Police Are Useless in Western Animation.
The following shows/franchises have their own pages:
- Peanut Cop from 12 oz. Mouse is constantly drunk or stoned, which is why he often fails at his job. His state of mind prevents him from reacting appropriately to crimes that occur right in front of him.
- In Adventure Time, the Candy Kingdom's Banana Guards are completely useless.
- In "You Made Me", when the Banana Guards found out that the Earl of Lemongrab was breaking into people's houses and staring at them because he was jealous of Princess Bubblegum's huge kingdom, they didn't do anything about it because they were bored and watched it on monitors. They did this for two weeks before anybody else realised what was going on.
- In "Root Beer Guy", when Princess Bubblegum was kidnapped by Finn and Jake as part of a plot to test her security, i.e. the Banana Guards, the Guards didn't even notice and just got in the way of Root Beer Guy, the only one doing any police work and ignored him when he tried to report the kidnapping — He eventually had to resort to claiming he took a boat out after 8 o'clock in violation of Lake Butterscotch rules to even get them to show up. At the end of the episode, Princess Bubblegum saw how useless the Guards were and made Root Beer Guy the Captain in an effort to change this.
- In "James II", Princess Bubblegum assigns them to arrest the various clones of the equally stupid James. After spending almost a full minute trying to grasp the difference between a picture of James and James himself, the Banana Guards decide to ask the first person to walk past them if they've seen James, which happens to be one of the James'. Soon, the Guards and the James' are facing each other in two groups, passing the picture back and forth between each other.
- In "Apple Wedding", after having everyone present at Tree Trunks' wedding thrown in the dungeon due to their support of the King of Ooo, Princess Bubblegum later orders the Banana Guards to "let everyone go". They release EVERYONE in the dungeon, including the actual felons.
- In "Rattleballs", during a flashback, the (still literally green) banana guards see a robbery going on and, instead of chasing the thief, cheer him on.
- In the movie Aladdin, the guards were actually fairly useful, even managing to catch Aladdin once. In Aladdin: The Series, they're another story. Aladdin solves all of Agrabah's problems, while the guards seldom do anything and sometimes even get in the way. The opening of the episode "Black Sand" is probably the best example of this. All four guards fail at catching a tiny flying eel. Subverted with Razoul when he's given A Day in the Limelight.
- Zigzagged in The Amazing World of Gumball, where the most frequently seen police officer is an anthropomorphic doughnut who is actually portrayed as somewhat competent on occasion, but is just as often shown doing reckless things that would have gotten him kicked off the police force in real life. This trope is lampshaded in "The Friend", in which Doughnut Sheriff's police manual actually says "If the task requires tact and intellect, call someone else".
- In one episode of American Dad!, Stan goes nuts and takes two hostages, demanding drugs. The police negotiator on the scene immediately gives Stan the drugs and a plane for Stan to fly to Colombia; as soon as Stan drops the hostages, the negotiator kills the hostages himself without any provocation before trying to rape Hayley.
- The one time the military or police do jack-shit in Archie's Weird Mysteries, the one time they actually decide to visit that God-forsaken town that's constantly coming under attack from every monster and weird event you can imagine, is when Veronica is accidentally grown to 50 feet tall and, after one brief little panic attack, isn't even aggressive or a threat. Then to add insult to injury, they fall for a simple "He Went That Way" from Veronica who was shrunk Just in Time.
- Justified in The Backyardigans episode "Caveman's Best Friend". Pablo cannot get Austin's pet dinosaur back because he cannot whistle.
- Inverted twice in Batman Beyond when Batman charges in to stop a crime, only to learn the hard way that he just screwed up a police sting that would have stopped the criminals on its own if he hadn't butted in. Naturally, that annoys his ally, Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon, to no end. But for a former Batgirl she's pretty quick to believe in an illusion of him killing a criminal. Then again, even Bruce seemed to believe Terry killed the criminal until Terry stated otherwise and was shocked upon the accusation.
- Played mostly straight in The Batman. Ellen Yin and Ethan Bennet were somewhat competent in Season 1, but Batman couldn't count on them for help due to their Jerkass superior Chief Rojas who was out to get Batman, and was indirectly responsible for Bennet falling into the Joker's hands and turning into Clayface. By Season 2, Batman could at least count on Yin as an ally, and after that, Gordon stepped in, and there were fewer problems.
