Taken Off the Case

"When I get taken off a case, right away I figure somebody put the pressure on. Right away I ask myself why."

— Columbo, "Prescription: Murder"

If a detective story needs more drama, the writer may decide to spice things up by throwing a spanner in the works. Often this comes in the form of the detective being suspended from work or even laid off for misconduct. Of course, this entails a drastic change in dynamics, so sometimes it may be preferable to simply have the hero be Taken Off the Case instead.

This can happen for various reasons:

• The detective might have failed to capture the Big Bad one time too many.
• He went too far and broke too many rules in pursuit of his suspect.
• There may be a conflict of interest because it's too personal, e.g. the detective got romantically involved with the prime suspect.
• The case got too big or the suspect was already the subject of a federal investigation and had to be handed to the FBI or by another agency that has a huge stake in it.
• Higher-ups conspired to remove the agent for getting too close to an inconvenient truth.
• Da Chief was bought off by or is doing a favor for the local mob by removing the detective from the case.
• Da Chief forbids the hero from further troubling a suspect with his investigation because he doesn't believe the detective's outlandish theory and is concerned about the suspect's reputation.

Of course, the detective is not amused and most likely continues investigating the case on their own terms although it's gonna be harder to do so now. Being removed from a case could also hint at deeper problems beneath the surface which may cause the opposite effect and make the detective even more intrigued in solving the case.

If an employee is ruled incapable of handling a caseload at all, it progresses to a case of Turn in Your Badge.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Darker than Black, Huang was taken off a public security case that involved the death of his partner back when he was known as Kuno and was working with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Public Security Bureau. Officially, the high-ranking officers of the TMPD are having a hard time dealing with the irregularities of his death after he was assassinated by a Contractor and they don't have trained officers in place to deal with them. Huang's superior was a member of The Syndicate who had overlooked the death of Huang's partner with his assassination in order to prevent a Syndicate operation from being compromised.
• Lupin III:
  • There are various times throughout the show when Zenigata is taken off the Lupin case for his repeated failure to arrest the thief. By episode's end, he's back on it.
  • In the final act of The Castle of Cagliostro, Inspector Zenigata is taken off the counterfeiting case with the Interpol council refusing to accept his evidence.
  • In Lupin III: Crisis in Tokyo, Inspector Zenigata is taken off the case after blowing a key operation. Desperate to prove he can capture Lupin, he ends up enlisting the help of Maria, a reporter who has been following him as part of a story on ICPO operations.

Fan Works

• In The X-Files fanfiction Out of the Cold, Fox Mulder is investigating a Serial Killer, but is taken off the case because he got pneumonia. When he's in the nearly-recovered-but-still-out-of-sorts phase, he wants to keep investigating, but everyone else thinks it's an unhealthy obsession and/or that he should rest.
• Twilight Sparkle, Ace Attorney: Turnabout Smiles: Star Cestus gets taken off the case due to having helped in Twilight's investigation the previous day.

Films

• Agent Cody Banks: After growing too attached to Natalie, who is supposed to be the subject of his investigation and his protection, Cody is removed from the case. He does, however, still have to keep going with it anyway, and the world is saved because he refused to not be involved.
• Beverly Hills Cop: After Axel Foley manages to put a banana in the tailpipe of their car and disable it and later lure them to a stripper bar where they foil a robbery, officers Taggart and Rosewood are taken off the case by their captain, and two other detectives are assigned to trail Foley.
• Dave Bannion is taken off the Lucy Chapman murder case in The Big Heat because the police department he works for is hopelessly corrupt, with the chief himself in the pocket of the mobsters that killed Chapman.
• Birds of Prey (2020): Police detective Renee Montoya has been investigating crime boss Roman Sionis for six months, including four murders. Because she hasn't come up with any solid evidence of Sionis's guilt, her captain takes her off the case and puts another detective on it. She continues to investigate Sionis and eventually helps take him down.
• The Killer (1989): Inspector Li Ying is taken off the case after getting the wrong guy at the airport since the superintendent thinks the man is siding with the guy he's supposed to take in.
• Love and Bullets: Detective Charlie Congers is taken off the case for leaving a trail of bodies in Switzerland and letting a key witness get killed.
• Now You See Me: Agent Rhodes is taken off the "Four Horsemen case" after having failed repeatedly to get hold of the protagonists and even having unwittingly helped them getting access to classified information. It's later revealed that Rhodes himself was The Man Behind the Man and faked his ineptness to let the Horsemen accomplish their goals.
• Saw V: After getting out of the meatpacking plant alive and arguing with Hoffman over Perez's supposed last words^note Perez actually faked her death for coverage, as shown at the beginning of the next film in the Saw series. (which led Strahm to become suspicious of Hoffman), Strahm is taken off the Jigsaw case on the order of his superior Erickson, after which he goes to investigate and pursue Hoffman on his own.
  Strahm: Jigsaw's dead! How many lives did I inevitably save?
  Erickson: By endangering yourself and others? You're off the case.
  Strahm: On whose orders?
  Erickson: Mine. I'm sorry, Peter. It's over.

