Dirty Cop / Live-Action Films

Multiple

• As in real life, the Australian police and prison guards in Ned Kelly (1970), Ned Kelly (2003), Captain Thunderbolt and The Outlaw Michael Howe run protection rackets, brutalize Irish homesteaders on behalf of the bankers, and take bribes. Sergeant Smith in Mad Dog Morgan is particularly sadistic, and extorts money from the local Irish Determined Homesteaders and Blacks when not abusing or robbing the Penal Colony Chain Gang convicts.

Specific Works

• A ring of dirty cops want to kill a witness in 16 Blocks.
• Anthony Quinn's character in Across 110th Street, who hides this by masquerading as a Cowboy Cop.
• American Gangster:
  • A gang of corrupt NYPD detectives make life difficult for both drug lord Frank Lucas by demanding money, invading his mom's house and destroying her furniture, shooting his dog and assaulting his wife, and for honest cop Richie Roberts by almost taking $10,000 in bait money and outright telling him not to arrest Frank to keep the drug/bribe business going. They're only stopped when Frank and Richie team up to catch all the corrupt cops that Frank knows, nearly 3/4 of the police force.
  • In addition to the detectives, Richie's career is ruined when he and his partner do not keep a million dollars, making the other corrupt cops in his squad suspicious that they'll turn them in. This drives his partner to theft and drug use, culminating in a fatal overdose on Frank's "product".
• American Justice: The main villains are small-town cops who run a protection racket against the local criminals and frame a fellow cop passing through town for a murder they commit.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Sonny Burch has an FBI agent who feeds him inside information. Eventually, he's killed by Ghost while trying to steal Hank Pym's lab to deliver to Burch.
• The Archer: Bob, the warden and owner of a girls' reform camp, bribed a judge to send him juveniles as the state pays for housing them.
• In Asian School Girls, Martin, Jack's boss on the police force, is in league with a crime syndicate and does everything in his power to prevent Jack from investigating either the rapes or the vigilante killings.
• A group of dirty cops in Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) with very superior firepower attack a lonely police station in order to silence the gangster who could expose them. However, they're staggeringly incompetent, carry their badges during the assault, and use police vehicles, leaving one to wonder how they expected to get away with it.
• In Back to the Future, Doc is interrupted by a cop while rigging his lightning rod. The cop asks to see a permit for his "weather experiment". Notice that Doc reaches into his wallet to look for the permit. The deleted scene then shows that the "permit" is actually a $50 bill.
• In Back to the Future Part II, alternate timeline Biff gloats that he owns the police in response to Marty threatening to go to them.
• Harvey Keitel in the aptly named Bad Lieutenant is a rapist and drug abuser.
  • Nicolas Cage's version in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a drug-addled lunatic lurching from crime to crime.
• Any cop in Batman (1989) (except Commissioner Gordon), especially Lt. Eckhardt (an Expy of Bullock, more or less) who is hired by Grissom to kill Jack Napier.
• Bedtime Story (1964) has con artist Jameson's friend Andre, a police inspector who helps him with his cons and makes several offers to help dispose of rival scammer Freddy.
• Played with in The Big Easy. As Roger Ebert put it, "[McSwain] is an honest cop in the ways that really count and a dishonest cop in small ways he has been able to rationalize." To Anne, who is campaigning against corruption, it looks a lot worse than it probably is.
• The Big Lebowski: The "fuckin' fascist" chief of police of Malibu, a real reactionary who assaults the Dude after he is drugged and ejected from Jackie Treehorn's party.
• In Black Angel Vol. 1, Shinichi Onda is in the pocket of the yakuza. At the time of the original massacre, he is a patrolman who helps to cover it up. By the time Ikko returns to begin her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he is a detective. It is eventually revealed that he has ambitions to become head of the yakuza.
• Bones (2001): Lupovich has spent at least twenty years taking bribes from drug dealers and helped murder Jimmy Bones when he tried to keep the dealers away.
  Detective Lupovich: Don't you think I deserve something extra for knocking out the competition?
  Eddie Mack: Shit, you was just doing your motherfuckin' job.