- Addressed in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, when Batman tries to talk sense into Loony Fan Bat-Mite by explaining that he didn't become a hero for praise or glory, but rather because there are criminals too dangerous for the police to handle.
- Beavis And Butthead: The police in Highland are generally presented as either very incompetent or very trigger-happy, with no in-between. They usually do not keep a close eye on Beavis and Butt-Head's shenanigans and end up beating up and arresting the wrong person instead.
- Ben 10: With the exception of the ones who were actually important characters (meaning essentially Max Tennyson and Rook Bonko), the Plumbers were essentially portrayed as more and more useless as the franchise went on, even though they were gaining more authority:
- In the Original Series, they were a disbanded organization depicted as operating only on Earth and implied to have been efficient enough that they could go toe-to-toe with an entire race of alien shapeshifters and required a confrontation with Vilgax to end them.
- Comes Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, they are now a galactic-wide police operating on multiple systems but still forced to follow The Masquerade on Earth, but the few times they show up involve them getting easily defeated or manipulated by villains and insisting they can't allow themselves to waste resources on a low-level planet like Earth.
- Finally, in Omniverse, they now can operate freely thanks to Earth now being an open system... and yet their headquarters has such terrible security that their prisoners keep escaping on the drop of a hat, their tech support is handled by two bumbling idiots who can somehow repair a Doomsday Device by accident, their black op branch is making Child Soldiers and recruiting murderous kids so they can eliminate The Hero because he might one day become dangerous, and they are either inexplicably absent or easily defeated in any situation where their actions could actually be useful.
- Officer Keys of Big City Greens doesn't seem to put on the right ideal "police" attitude, and there are times when he does not do his job at hand.
- In the climax of "Chipocalypse Now" when Keys sees Chip about to murder Cricket and his family for getting banned from Big City, he does nothing. Granted, Chip would've gotten in even more trouble for attempting murder, as Keys pointed out in "Reckoning Ball" to begin with.
- In "Impopstar", Keys doesn't bother to join Nancy in rescuing Cricket because he's too focused on finding Zillon Brax.
- In Big Hero 6: The Series, the police tend to be unable to handle supervillains, though it's not that they're incompetent hacks, more in the case that they don't have the means to combat against said supervillains, whereas Big Hero 6 do.
- In the first episode, Yama has engineered a small army of Baymax-type robots, sans Three Laws Compliance. Fred uses this to insist that his friends don their costumes/armor again and take on the threat as super-heroes. GoGo insists that the police can handle it. Cue the news showing the police among the citizens running for their lives.
Police Officer: WE CAN'T HANDLE THIS!- In Season 2, the new police chief Diego Cruz hates superheroes, blaming them for the appearance of supervillains and vows to arrest the team. But his claims are untrue since the members of Big Hero 6's Rogues Gallery were already villains or became villains on their own without the heroes' involvement. And no matter how many times circumstances prove him wrong, Cruz won't let go of his accusations against them.
- He ends up setting his 14-year-old daughter, Megan, to the task of determining the team's identities. She manages to make more progress than the entire police force, which is to say that she does basic investigative work that they are apparently not doing. Her first step in her investigation is to identify hotspots where Big Hero 6 sightings are statistically clustered. This is something that any half-decent police department should have been able to do.
- The Boondocks: While the police of Woodcrest do appear to be useless on a daily basis, this is mostly because they are either on the take, innocents roped up in some so-called heroes' criminal activities or simply not called upon in the first place.
- In "Thank You for Not Snitching", it is stated one of the reasons black people are against snitching is because of this trope: when black teenager Bernard Jefferson helped the police shut down a local crack house, they lazily neglected to give him any form of Witness Protection, claiming that was "more of a feds thing". As a result, not only was Bernard shot as he walked away from the police precinct (in full view of two police detectives, who didn't even try to defend him), but when he later refused to identify the men who shot him he was charged with conspiracy and sentenced to a month in jail.
- They prove how useful they can be in "Stinkmeaner 3: The Hateocracy". Only after the Freeman family's other plans fall through including purchasing the incredibly pricey protection services of the now deceased Bushido Brown, someone resorts to 'snitching' on the three antagonists making attempts on their lives and the police resolve the issue quickly with minimal fuss.
