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Nick: I'll tell you guys what I'm gonna do! I'll tell you what! I'm gonna get even with every rotten cop in this city!
Paolo: Yeah, me too!
Guido: How you gonna do it, Nick? How you gonna do it?
Nick: I'm gonna... turn in my badge!
Guido: Yeah! I'm gonna burn my uniform!...
— The Firesign Theatre, How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All?
That cop has always been a loose cannon, but this time he's stepped over the line. He is ordered by his boss to turn in his badge and gun, and then go home on an extended "vacation." This is sometimes accompanied by an Insignia Rip Off Ritual.
The cop ignores this directive and finishes tracking the perp down. Sometimes, it's because he's a Cowboy Cop. Other times, Its Personal. When the bad guy is eventually caught, the cop's boss never reprimands the rogue cop and sometimes even admits he was wrong. There won't even be a Mc Cloud Speech about all the regulations the cop broke on this excursion, not the least of which being ignoring an order — probably because he technically wasn't acting as a cop, but merely breaking the law as a regular citizen...
Variation: the cop was never actually off the force but was merely pretending to be, with his superiors' knowledge, to fool a bad guy, sometimes another cop (see: Fake Defector, which is a case of Not Himself).
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- In Death Note, most of the taskforce spend the Yotsuba arc doing this under L's supervision, after they're pulled from the Kira case.
- In The Big O, Dastun does this near the end. Followed by the entire police force.
Film
Literature
- DCI Jack Spratt of Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series is stated in the book-within-a-book Bumper Book of Berkshire Records to have been suspended over 262 times in his career, only one of which led to higher action (a reprimand). This is mainly because both he and his supervisor are Genre Savvy, and his supervisor makes a point of suspending him at least once per case more for dramatic effect than anything else.
- Halt from John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice deliberately creates a situation where he'll get banished from The Kingdom so he can save his apprentice only to get misty-eyed when he must turn in his
ranger badge oak leaf necklace to the authorities as well.
- Subverted in Terry Pratchett's Discworld book Men at Arms, when Lord Vetinari takes Vimes off the case and demands that he turn in his badge. It eventually becomes clear to the reader that he is doing this to make sure Vimes solves it, though Vetinari goes a bit too far and drives Vimes into a Ten Minute Retirement. The trope was played more or less straight in the earlier novel Guards! Guards!, when Lupin Wonse takes Vimes' badge.
- Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus is frequently suspended from cases for various reasons throughout the series.
- Subverted in Liz Williams' Inspector Chen novel Snake Agent. About halfway through, Chen has a meeting with Da Chief, who tells him explicitly that he is not going to take Chen off the case, because he knows full well that Chen is the only person able and willing to handle it. (The scene also features Chen uttering the words "Go to Hell, sir" — as a literal and truthful response to the question "What do you intend to do next?")
- Meyer Landsman of The Yiddish Policemen's Union is ordered to turn in his badge and gun as a result of his Cowboy Cop methods. When he still goes investigating the case, he uses his membership card in the titular union to justify his questioning.
Live Action TV
- Happens to Jack Bauer on 24 at least once a season, forcing him to "go rogue" for 2-3 episodes before CTU realizes he was right all along.
- Kate in season 2 of Angel.
- Det. Mike Cellucci is asked for his badge in Blood Ties S2 finale. Considering he's been threatened with it for two seasons and finally left a hostage crisis to battle Astaroth with Vicki and Henry, it's completely unsurprising.
- Subverted in an episode of Cold Case, where Det. Valens goes overboard on a suspect after suffering a personal tragedy and is ordered to turn in his gun (but not his badge) to his boss. Not only was he not taken off the force (it was only a suggestion for a leave of absence that Valens mistook for a suspension), but he also doesn't go off on his own, during his leave.
- Subverted on CSI, when Warrick Brown forces Detective Jim Brass to hand over his badge, but only so he can analyze it and find the evidence to clear Brass of the crime he was accused of, before Brass gets it back at the end of the episode.
- Parodied with Laser Tag in the pre-credits sequence of an episode of How I Met Your Mother.
- Subverted in an episode of Joan Of Arcadia: Will was being a loose cannon due to stress from recent events, and nearly shot a little girl; he's slowly talked into accepting the break from work. In a later episode, back on the force and fresh from a successful bust, he's interviewed by reporters who try to shove him into the McCloud role, which he gets an ego trip from until his coworkers call him on it.
- Law And Order Special Victims Unit: 90% of the episodes starring Elliot Stabler.
- DCI Gene Hunt gets suspended in both Life on Mars accused of murdering a boxing promoter and Ashes to Ashes Gene and Ray attack a suspect and are reported by Alex, and Gene gets put on paid leave, which means, of course, that he was just being Gene!
- Subverted in New Tricks; although he's not technically a police officer anymore, when Gerry is briefly sidelined from an investigation owing to his possible old-time connection to a gangster who has become the focus of the investigation, he angrily offers his resignation, only for his boss (Sandra) to flatly refuse it; she doesn't want his 'badge', but at the same time she can't reasonably have him in the investigation.