  Detective Lupovich: The last thing you need is for me to start doing my fucking job.
• Officers Warren and Norton in Bride of Chucky. They collaborate to plant a bag of marijuana on Jesse just because he's dating Warren's niece, Jade.
• In Busting, Keneely and Farrel want to bust crime lord Rizzo, but they find it almost impossible due to the fact that practically the entire LAPD is in Rizzo's pocket. Their fellow cops destroy key evidence, let suspects escape, and refuse to help them with basic policework, and as a result, hardly any of their arrests stick.
• In Cannibal Girls, the Farnhamville police are in cahoots with the Reverend Alex St. John and kill a man looking for his missing sister at the Reverend's request.
• This is a major plot point of Cellular, as it's revealed that several Homicide Detectives are in on a corruption ring.
• Changeling has Captain J.J. Jones, who is willing to go any length to protect the image of the LAPD, including giving Christine a stand-in for her missing child, forcing her to care for him, and committing her to a mental institution when she finally decides to stand up for herself.
• Jake Gittes in Chinatown strongly implies that Mulvihill was one during his time with the police. In their first scene together, Gittes mentions that when Mulvihill served (during Prohibition) "the rumrunners never lost a drop," hinting that he was on the take.
• A Clockwork Orange: After being released from prison, Alex is horrified to discover that his treacherous gang members George and Dim are now bobbies. "A job for two who are now of job-age. The police!" Given Georgie's previous interest in earning money for their crimes, it's pretty clear that they're motivated purely to get paid for brutalizing people. When they cross paths with Alex again, they drag him to a secluded place and beat him nearly to death while still in uniform.
• Billy, in Cold Comes the Night, has his hands in prostitution and fencing car parts from impounded cars. Then he steals cash from a hitman and starts killing to cover it up.
• The Commuter: It turns out there's a group of corrupt cops who are part of the conspiracy. Murphy is one of them. The police captain mentions he's been under investigation already for it.
• Confidence: LAPD detectives Lloyd Whitworth and Omar Manzano work for con artist Jake Vig, busting in on him to scare the mark away after Jake and his crew have conned the mark out of his cash, and getting a cut of what Jake makes. Special Agent Gunther Butan also turns out to be working for Jake as well.
• Kretzer in Cop Car is a crooked sheriff who spends the movie trying to cover up a murder he has committed.
• Nick Chen, the Villain Protagonist and titular character of The Corruptor, who is a decorated New York City policeman well-respected by his higher-ups, given a powerful authoritarian position investigating activities involving The Triads and the Tongs in Chinatown... and an informant actively accepting bribes from the local Tong boss, Henry Lee. He attempts to convert rookie cop Danny Wallace onto his side after Danny finds out about Nick's shady dealings, hence the film's title. Much later in the film, Danny's father is revealed to be an ex-dirty cop, yet his father has the gall to call his son worse than him because Danny is an undercover Internal Affairs officer.
• In Courageous one of the main characters, Fuller, is revealed to be stealing evidence from drug raids and reselling it on the streets.
• In Doctor at Sea, Fellowes warns Dr. Sparrow that the police in Bellos will arrest anyone first chance they get.
• This trope is the main focus of Dark Blue, and provides several examples.
  • Eldon Perry frames people for crimes, shoots suspects, and behaves like an all-around Jerkass. Later on he becomes repentant of his actions and atones with a speech that uncovers all of his and Van Meter's shady dealings.
  • Perry's supervisor Jack Van Meter is one through and through and oversees and orders all of Perry’s corrupt actions. He's even revealed to be the person Orchard and Sidwell answer to.
  • Bobby Keough subverts it when he has serious moral qualms with the illegalities committed in the department.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Most of the Gotham Police Department in Batman Begins (with the exception of Gordon). Flass is the most notable one, to the point of such pettiness as pocketing money from street vendors because he doesn't want to cough up a few dollars for some fast food. Even Gordon is not particularly upstanding, as he ignores clear evidence of corruption (though it's because he has no recourse, he still doesn't try to fight it). Flass warns Gordon to get a little dirty so that other cops can trust him, but Gordon points out that he won't point out corruption even if he won't get dirty himself.