Literature

• Men at Arms: Vetinari once took Vimes off a case because it was upsetting the rich and powerful. Of course, this was only done to further motivate him.
• At the start of Ravenor Rogue, Inquisitor Ravenor has been forced off of his hunt for Zygmunt Molotch by his superiors on the grounds that the case is too personal (the fact that their previous encounter resulted in a Mega City being burned down doesn't help). When the task is given to another inquisitor, it initially appears that Molotch met his end when his hideout went up in flames, claiming the lives of the other inquisitor and his retinue... until the dead inquisitor's second-in-command shows up and reveals that Molotch survived after all. Not wanting the trail to run cold again, Ravenor defies orders and goes rogue in pursuit of his nemesis.

Live-Action TV

• Alien Nation: In the episode "The Game" both Sikes and Francisco are investigating a series of Newcomer deaths but are pulled off the case by Captain Granger when Francisco cannot control his emotions in the presence of the Overseer who murdered his brother. This does not stop Francisco from continuing to pursue the leads and finding that the Overseer had indeed caused the deaths of several Newcomers on Earth.
• In Arrow's episode "Betrayal", Quentin is taken off of the search for the Hood because public support for his arrest is beginning to wane. It makes him desperate enough to bank on Laurel arranging a meeting with him so he can use her as bait to draw Hood out.
• In Barney Miller two-parter "Eviction", Barney and the 12th are taken off an assignment to evict Hispanic immigrants from a condemned hotel, over Barney's reluctance to use forceful methods. On top of that, Barney is put on administrative leave. After a near-disaster with Manhattan South's attempt to clear the building, Barney is called back because the tenants will only speak to him.
• The season 4 finale of Blue Bloods has the government conspiracy type. Danny and Baez work a woman's homicide with the District Attorney's Investigators, and Danny has a massive verbal quarrel with one of them. He eventually gets taken off the case on orders from 1PP. The DA investigator with whom he quarreled did not file a complaint, but an ADA for whom he works. Said ADA was not running a prostitution sting op, but rather an entrapment, to collect blackmail material of high-profile figures, such as celebrities, famous athletes, and high-ranking officials, including the Chief of Department.
• Bones:
  • In "Pilot", Senator Bethlehem, the boss of the murder victim, gets Booth kicked off the case after Brennan confronts him and pisses him off.
  • In "The Man in the Mansion", entomologist Dr. Hodgins hides his personal connection to the victim, including a past engagement to his widow, since it would get him taken off the case and he wants to help catch the person who killed him. When the truth about his connection comes out, not only is he taken off, but any evidence he touched is thrown out as being compromised. This causes the rest of the team to scramble to make up for it.
  • In "The Past in the Present", serial killer and longtime nemesis Christopher Pelant manages to implicate Brennan in the murder of a former colleague of hers who made schizophrenic threats towards hers and Booth's daughter. After Pelant pushes Booth to assault him, that and the evidence get both Brennan and Booth taken off the case, with Booth suspended from the FBI altogether. The new agent assigned takes Sweets (for his biased defense of Brennan) and Caroline (since she received a sum of money from Brennan's account, courtesy of Pelant's hacking) off the case as well. This forces Brennan to go into hiding with her father and daughter.
  • In "The Secret in the Service", Booth's heritage as a descendant of assassin John Wilkes Booth gets him temporarily taken off a case involving the death of a secret agent, but only in order to go through a screening process. Brennan is also briefly sidelined, but only because she was dealing with a contagious illness.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries: Breen is sidelined for a case where the victim is his own rugby coach. When Mike and Kristin pay him a visit at his house, they discover that his time away has been taken up by gaming and his girlfriend's insistence that he repaint their house. Mike calls in Area Commander Hughes to interview Breen and confirm that there is no conflict of interest before he's allowed back on the case (finally letting him escape doing more home improvement).
• Castle:
  • Happened fairly frequently to Beckett and Castle, particularly on cases that centered around the murder of Beckett's mother or one of the squad personally.
  • Castle in particular, since he isn't actually a cop, was often asked to sit out for the sake of civilian safety.