- Rancid Rabbit from CatDog. Mainly because he has hatedom towards Cat.
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers:
- This usually intersects with Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot; the police routinely overlook seemingly minor cases that turn out to be connected to much more serious crimes. In first episode, the police decline to help a little girl find her missing kitten. The Rescue Rangers take on the case, and in the process stop a plot by Professor Nimnul to use a static electricty-powered lightning machine to destroy the city.
- In the Five-Episode Pilot, Detective Drake and his dog Plato avert this by being intelligent and competent, but the Big Bad gets them out of the way by framing them for the theft of the MacGuffin needed for the villain's master plan. They spend most of the pilot movie in jail, while the Rescue Rangers are left to clear their names.
- DuckTales (1987) and Darkwing Duck both had their respective protagonists, Scrooge McDuck and, well, Darkwing Duck, wind up in jail at least three times because the villains are messing with the police's heads. Of particular interest is that, in the "Super DuckTales" TV movie (and later serial) that introduced Gizmoduck; the police also actually give judge and jury duty to the Beagle Boys despite them being known criminals!Nice guys, those Beagles. The only people in town who volunteered for jury duty.
- Scrooge was only in hot water because he was trying to steal his own money back from the Beagles. They just used it as an excuse to get Scrooge locked up.
- They definitely seem to be pretty useless in Ernest et Célestine. They can't catch either Ernest or Celestine and when they do briefly capture Ernest, he and Celestine have a fairly easy time of it getting away. They then spend months spending hiding out in Ernest's home in the woods, even though it's really not that far from the city and shouldn't be all that hard to find with a joint manhunt issued for the two of them.
- One episode of The Fairly OddParents! that put Timmy in a Clear My Name situation featured a police squad that hounded Timmy based on his parents description. They fall for a Paper-Thin Disguise Chester and AJ put on and completely ignore Francis, the actual thief, who wasn't exactly being subtle.
- Family Guy
- Stewie reports the theft of his tricycle to the police. Since no adults understand the talking Stewie, the cop says, "Oh, look at the little baby. Aren't you cute? Where's your mommy?" The cop says the exact same thing to when a man shows up to turn himself in when he has a dismembered Baltic hooker bleeding through the tarp in his trunk.
- In the episode "Screams of Silence", Joe invokes a Take That! at the real life legal limitations of police when it comes to domestic abuse:Peter: Hey Joe, can't you just arrest the guy?
Joe: I can't arrest Jeff unless Brenda files a formal complaint with the police.
Quagmire: She won't go to the police, she's afraid of what Jeff'll do! [...] What if one of these nights he hits her so hard he kills her?!
Joe: Sorry, Quagmire, police policy; we can't step in until it's too late.- Even though Joe then says he could have Quagmire arrested for suggesting that somebody should kill Jeff instead.
- The page image is from a joke the show did about the cop show CHiPs, where Erik Estrada's character Ponch is hitting on a woman and ignoring a violent gunfight and a truck carrying cocaine passing behind him.
- Also, when James Woods stole documents of Peter's identity, Joe said he had no choice but treat Woods as the real Peter Griffin.
- Joe in general. If he's not on the job, and sometimes even then, he'll permit blatant crimes to occur right in front of him without doing anything about it, especially those of his friends, and sometimes even take part in it.
- When the Griffins go to a stadium, two random female spectators in the stands get into a fight, bouncing chests against one another. Peter then mentions that security is now here to remove the wrong person; sure enough, as soon as the security staff get there, they pick up a completely innocent Asian man sitting nearby, muttering a racist invective about Mr. Miyagi as they drag him away.
- In the Gargoyles episode "Temptation", Demona shows Brooklyn a series of unpleasant events taking place in New York to convert him to her human-hating ways, one of which is a mugger stealing a woman's purse. When Brooklyn tries to stop him, Demona states that the police would let him out of prison in a day.
- The grumpy cop from The Goode Family episode "Gerold's Way or The Highway".
- Gravity Falls:
- Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland combine this trope with Adults Are Useless. The closest to an aversion is "Irrational Treasure," which casts them as relatively competent villains covering up the secret history of the town's founding.
- Agents Powers and Trigger overlapped this with The Men in Black, as they were federal agents investigating the paranormal but didn't believe Dipper about his findings until he accidentally starts a small-scale Zombie Apocalypse, after which they're immediately carried off.