  • In The Dark Knight, Gordon notes to Harvey Dent that if he chose not to work with cops Dent investigated in Internal Affairs, he'd be working alone. Indeed, two of his guys, Ramirez and Wuertz, are on the mob's payroll and delivered Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent to the Joker. It's implied that Ramirez had some moral issues with what she did to Rachel and to Gordon's family, unlike Wuertz. In some of the promotional animated materials that bridge the timeline of the two films, Ramirez is shown to have a very sick mother that the mob is using to force her to be a dirty cop (offering much-needed money for her bills and threatening her life if Ramirez doesn't cooperate).
  • Completely averted by The Dark Knight Rises, where police corruption is nonexistent and the force is definitely much more competent, especially when they all rally together for a final fight against Bane's army.
• In Den of Thieves, O'Brien announces that his crew is basically a gang with badges and that they'll shoot suspects rather than take them in.
• The Departed: Colin Sullivan is Frank Costello's mole in the police. In the opposite direction, Billy Costigan is an undercover cop who has to do some pretty immoral things just to keep his cover intact.
• The customs official in The Dogs of War putting aside half the protagonist's belongings as "Airport Tax" and "Importation Tax".
• Dirty Cops are a fact of life in The Elite Squad. Nascimento muses that the police have enough manpower to clean up the city, but it's a lot easier and safer to take bribes and look the other way... unless you're a member of BOPE. The sequel adds a "militia" of corrupt cops who take over pacified slums (all is Truth in Television, see the Real Life folder).
• In End of Days, it appears that the entire NYPD are secretly Satanists. And not the fun, pot-smoking free-love Satanists either, but the "murder witnesses and abduct women" kind.
• In Even Lambs Have Teeth, Sheriff Andrews is part of the sex trafficking ring.
• Face/Off: When he's impersonating Sean Archer thanks to plastic surgery, Castor Troy is perfectly willing to abuse his job for personal gain.
• Played with in Fallen, where early on Hobbes explains to a new transfer that while he doesn't take bribes, he doesn't really care all that much if other cops do, since he figures they are still putting their lives on the line and out there doing good 90% of the time anyways. For a dash of irony, the transferee was played by the future Tony Soprano.
• Basically, in Fast Five, every Rio civil police, military police (PMERJ), or Brazilian Federal Highway Patrol (PRF) cruiser or officer we see, except for Elena, is dirty since they are all on Reyes' payroll to protect his money. Too bad for them, it cost them either their cruisers or their lives once they met Toretto and his team.
• The Small-Town Tyrant police officer in The Final lets the jocks go in exchange for them handing over all of their weed... which he is later seen smoking. In a Deleted Scene, we see that he does the exact same thing with good-looking women, in exchange for sex.
• In The Fugitive, Frederick Sykes is an ex-cop and contract killer who happens to have one arm. The Chicago Police Department is portrayed in a neutral but incompetent light (though some would theorize that they knew about Sykes's guilt and helped framed Kimble to cover for one of their own).
• Captain McCluskey in The Godfather, who is less an NYPD cop as he is a glorified assassin and enforcer for a rival mob family, and whose loathsomeness is compounded by his smug arrogance that his rank will protect him.
• In Guns, Girls and Gambling, Dryrock has two sheriffs and both of them are corrupt. Sheriff Hutchins is in the pocket of The Chief, and Sheriff Cowley is on the payroll of The Rancher.
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle:
  • The Cherry Hill PD, hoo boy. They even respond to a call about a shooting (phoned in by Kumar so he can sneak into the police department and break out Harold) and arrest the nearest black man they can find, who was asleep in his home.
  • This turns out to be shooting themselves in the foot when the guy turns out to be a high-priced lawyer who, after being on the receiving end of overwhelming evidence of Police Brutality, is able to have all the cops arrested.
• In Heatwave, the Sydney police are suggested to be in cahoots with the Eden Project developers, having enabled them to carry out their assassination of Intrepid Reporter and community activist Kate Dean.