- Another time, after another chewing out from Sandra, Gerry offers her his badge yet again — except, of course, being a retired policeman, he no longer has a badge, so he has to make do with his Blockbuster video club card.
- Subverted in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Shades of Grey", in which Jack O'Neill (a Military Maverick) is forced to retire after stealing a piece of advanced technology from the Tollan, and then proceeds to collaborate with Colonel Maybourne and his rogue NID team involved in similar activities. In the end, it is revealed that all of this was a ploy by O'Neill and General Hammond to expose the NID's mole in the SGC, who turned out to be Colonel Makepeace.
- Occurs during the first series finale of Torchwood to Owen after he opened the Rift and caused what appeared to be irreparable damage. It was later subverted in the second series, once again with Owen. The subversion was that he was asked to turn in his badge, but because of the danger to others, but to himself - he had died and was brought back to life, and could no longer heal.
- Fox Mulder (The X Files), at least three times.
- Used with Wayne Rigsby on The Mentalist, but quickly taken back once Patrick Jane realized that he had been hypnotized and wasn't responsible for his actions.
- Used again in the second season with Lisbon after she was accused of murder and failed a polygraph test. And this time, she really had to turn it in.
- The whole team went unregulated for an episode after breaking protocol, but they were allowed to carry on when Minelli looked the other way.
- "Mr Monk Gets Fired": Monk accidentally deletes important police information, so the commissioner revokes his license.
- One episode of Bones had Booth turn in his badge. The rest of the team realized that they could get him his job back if they solved the case they were working on, so his suspension only lasted one episode.
New Media
Video Games
- In the Ace Attorney series, Detective Gumshoe loses his job in both the DS-exclusive fifth case of the first game and the fourth case of the second game. He makes it through the third game without getting fired once.
Web Comics
- Played with in a long-running cop show parody on Checkerboard Nightmare. The trope is so routine that when the chief pulls it more often than usual, the title character protests that "we've already turned in our week's supply of badges!"
- In Darths And Droids, Obi-Wan and Anakin get suspended from the Jedi Order after they do a spectacularly bad job protecting the Senator and apprehending the assassin. The Genre Savvy players think that this means they're on the right track, since this always happens to the Cowboy Cop just before they save the day in the movies.
Western Animation
- Angry Beavers, "Dagski and Norb" (parodying Starsky and Hutch). The titular cops report to their superior about seeing a car that looked just like theirs... and end up turning in their badges anyhow because there was a report about "something bad going down" and their car being seen leaving the scene of the crime.
- Happens to Montoya in the Batman The Animated Series episode "P.O.V.". (Bullock and an incidental character, Wilkes, are also forced to turn in their badges, but only Montoya keeps working on the case.)
- In Family Guy The Movie, Tom Tucker is fired from the news station and had to give back all of his station items, including his mustache.
- In at least one episode of Fillmore, the title character has to turn in his Safety Patrol sash.
- The second variation of this trope happened with Elisa on Gargoyles. Turns out she was going undercover to catch Dracon.
- Officer Mike Brikowski from The Powerpuff Girls is a fat, lazy old cop who believes that the girls are a waste of space who just take work away from "hard-working" policemen like him. In the end he is fired for his laziness and forced to turn in his badge and reflective sunglasses, but for some reason is allowed to keep his firearm as "a little souvenir". He also has to give up his precious donut. He swears vengeance on the Powerpuffs, which he goes after unsuccessfully through the episode.
- Done, as everything is, on The Simpsons when Apu is fired from the Kwik-E-Mart. He is told to hand in his pricing gun (which he keeps in a shoulder holster) and his backup (kept in an ankle holster).
- Parodied in South Park when Mr Garrison is fired.
Mr Garrison: I suppose you'll be wanting my badge and gun...
Chairman: Mr Garrison, most teachers do not carry a gun!
Mr Garrison: Oh, sorry. So I can keep it then?
- Parodied again near the end of We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, when Stubbs the Clown resigns from Prof. Screweyes' circus and hands in his props. All his props: "Here's my shoes, my nose, my horn, my buzzer, my fake arm, my bug-eye glasses, my backstage passes, my hat, my rabbit, his backstage passes, my fake fangs, a few birds, my pogo stick, my donkey ears, my extending tongue gag, my rubber chicken... ya can't even get these anymore... my lucky whale tooth, and a giant clam that opens to reveal the American flag held by a mermaid and her normal brother Richard!" If you thought reading the description was funny, it's even better in the movie.
- Grizzlikov, the Obstructive Bureaucrat supreme of SHUSH, ends up getting let go by Da Chief J Gander Hooter, in favour of a squad trained and inspired by Costumed Crimefighter (and title character) Darkwing Duck in one episode. It's the variant, as mentioned above; he gets recruited by the villains and works as The Mole to sabotage their big design, all according to Hooter's plan.
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