- The cop that holds Harvey to "get down" from the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode "Booty Noir".
- The police in Hey Arnold! usually vary, but any time a character reports a crime to the police station, the cops laugh them out. The worst would be the time Grandpa reported that his Packard was missing. The police said they'd get right on it, as soon as they were finished with a stack of other missing car reports, with them laughing uproariously.
- In Heavy Metal in the episode “Harry Canyon”, Harry takes his passed-out passenger to the NYPD. Harry has to argue his way in to the police station (which is locked up like a fortress), and once inside when he explains the situation to the desk sergeant, the sergeant gives him a lengthy list of all the things Harry will have to pay for if he wants an investigation. “Here’s a dollar,” Harry says, flipping the cop a coin as he leaves; “Thanks for nothin’.”
- Inspector Gadget lives this trope. He only managed to arrest the right person once in his entire series. And that was because the thief fell down the fire escape and landed in front of him with the stolen goods. Most of the episodes include at least one scene of Gadget trying to arrest his dog.
- Played with in Jackie Chan Adventures in the episode "The Chan Who Knew Too Much". The episode focuses on a cult that steals Stonehenge in hope of using it as a potential doomsday weapon, and when they suspect Jackie Chan of knowing their plot, instead of working to try and take them down, he makes several attempts to report it to the "proper authorities". At first he tries to report it to Captain Black, who gets paranoid when he hears that magic is involved. Then when Jackie tries to inform the Metropolitan Police, he's immediately arrested by an officer who is part of the cult, leading him to the conclusion that the cult is much bigger than anticipated. The only person who actually manages to help in the situation is Uncle, and by the time he does help, all the information he relays is already known. And earlier on in the episode when they tried to get his help, he was also a bit useless as he was spooked by a fax machine, thinking it was a possessed phone.
- Jellystone!: Their very presence is variable depending on the gag. Some are seen when there's a court case going on, but at other times El Kabong is treated as the law-enforcement option, and Top Cat's scams generally go unopposed.
- Kim Possible: The very few times the police are actually shown, they show up after the villain is captured, no exceptions. Lampshaded in the episode with the Fashion Police. When Kim calls them out on being completely useless, they point out that they were trained in fashion, not combat. Makes you wonder how they're supposed to enforce anything.
- ZigZagged in King of the Hill; in one episode, Hank reports the defamation of beef caused by a smarmy artist to a Sheriff and the sheriff arrests him. In some other episodes, the police’s incompetence are usually because of their stupidity or because they are an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
- The Legend of Korra plays with this. Republic City's Metalbending Police and the Anti-Equalist Task force do have moments of competence, like attacking and defeating an Equalist secret base. Ultimately though, the police are outfoxed and outwitted at most turns, with the Equalists unveiling new weapons and tactics, and the cops beaten thoroughly. When the Stadium is attacked, all the cops are taken out with electric gloves (they all wear metal), and all the outside airships and boats were all defeated offscreen. In the first season finale, the officers get taken down left and right, losing the city.
- Metalbending Police's main problem is that they never seem to learn. When they fight tanks that are largely immune to their metal cable attacks they tend to forget that they can just earthbend the ground to make either huge walls or pits to trap them in. When faced with electric attacks that hit them through their armor they never try to adapt and insulate that armor for future attacks. They acknowledged the need of body armor to stop chi blocking attacks but some how never thought to use a material other than highly conductive metal.
- In the second season, Lu and Gang play this role as jerks who prank Mako by lying to him, intentionally place evidence in the shelf so that they don't have to investigate, and (don't) do other things that make things worse to the protagonists. Lampshaded by Asami in "The Sting" while in the interrogation room.
- Thankfully this doesn't stop Chief Bei Fong from being competent. Lu and Gang both get fired from their detective positions after them being more concerned with eating than protecting the President of the United Republic of Nations causes him to nearly get kidnapped while they're easily knocked unconscious.
- Used in a brief throwaway gag in the Looney Tunes cartoon "The Stupor Salesman"; a bank robber blows by a parked police car with two officers in it, both of whom are fast asleep.