• In He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, the two Detectives who show up during the Shared house 48 arc are blatantly corrupt and try to justify it.
  Melbourne Detective: I'll tell you how this game works, Daniel. We're the cops, we get to ask the questions. You're the suspect, you get to complain about your civil liberties, perhaps get shot, maybe even killed. And it has to stay like that, Daniel, otherwise everything falls out of balance. When things fall out of balance, you know what happens then, don't you, Daniel. Your spiritual values start to decline. You get your disintegration of your social structure, don't you? The system collapses. Petulance, flood, famine. It happened to the Romans, it happened to the Greeks, it happened to the Ancient Mesopotamians. And we don't want it happening to us, do we, Daniel?
• In Heist (2015), Detective Marconi, who is in charge of resolving the bus hostage situation, is actually in the pocket of mob boss Francis "The Pope" Silva, and his chief goal is to recover the money stolen from the casino and kill the robbers.
• In Hellraiser: Inferno, Detective Joseph Thorne cheats on his wife with prostitutes, neglects his family, brutalizes his informant, steals evidence, does drugs, frames his partner...
• The Hitman: Ron Delany, the main character's old partner, is revealed to have actually been working with gangs in the area to supervise illegal shipments when he shoots his partner for interfering. He later joins up with an Iranian gang to wipe out all the opposition.
• The final scene of Hoboken Hollow reveals that Sheriff Greer is in league with the slave ranch.
• Every policeman in Hobo with a Shotgun: "At least he's only killing the dirty cops." "We're all dirty cops!"
• Hot Fuzz has the never-seen Uncle Derrick, who was arrested for selling drugs to students. Ironically, he inspired his nephew Nick Angel to become a genuinely good cop. One of the film's main villains, Frank Butterman, is also this, though in his case, he's more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• One of the oldest surviving depictions of a police officer in American film is How They Rob Men in Chicago, a very brief comic skit by film pioneer Wallace McCutcheon. A well-dressed man is coshed, robbed, and left unconscious in the street by a mugger. A uniformed cop on foot patrol then appears, finds the man lying on the pavement... then steals the rest of his valuables and walks on.
• In An Innocent Man, two of them frame the titular man, who has to then clear his name.
• In Into the Grizzly Maze, Sully, The Sheriff, is taking bribes to allow Evil Poachers to operate inside the Grizzly Maze.
• In The Jerky Boys: The Movie, the two title characters find out that the entire Queens organized crime division is in league with a local crime boss, making it difficult to turn over evidence on said crime boss to the authorities.
• In Judas Kiss, Detective Matty Grimes is on the payroll of Senator Hornbeck and has been tailing her and tapping her phone. He later turns up in an attempt to clean a crime scene for the Senator but is busted by Agent Hawkins.
• Kick-Ass: Vic Gigante, a detective with the NYPD who mob boss Frank D'Amico pays to cover his criminal dealings (and in one case, get rid of fellow cop Damon McCready with a frame up as he'd become a threat). Later, he also helps hunt down the costumed superheroes gunning for the D'Amico family too on their behalf.
• Kick-Ass 2: Some prison guards accept bribes from The Motherfucker, leaving the area where Dave's father is being held and letting in some thugs to kill him.
• Kill Ben Lyk has Detective Scott, who is actually working for the gangsters.
• In Kiss of the Tarantula, Walter (uncle of Villain Protagonist Susan) hides evidence that might implicate her in a murder (of someone who publicly accused her of being behind several other murders). Then he murders a girl who accused Susan of that murder. He does this not out of family loyalty, but because he thinks it will help him get into her pants.
• Zig-zagged and Played for Laughs in Kopps. After the supreme authority decides to close the local police station in the village of Högboträsk because of the lack of crime, the four police officers begin to commit crimes themselves to raise the crime statistics, among others bribing an alcoholic to steal sausages at the local supermarket, spraying graffiti on walls and setting fire to the hot-dog stand. Otherwise, however, the police officers are nice and honest people and only act criminal because it's the only way they can save their station.
• Every cop who is a main character in L.A. Confidential. No one is completely clean, not even the usually upstanding Ed Exley.