  • A few episodes had a big case handed off to the FBI or another higher-up organization, which got turned on its head in Season 6's "Need to Know" when Beckett was briefly part of the FBI and takes her former squad off of a case, making them feel betrayed.
• Invoked on several occasions in Columbo when a suspect with political connections tries to have Columbo removed from a case. In the very first movie "Prescription: Murder", Columbo bluntly informs the murderer's accomplice (who believed Columbo had been taken off the case) that the fact that someone tried to apply pressure to take him off the case convinced Columbo's superior that he was on the right track.
• The CSI-verse has a few:
  • CSI: Catherine gets taken off a Sam Braun case by Grissom, after he learns that Braun is Catherine's father.
  • CSI: Miami:
    • Horatio takes himself off a case in which a woman he'd been out with two nights prior was found dead and he's the last person known to have seen her alive.
    • Horatio tells Eric to stay out of the case of his sister Marisol's marijuana purchase.
  • CSI: NY:
    • Mac takes Danny off a case because it turns out the dead guy wasn't murdered. Danny doesn't buy it easily and keeps at it, only for Mac to chew him out later.
    • Mac pulls Sheldon off one case where the former doctor's ex-girlfriend's rapist resurfaces, and another where Sheldon knew the victim but neglected to tell the team about it.
    • Due to Stella's personal connections, Mac tells her she's off the Greek antiquities theft case and that another department is handling it, but she keeps investigating anyway, to the point that it reaches Turn in Your Badge status.
    • Mac tells Adam not to hack into a company's system in "Unfriendly Chat." He does so anyway, the FBI gets wind of it, and Mac puts Adam on three days' unpaid suspension.
  • CSI: Vegas: Maxine is eventually taken off of David Hodges' forged-evidence case when the higher-ups believe she is helping Grissom and Sara cover up David's (alleged) guilt.
• Forever:
  • After information about an autopsy leaks to the press, Henry is taken off the case in "The Art of Murder" when he takes the blame to protect Lucas. He says he's never been taken off a case before.
  • In "Punk Is Dead" the whole department is ordered to not go anywhere near a prime suspect because he's already the subject of an extensive DEA investigation which could be disrupted by local interference. Lieutenant Reece explicitly points out to Henry that he works for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, not the police, so she has no jurisdiction to tell him what to do — then outlines exactly where to find the suspect.
• Discussed in Inside No. 9 episode "Nine Lives Kat", where the female detective explains that she was taken off a "missing child" case because her superiors couldn't stand to be told the truth by a woman.
• In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Charisma", Stabler is pulled off of the investigation into cult leader Abraham Ophion after the mass killings of the children of Ophion's followers, as Stabler's post-incident review has him confess that he saw a dead child wearing the same kind of pajamas as his own children, leading Dr. Huang to believe that Stabler will not be able to stay objective in the case.
• Midsomer Murders had a case where Barnaby was taken off a case because his wife was a witness. He investigated anyway, as his replacement was a jumped-up little jerkass more interested in planning out his wedding than handling the case and due to his using Barnaby's name at a restaurant, caused Barnaby to be stalked by the murderer who was obsessing over the asshole's fiancée.
• Money Heist: In Episode 7 of Season 2, Raquel, the lead inspector in the Mint heist's investigation until then, is taken off her position once the Spanish National Police identify the Professor and discover the romantic relationship Raquel had with him, leading them to believe that she was an accomplice of his when she wasn't even aware of who he really was back then. In reaction, Raquel tells them that they can go on without her as she angrily lends her badge and the pistol she had in hand by then to them, determined to go on a manhunt for the Professor on her own.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "For the Uniform", Starfleet Command orders Captain Sanders to take over the pursuit of the renegade Michael Eddington, feeling that Captain Sisko was way too personally invested in hunting down Eddington.
• In the pilot of Taxi Brooklyn, Cat Sullivan is removed from the investigation into a violent Bank Robbery because she caused a car accident while trying to chase down the suspect. It's also mentioned that she's in the doghouse for repeatedly ignoring orders to stay away from the investigation into her father's murder.

