavering conviction that any person they've identified as "the perp" really is a perp (regardless of any contradicting evidence) and deserves to suffer. Rules and trials are for the PERMISSIVE LIBERAL ASS-WIPES! In a [[Good Cop, Bad Cop]] routine, they usually take the "Bad Cop" ball and run clear out of the stadium with it.
{{examples}}
== Film ==
*
* Van Stretch from ''Internal Affairs'' is Dennis Peck's partner who assaults a drug pusher and his girlfriend for resisting arrest.
** Peck is also implied to be disliked by his fellow officers, due to his unscrupulous methods during his job.
* Officer Curtis Mooney in ''[[Killer Klowns From Outer Space]]'' is a misanthropic police sergeant who has to be almost physically restrained by Dave Hanson from beating up
* Park Doo-man and Cho Yong-koo from ''[[Memories of Murder]]'' are a duo of detectives who both uses brute force against suspects, one of whom was a mentally handicapped young man, and get very few results. They're contrasted with Seo Tae-Yoon, who uses logic and reason in his investigation. {{spoiler|Though he eventually loses his temper after his frustations gets the better of him and nearly shoots a factory worker.}}
* Alonzo Harris from ''[[Training Day]]'' is a rogue narcotics detective who had terrorizes his neighborhood with his controversial and radical methods. He is also just a sociopath who has no qualms about abusing his suspects.
* ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'': Barricade is portrayed as a "bad cop" cliche when he interrogates Sam Witwicky in an attempt to find where are his great-great-grandfather's glasses for the coordinates of the AllSpark.
* David Kujan is a U.S. Customs Special Agent who yells at Verbal Kint several times in ''[[The Usual Suspects]]''.
{{quote|'''Verbal Kint:''' The DA gave me immunity.
'''David Kujan:''' Not from me. You get no immunity from me, you piece of shit.}}
== Literature ==▼
* [[Discworld
* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Desperation]]'': Collie Entragian. Of course, ''I'm going to kill you'' not all he seems, ''I'm going to kill you'' this being a [[Stephen King]] novel. ''I'm going to kill you.''▼
*
* Bud White from ''[[L.A. Confidential]]'' is a thuggish police officer with a penchant of assaulting woman-beaters.
▲* [[Transformers Film Series|"ARE YOU USERNAME 'LADIESMAN217'?!?!"]]
** Dick Stensland is also responsible for instigating the Bloody Christmas incident by brutalizing the Mexican prisoners.
▲* The main character's partner is one of these in ''[[The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans|Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans]]''. And the main character starts to turn into one himself as his addictions spiral out of control.
▲* Officer Mooney in ''[[Killer Klowns From Outer Space]]'' has to be almost physically restrained from beating up a couple of punks brought in for public drunkenness. He later takes a flashlight to the head of one of the klowns, which turns out to be [[Mugging the Monster|not such a hot idea]].
== Live
* DS Jimmy Beck in ''[[Cracker]]'', once causing his superior officer to say,
* Sgt. Michael "Mick" Belker in ''[[Hill Street Blues]]'', who has a habit of barking and growling like a rabid dog. And bit preps on a regular basis.
* Elliot Stabler from ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'', what with his [[It's Personal|desire for revenge]] against suspects who had abused children. Which is roughly every other week. This tendency earned him the [[Fan Nickname]] Un-Stabler. Most likely because Elliot is increasingly unstable and psychotic. That series will NOT end until he actually kills someone, ending his massive fall from grace. He finally leaves the police force due to his fatal shooting of Jenna Fox in the precinct. His shooting of said 14 year old girl is justified, since she was shooting up the holding cell.
* ''Most'' of the 1973 detectives in ''[[Life On Mars]]'' are
* The retired detectives of ''[[New Tricks]]''
** And occasionally, they find themselves working alongside an actual brutal cop, such as Frank Patterson in "The Fourth Man".
* Vic Mackey in ''[[The Shield]]'' has at least four excessive force complaints made against him, and hits Dr. Bernard Grady, the pedophile, with a telephone during his interrogation with him. Though usually, his menacing is done with a cold and calculating air.
* Peter Boyd of ''[[Waking the Dead]]''. A Detective Superintendent who tends to
* Jack Malone of ''[[Without a Trace]]''
* Several of the policemen in ''[[The Wire]]'' are rough around the edges, but standout examples are Anthony Colicchio, who attacks an elementary school teacher when said man asks him to move his car, and Eddie Walker, who out of frustation over having additional paperwork to fill out, breaks Donut's fingers over stealing a car, and causing a lot of damage to the other parked cars during the joyride.