  • Jack Vincennes takes bribes from Sid Hudgens to bust celebrities for Hush-Hush, though he seems to realize the wrongness of his ways when Sid tries to set up a blackmail scheme by arranging a sexual encounter between the district attorney and an actor that Jack previously captured as one of their previous schemes, and said actor is killed.
  • Wendell "Bud" White beats up criminals on Capt. Dudley Smith's orders and kills the ones whom he truly despises during arrests while staging 'self-defense'. He also is a Wife-Basher Basher (which could be considered a good thing, if not for the inevitable Police Brutality).
  • Dick Stensland is a drunken thug who beats up unarmed prisoners on the basis of escalating rumors that they hurt some cops and deals in heroin on the side.
  • The worst is Captain Dudley Smith, who has taken over Mickey Cohen's empire and staged the Nite Owl Massacre himself.
• Abel Turner in Lakeview Terrace. He's an old racist man trying to ruin the lives of an interracial couple next door. He frequently uses his status as a cop to get away with it until the neighbors fight back.
• Last Action Hero: FBI agent John Practice, a friend of Jack's, is revealed as in league with Vivaldi, a sicilian mobster (being paid very well for it). He also says that he's killed so many people Practice simply can't remember them all.
• In Lethal Weapon 4, Riggs suspects Murtaugh of being on the take, pointing out that he has spent way more money than a police sergeant nearing retirement should. Not an unreasonable suspicion, considering that Murtaugh has rebuilt his house twice (after a hitman drove a car into the living room in the first installment and another one blew up the bathroom in the second), bought a new boat, consistently has worn very snazzy suits and sent two kids to college. The whole thing is compounded by the fact that Murtaugh refuses to offer other explanations. It turns out that his wife has written several Mills and Boon Prose-heavy Romance Novels (Riggs describes them as "the cheesy sex novels") that sell extremely well, and he's been embarrassed about where the money comes from.
• Licence to Kill: Ed Killifer, Felix Leiter's colleague in the DEA, is greedy enough to take a $2 million bribe to free Franz Sanchez, and then sell out Leiter and his wife. Bond proceeds to kill him by feeding him to the same shark that maimed Leiter.
• The villain of Macho Dancer is Kid, a bigshot cop who acts as a local kingpin. He also owns a brothel where women are forced to become prostitutes.
• The Magnificent Seven (2016): Rose Creek's sheriff is on Bartholomew Bogue's payroll. Bogue's ranks of Mooks are also primarily from the Blackstone detective agency.
• The Mexico City police department in Man on Fire is full of these. The kidnappers outright hire off-duty cops to assist in Pita's kidnapping.
• The Marksman: Jim is stopped by a Highway Patrol officer whom he quickly realizes took money from the cartel to hand over him and Miguel. He manages to escape the officer with Miguel, before the cartel members show up (who then summarily kill the guy as he's become useless for them).
• Hank in Me, Myself & Irene is a subversion. While he's certainly a Jerkass, he's not corrupt, and represents Charlie's repressed anger at the abuse he's taken over the years. It's Charlie finally accepting this aspect of his hidden personality that enables him to take down the real dirty FBI agents who are setting him up at the end.
• In Money Movers, Det. Sgt. Sammy Rose is a crooked cop who is in bed with local crime boss Jack Henderson. Henderson provides him with tips to help him solve crimes, and he points Henderson in the direction of profitable jobs. He also set up Dick Martin to take the fall with Internal Affairs for his crimes.
• A hidden one is a member of the Big Bad Ensemble along with crime boss and drug trafficker Pat Shepherd and his Thai associate of the film The Mule.
• In Mystery Date (1991), this turns out to be the motivation for pursuing the MacGuffin. It contains a tape with incriminating evidence that the police are covering up for a local gangster.
• In Mystery Road, Robbo turns out to be in league with the local drug dealers.
• It becomes quickly clear in National Security that there are corrupt cops in the LAPD, who are working with the warehouse robbers. The protagonists initially suspect Hank's old Lieutenant Washington, although Earl doesn't believe it, as he thinks that only white cops can be corrupt. In fact, the corrupt cop is Detective McDuff, along with the fake SWAT team at the end. There is a scene earlier in the film, where a random black lady jokes that the entire LAPD is corrupt.