Podcasts

• Black Jack Justice: The episode "The Albatross" features police lieutenant Sabien hiring Jack and Trixie to pursue the murder of a pregnant black teenager. The reason he does this is that he was removed from the case after looking into the possibility the unborn baby's father was white. Jack and Trixie take the case, reluctantly as the case has clearly gotten to Sabien in a big way, and discover the baby's father and murderer is a city councilman who won the black vote to get elected.

Video Games

• Captainsauce: In his "The Life Of Kevin" The Sims 4 play-through, during the Llama Man arc, Kevin is working as a detective investigating a crime. When it becomes apparent that the suspect is the Goth's daughter, he tries to arrest her but is prevented from doing so. The next day, he's taken off the case and given a new one. Captain decided that this was the result of a conspiracy and that the cops and the Goths were working together.
• In Detroit: Become Human, Hank and his assistant Connor are taken off the case of deviant androids after it develops into a full-blown android revolution, requiring the FBI to step in. Hank protests vehemently but it's Connor who decides to take things into his own hands and continue the investigation without an official mandate.
• The Mystery of the Druids:
  • The game sees the player put on the titular case due to this happening to the original detective. Steve Lowry supposedly caught the man behind the "Skeleton Murders", but it wasn't until the suspect was stabbed to death in prison that they realized he was the wrong guy, and that he was only ever deemed guilty in court because Lowry royally screwed up his case. The game starts with Da Chief reassigning the case onto Halligan, much to Lowry's recurring disdain.
  • Two-thirds into the game, Halligan himself is suspended after Da Chief gets wind of Lord Sinclair threatening to bring charges against him for "burglary". This is just after Halligan has escaped from Sinclair's manor, having been almost brainwashed after discovering Sinclair and his local cabal are in fact the neo-druid murderers, among other things. Naturally, Halligan is undeterred and sees to solve the rest of the case by himself.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series:
  • In Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Katsuya Suou is removed from the JOKER serial killings case by his superior after delivering a report that included that JOKER was a demon summoner. He continues working on the case on his own with the support of the party, even after threatening to have his badge removed. It turned out to be quite a good call since said superiors were part of an Apocalypse Cult type of Conspiracy and among other crimes, they were covering up for the murders.
  • In Persona 5, Sae is taken off the Phantom Thieves' case near the end of the game, much to her frustration. This was to keep her out of the way so the conspiracy could execute Joker. They also wanted to trigger a mental shutdown in her to keep her quiet. But she doesn't follow orders and ends up going to interrogate Joker, leading to the final arc of the game.

Western Animation

• In an episode of Family Guy, a guy who crippled Joe gets out of prison, with the police chief denying the latter permission to be on the case because it's too personal for him, instead giving the case to two cops who don't care about it at all. Joe ends up carrying out the case on his own, with help from Peter and Quagmire.
• In the The New Batman Adventures episode "Over the Edge", after Commissioner Gordon leads a manhunt against Bruce Wayne following the death of his daughter, Barbara, while helping out as Batgirl, the mayor of Gotham City takes him off the case citing Gordon's personal connections, and the D.A. is also asking him to step down due to his involvement with Batman. To avenge Barbara's death, Gordon hires Bane to go after Batman. In the end, it was All Just a Dream Barbara had after she got hit with Scarecrow's fear toxin.
• In the The Simpsons episode "Bart's Inner Child", this is used in a Dirty Harry type film that Homer watches on TV.
  Chief: You're off the case, McGarnagle!
  McGarnagle: You're off your case, Chief.
  Chief: [confused] What does that mean, exactly?
  Homer: [watching] It means he gets results, you stupid chief!

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