== Music ==
▲* As illustrated above, Andy Sipowicz from ''[[NYPD Blue]]''.
* "I Shot The Sheriff" by [[Bob Marley]]. The song is about the narrator who's accused by the police of killing a deputy. However, the narrator admits to having shot Sheriff John Brown after being harrassed by him (for unknown reasons) one time too many. It's also implied that the sheriff stomp over the narrator's garden while he's sowing (marijuana) seeds.
▲** The cop in the (ironically named) "Unstable" made Elliot look normal.
▲* ''Most'' of the 1973 detectives in ''[[Life On Mars]]'' are rabid by today's standards, especially in contrast to 2006 transplant Sam, but Gene Hunt deserves a special mention, here.
▲* Jack Regan of ''[[The Sweeney]]'' got rabid at times, too.
▲* Peter Boyd of ''[[Waking the Dead]]'' tends to get EXTREMELY SHOUTY and verges on violent at times, though usually one of his team is watching through one-way glass and bursts in to stop him.
▲* Jack Malone of ''[[Without a Trace]]'' can be pretty worked up and he will do anything to get information on on those poor missing people.
▲* Jimmy Beck in ''[[Cracker]]'', once causing his superior officer to say 'I don't know what you did to him, but you scared the hell out of me.'
▲* The retired detectives of ''[[New Tricks]]'' have slightly [[Cowboy Cop]] attitudes compared to modern police methods and standards. So they see nothing wrong with creating a fake [[Rabid Cop]] scenario where the interrogator gets so insanely angry that he shoots the suspect's public defender lawyer. The 'lawyer' is another retired cop and the gun is a starter pistol.
▲== Literature ==
▲* [[Discworld|THAT! IS! NOT! MY! COW!]]. Vimes does whatever he can not to turn into one, to the point that he {{spoiler|actually has a Vimes-esque entity in his mind to prevent him from succumb to the darkness.}}
▲{{quote|"Who watches the watchman? I do."}}
▲* Averted in [[The Dresden Files]] book ''Changes''. Rudolph tries his best to play the [[Rabid Cop]], but all his desk-pounding and spittle-flecked screaming manages to do is cause Harry to crack up and the other interrogator ends up ordering him out of the room. It probably helps that Harry has seen Rudolph ''freak out'' whenever confronted with the sort of thing he deals with all the time.
▲* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Desperation]]'': Collie Entragian. Of course, ''I'm going to kill you'' not all he seems, ''I'm going to kill you'' this being a [[Stephen King]] novel. ''I'm going to kill you.''
== Video Games ==
* Agent Robert Nightingale in ''[[Alan Wake]]''
* Carter Blake in ''[[Heavy Rain
** It doesn't stop there. One
*
▲* There's a lot of back-and-forth about whether Saren Arterius of ''[[Mass Effect]]'' is a [[Complete Monster]] or a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]], but he really fits this trope better than either. As a Spectre, he's essentially a Council space cop with no strings attached, and he plays it to the hilt - making frequent usage of the [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]], pursuing his own ambitions on the side and pinning the collateral damage on people he doesn't like. He's the same sadistic, racist government law officer we've seen in many other works - just relocated to a sci-fi setting.
▲* Agent Nightingale in ''[[Alan Wake]]'' really fits in this trope. Though the source for his jerkassery is found in [[All There in the Manual|his back story]].
== Western Animation ==
* The titular character from the [[Adult Swim]] show ''[[Assy McGee]]'' is an extremely violent parody of
* ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'': Lyle Bolton from "Lock-Up" is a new chief of security who terrorizes the inmates of Arkham Asylum. He later becomes a vigilante called Lock-Up after he's fired from his position.
== Real Life ==
* There are too many instances of [[Truth in Television]] to count. It's hard not to find a list of cases where the police officers are caught red-handed using excessive force.
▲* The titular character from the [[Adult Swim]] show ''[[Assy McGee]]'' is an extremely violent parody of a [[Rabid Cop]] (and a [[Heroic Comedic Sociopath]]) despite being, as his name suggests, a pair of ass cheeks.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Perp Sweating]]
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
[[Category:Cops and Detectives]]
[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
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