• The Negotiation: Hwang Soo-suk, the Chief of National Security, is in deep with a criminal syndicate.
• The Negotiator: Lt. Danny Roman is accused of murdering a cop (his former partner and best friend) and suspects he's been framed by his fellow officers in a conspiracy. Commander Frost eventually confesses about a scheme to steal money from the police retirement fund, which Roman inadvertently got dragged into when his friend got killed for starting to catch on.
• The Newton Boys: The Chicago cops torture the members of the Newton Gang whom they capture, but then agree to release them in exchange for a big bribe, although the FBI foils that.
• Non-Stop: One of Marks' fellow Air Marshals is found to be smuggling cocaine. This was used by the terrorists to blackmail him into making Marks think he is the one trying to hijack the plane. It's also hiding a bomb.
• Once Upon a Time in America:
  • Some of the earlier scenes featured an officer who keeps troubling the main characters (a group of children who are forced to steal to survive). It eventually turns out he takes bribes to ignore the actions of specific criminals while still prosecuting others. However, this is much less prominent in the later parts of the film when the children have grown up into vicious gangsters.
  • There's also Danny Aiello's Chief Aiello, who's paid by a steel company to break a strike.
• Detective Kaota in Outrage works for the Yakuza and is the one coming out on top of the affair.
• The Parallax View:
  • Wickers, a local sheriff who's a mid-ranking employee of the Parallax Corporation. He's done dirty work for them before, having murdered a witness to the Caroll assassination, making it look accidental. Bill also mentions he was indicted for an unrelated utility scandal, too.
  • On a pettier scale, Wickers' nephew, Deputy Red, is an asshole who takes undue advantage of his badge to bully people. Not even his uncle approves.
• Payback features two dirty cops. These two cops are, besides the Internal Affairs officers in one scene, the only cops in the whole movie.
  "Dirty cops. Do they come any other way?"
• Several times in Peppermint, there are warnings by characters of cops in the Los Angeles Police Department who are on the take of Diego Garcia, but one isn't actually seen until towards the end of the film, when the audience finds out that Detective Stan Carmichael is working for Garcia.
• In The Place Beyond the Pines, everyone on the force but Avery is involved in shady businesses.
• Bobby Monday in Premium Rush. He blows his money in Triad gambling and then tries to pay them back by essentially robbing a desperate student.
• The Professional: Overlapping heavily with the Naughty Narcs trope, Norman Stansfield and his henchmen are a squad of corrupt DEA agents and cops that deal drugs rather than bust drug dealers. They also have ties to criminal organizations such as the Triads and the Mafia.
• NYPD Detective Jimmy Shaker in Ransom is the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Tom's son and planned to kill Sean all along.
• Rooster in Righteous Kill after it is revealed that he killed all the people and had Turk framed for it.
• Les Ripoux, a series of three French comedies, is about exactly this; indeed, the title is French slang for "the rotten cops". At first, René is introduced as the classic corrupt cop and François as his incorruptible new partner, but François soon becomes just as corrupt and even more ambitious. The first sequel has another duo of dirty cops as villains.
• Sheriff Glick and his replacement (and cousin) Deputy Sheriff Potts who conspire with Guy Gisborne to help him seize control of the Chicago underworld in Robin and the 7 Hoods.
• RoboCop:
  • RoboCop 2: Officer Duffy is used by Cain as an inside source so that Cain and his gang can get inside information on police raids against their hideouts and prepare. After RoboCop beats Cain's location out of Duffy, Cain has Duffy killed by vivisection.
  • RoboCop (2014): Antoine Vallon has a number of cops on his payroll, including the Chief of Police. They are responsible for stifling investigations into him, removing guns from the evidence locker, and are also the ones who sold out Alex Murphy.
• Running Scared (2006): A crooked cop played by Chazz Palminteri brags that his gang is the biggest and toughest in the city. Crooked cops are one of several criminal factions in the film.