- Zig-zagged in Miraculous Ladybug. The police are rarely any help against the villains Ladybug and Chat Noir face, but it's mostly because they're normal human beings trying to go up against empowered supervillains rather than any incompetence on their part. This is best shown in the episode "Captain Hardrock"; while Lieutenant Raincomprix is woefully outmatched against Captain Hardrock, he still keeps trying to arrest her, in the process distracting her at a crucial moment and securing victory for the heroes.
- The cops of Moonbeam City are generally varying levels of useless or corrupt. Protagonist Dazzle Novac rarely ever does his job well and is often sidetracked by his own personal shenanigans while his rival Rad is outright psychotic. The only ones on the MBCPD that consistently try to get their job done are the police chief and the resident tech expert, and even they have their moments.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: Jenny is Tremorton and the world's only defense as Skyway Patrol not only fit this trope, but they're also Obstructive Bureaucrats, which is even worse than useless.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The series premiere has a scene where some Royal Guards try to take down Nightmare Moon. They get blasted with lightning.
- "A Canterlot Wedding": Canterlot is protected by a magic shield and a small army of Royal Guards who, despite being on high alert, are overrun by Changelings as soon as the shield collapses. Their leadership had been incapacitated, but still...
- The Wonderbolts aren't much better. In theory, they're supposed to be a military branch that performs exhibition for civilians, yet we mostly see them at exhibition shows and derbys. Whenever they go up against a real threat, like Tirek or an unnaturally grown Spike, they lose in seconds.
- Sheriff Silverstar gets this from "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" when three fillies trick him into abandoning his post so they can set an outlaw free.
- Averted in "The Times They Are A Changeling", where the Crystal Empire Guards take their duty to find the eponymous Changeling seriously and even suspect Twilight, Starlight and Spike when they arrive in the Empire. The fact that they're commanded by Shining Armor, the previously-mentioned incapacitated commander during the initial Changeling attack, probably has a lot to do with it. That said they also not only fail to find the aforementioned changeling but can't even keep him out of the city, which only works out since said changeling just happens to be the only nice one in the entire hive, since Shining Armor apparently forgot all about that shield he used last time that conveniently let anything except changelings enter the city and they can't seem to figure out ID cards or a password system...
- Paradise PD: Paradise PD is so financially underfunded that they're running low on ammunition. It's later established that Gina is pretty much the only competent cop on the force and is the sole reason Paradise hasn't fallen apart. When she briefly quits the force in one episode, the rednecks end up taking over the police station due to the sheer incompetence of the other cops (particularly Dusty, who sings inspiration songs to criminals about quitting drugs instead of actually busting them).
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
- The movie shows what Townsville was like before the girls came along. The reason crime was so rampant? The police were always at the donut shop. Although the implication seemed less like laziness and more of a case of Crooks Are Better Armed.
- In a few episodes such as "Mime for a Change", the police are really unable to confront bad guys who have superpowers. Although because there needs to be a plot, the police are never even bothering to stop bad guys who have no superpowers at all. In "Too Pooped to Puff", bad guys were seen robbing a bank but then the Powerpuff Girls came and saved the day. Then the camera pulls to the police relaxing, eating donuts and asking the girls to also book the bad guys (granted, the basic premise of that episode was everyone in Townsville expecting the Powerpuff Girls to do everything for them due to becoming too lazy to do it themselves).
- Mike Brikowski, the villain of "Cop Out" was an incompetent cop who blamed the girls for his firing. Said cop was a lazy Small Name, Big Ego that sat in his car sleeping and ate donuts, somehow thinking that he was up for a promotion any day now. The rest of the police are actually competent, as they rescue the girls in the end. However the trope applies to any other appearance, as seen in "Girls Gone Mild."
- Recess: School's Out: Granted, the story was pretty crazy, but when you get THREE separate reports of the same story (not only that, but the third person who reported it was not only a teacher at the same school as the one with the strange reports, but the same person was also likely old enough to have most likely would have taught them as kids), don't you think it might at least be worth a look?
- A Robot Chicken sketch.
- Done in Rocky and Bullwinkle when the World Economic Council calls the police when Boris and Natasha escape with a truck load of counterfeit box tops.Officer: Would you spell it please?
Council: B-O-X-T-O-P-S!
Officer: B-O-S...
Council: X! X! B-O-X!