• Salvation Boulevard: One of Pastor Dan's followers is a police detective who assists Jerry in trying to murder Carl.
• Savages Crossing: Detective Chris moonlights as a hitman and bounty hunter.
• Saw:
  • Mark Hoffman, who's arguably the most ruthless Big Bad in the franchise, worked as one of Jigsaw's apprentices and eventually became his successor during the first spree of Jigsaw killings. His former colleague Matt Gibson was demoted after trying to convince their boss to enact some kind of punishment on Hoffman for unnecessarily shooting a homeless man to death after he tried to shoot Gibson but quickly dropped the gun and surrendered, which put Gibson on Hoffman's hit list for future reference. And this was all before he put his dead sister's abusive boyfriend in a trap that was designed to be unwinnable, as punishment for killing her and getting out of prison due to a technicality. He has zero concern for any kind of human life or suffering, only cares about himself, and goes to ridiculously convoluted and violent lengths of exacting pain unto others for the sake of his own power and survival, including taking over the Jigsaw legacy and trying to make it his own.
  • Eric Matthews, the protagonist of Saw II and a supporting character in Saw III and Saw IV. He had a history of brutality with suspects and reporters, and planted evidence and deliberately framed people in order to get false convictions. In II, Jigsaw's test for him is to talk with him helplessly while watching his son trapped in the Nerve Gas House with all those he got wrongly sent to prison. If one were to look at the bigger picture of the franchise and its timeline, they would see that if Eric hadn't sent Amanda to jail for a crime she didn't commit, she wouldn't have become a heroin addict while inside; thus she would never have told Cecil to rob Jill's clinic, which was the first incident for Jigsaw's Start of Darkness. So if you think about it, if Eric hadn't been such a corrupt piece of shit, most of the franchise's events may have never happened.
  • Brad Halloran, the Big Bad of Jigsaw, is guilty of tampering with evidence, putting innocent people in jail, taking bribes, and letting his criminal informants go, one of whom ended up killing Logan's wife.
  • All of the victims targeted by the titular copycat killer in Spiral (2021) are cops who are guilty of crimes such as lying under oath, shooting unarmed suspects, killing people who are willing to expose other dirty cops, and enabling all these actions by covering them up. That being said, the killer is revealed to have snuck into the department to carry out his murders, so he's not much better.
• Scanners II: The New Order:
  • Commander Forrester wants to seize power by building an army of psychic 'scanners' to keep everyone else in line. He uses the psychics for brainwashing and assassination to position himself into increasingly higher public offices. He kills the chief of police, compels the mayor to appoint him as his replacement, and kills her as well when she finds out too much.
  • Forrester's lackey Officer Gelson enthusiastically participates in his boss's plans to exploit the scanners and take over society.
• Serpico, as it's based on real events, documents Frank Serpico's role in the exposure of widespread corruption within the NYPD rank and file.
• The Shawshank Redemption: Captain Hadley is a "Dirty Prison Guard" variation. He routinely beats the inmates for trivial offences like asking for food and crying. He also has poor young Tommy murdered at Warden Norton's behest.
• Sherlock Holmes (2009): During his montage of Doing In the Wizard in the climax, Sherlock Holmes mentions that Lord Blackwood paid a prison guard to pretend to be possessed to enhance Blackwood's malevolent aura. Similarly, one of the executioners at Blackwood's hanging attached the rope to a harness which would redistribute the strain around Blackwood's waist instead of his neck.
• Lt. Barney Nolan, the Villain Protagonist of Shield for Murder, murders a bookie at the start of the film and spends the rest of the movie committing further crimes to cover up.
• In Shooter, a local cop tries to kill Bob Lee Swagger as part of the frame-up.
• One of these is helping the gangsters in Sister Act, providing them with information about the safe houses where informants are being hidden in exchange for lucrative kickbacks. He finally gets caught, but not before he lets them know that lounge singer Delores, who witnessed a killing, is incognito as Sister Mary Clarence in the nearby convent.