Officer: One question? How do you make a "B"? - Sheriff Stone from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. Most of the time, he won't even get involved in whatever mystery Crystal Cove is facing, until the gang proves it a hoax, and if he does get involved, he'll sometimes make things worse. He even arrested Scooby when a dog was terrorizing the town despite clear evidence that Scooby wasn't responsible. In Season 2, it's revealed he has a string of lawsuits related to arresting the wrong people. This is something of an Enforced Trope as well: Crystal Cove is a tourist trap that relies on its legends of monsters to attract people, so when something mysterious starts happening, it's the policy of the local government to simply declare it the work of monsters and not investigate, lest it be proven a hoax and shut down another merchandising opportunity. Therefore, the only time Stone bothers to arrest monsters early on is if they've been unmasked and the cat's already out of the bag. He does improve with time, though.Scooby: You are a terrible sheriff!Sheriff Stone: Ehhh, sounds like someone's been talking to my lawyer.
- SheZow is an aversion on this; the police can hold their own, it's just that SheZow is faster.
- South Park
- When Kyle tries to report the obvious serial killer (who wants to get caught) with DNA evidence, he is berated by Sergeant Yates for being a waste of his time, since he is not a psychic.
- Officer Barbrady is extremely incompetent in the early seasons for being incapable of solving crimes and other stuff. Despite that, he actually kept South Park in peace since he's the only cop in town and had moments like when he learned to read and solved the "Chickenlover" case. He becomes much more competent in his job during his appearances as he was Demoted to Extra when Yates and the Park County police took over.
- In "Cartman Sucks" the police seem very apathetic to an 8-year-old discussing a photo of himself with someone's penis in his mouth. One would think that would merit following up.
- As if being this trope wasn't bad enough, the Park County cops have a nasty tendency to go rabid or worse when things don't go their way.
- Similar to Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland above, the elderly beat cop who occasionally shows up in Star vs. the Forces of Evil is an oblivious idiot who barely notices or cares about the constant monster attacks in Echo Creek.
- In Star Wars Resistance, the security droids on the Colossus don't do anything about people getting mugged or killed, but they will book you for being unregistered and arrest those who induce a panic without an emergency. In one instance, one of them runs away when a sea monster attacks the Colossus.
- The mall cop from the Christmas Episode of Stroker and Hoop.
- The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!:
- Subverted by an episode where Bowser and the Koopas follow Mario and Luigi back to Earth. Bowser decides to conquer Earth along with the Mushroom Kingdom, and the New York police department helps the Mario Bros. get rid of them. Unfortunately, Bowser turns them to stone (and we never see them get changed back).
- Later on, Koopa tries to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Becides sending in typical officers for what is clearly terrorism, the officers are completely unarmed, don't even have batons or other nonlethal weaponry, and just simply charge at Koopa when he has easily throwable bombs.
- Subverted in SWAT Kats at least once. While the titular heroes and the city Enforcers butted heads more often than not, the Enforcers were quick to step in in a fight against a giant alien insect. While they ultimately couldn't do much against said insect directly, they still managed to torch its lair and all of its eggs, and were ultimately responsible for its destruction. As a general rule, however, while they're fairly badass for cops in a superhero show, the Enforcers just Can't Catch Up to the titular SWAT Kats and the enemies they face.
- The Toy Story Toons short "Partysaurus Rex" plays this for laughs. When Rex is trying to subdue a party, a little toy police car drives up and dives into the bathtub party.
- The Detroit Police Force in Transformers: Animated is usually ill-equipped to deal with whatever supervillain/alien robot/giant monster related weirdness is attacking the city this time. They even become part of the problem after an Allspark fragment in an assembly line robot causes the police bots it constructs to go violent and berserk.
- Played with in the Venture Brothers episode "The Trial of The Monarch", in that the police, in exchange for substantial funding, refuse to acknowledge any criminal activity of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and do not respond to any emergency calls regarding them. However, if a Guild villain messes with the police directly, they're likely to get arrested for it (as in the case of The Monarch, who allegedly killed a cop).
- In WordGirl, the police are so dependent on WordGirl to defeat the villains that they are left befuddled in situations where she is incapacitated. This is most blatant in "Ch-ch-ch-change Day". Becky and Bob are left trapped in a bank vault, unable to change into WordGirl and Captain Huggyface. Outside of the bank, the police chief is forced to admit to the officers that he doesn't know what to do, because WordGirl would usually have solved the problem by this point.