• The boisterous protagonist Rick Santoro of Snake Eyes is an arrogant, corrupt detective who sees Atlantic City as his own Wretched Hive. He takes bribes, doesn't hesitate to use Police Brutality, and sleeps around on his wife. The conspirators even get him involved because they knew he could be bought if he found out too much. He draws the line at plain murder, though.
• Snitch: The Latina prison guard at the jail where Jason's being held works for a Mexican drug cartel. As a result of the repeated visits by Jason's father John she realizes John's working with the government (he had recently made a drug deal with the cartel), tipping them off. John is nearly murdered for this as a result, while he has to go into Witness Protection along with his family later. It does not appear that anyone else learns of what she did by the film's finale though.
• Stander is the biopic of a South African cop during The Apartheid Era, who after participating in the crackdown on the Soweto uprising in 1976 during which he kills an unarmed young black man, becomes disgusted with himself and his society. Turning on them, he begins to rob banks while the rest of the force is off enforcing the apartheid laws before he gets caught, then breaks out of prison and flees to the US. This is a Historical Villain Downgrade as the real Stander wasn't even present during the incidents at Soweto where black protesters were killed, and may have just claimed this to garner sympathy. It's also implied in the film he chooses Suicide by Cop in the end (at the hands of a black American officer) as a form of penance, while in real life it was an accidental discharge during a struggle over a gun.
• In Stiletto, Det. Beck is in the pocket of crime lord Virgil Vadalos. When Raina starts he Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he orders Beck to bring Raina to him alive without involving the rest of the police. He murders a fellow detective who finds out something's up and tries to alert others.
• Pretty much everybody in Street Kings. The protagonist does some morally and legally questionable things, but he's Incorruptible Pure Pureness composed to the rest of the force. Even the Head of Internal Affairs (who is an antagonist for much of the movie) is willing to make compromises (though in his case it's overlooking the protagonist's dubious acts in order to bring down the really dirty cops).
• Sunset has Captain Blackworth, a.k.a. "Dirty Bernie", who is on the payroll of gangster Dutch Kieffer.
• In Ten Dead Men, DI Keller is in London Gangster Hart's pocket and is his inside man on the force.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-1000 takes the shape and form of an LAPD patrol officer to pursue John Connor. Nobody seems to question its unethical police hunting skills.
• In The Thieves, Wei Hong has several cops on his payroll. One reveals his presence by betraying his colleagues at a vital point during the climax.
• Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead: Crime boss The Man With The Plan has Lieutenant Atwater of the Denver Police Department in his pocket.
• In Tombstone Rashomon, the testimony of the Earp faction paints Sheriff Johnny Behan as being in the pocket of the Cochise County Cowboys, a gang of rustlers. Behan's self-serving account does not do much to clear him.
• Captain Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil is a well-respected pillar of the community who got where he was through tampering with evidence to frame criminals he can't convict through legal means — or those he thinks are criminals, anyway.
• Alonzo Harris in Training Day. He frames and beats up suspects, has ties with criminals, kills people he doesn't like, betrays his friends for money, and uses his badge to intimidate everyone in the gang-run neighborhood he frequents.
• Barricade from the Transformers Film Series is a Decepticon who can turn into a police car.
• In Underworld U.S.A., Police Chief Fowler is receiving $5000 a week to turn a blind eye to The Syndicate's drug dealing and prostitution.
• The Untouchables (1987): Chicago is a Wretched Hive during the Prohibition Era. The gangster Al Capone rules the city with violence, illegal smuggling and corruption, and has bought up protection from the law through bribing cops and Prohibition agents. Treasury agent Eliot Ness experiences the police corruption when a raid fails and is mocked in the press, prompting him to create a small group of reliable men to catch Capone when he meets Jimmy Malone.
• The Usual Suspects:
  • Keaton was once a corrupt cop before being thrown off the force and becoming a professional crook.
  • The Suspects carry out a hit on New York's Finest Taxi Service, a unit of corrupt NYPD cops who use their squad cars to escort drug kingpins around the city.
  • Kujan tries to portray himself as a good cop in contrast to Keaton, but he's all too willing to say that, if Verbal doesn't tell him the whole story, he'll call in every favor he has in the underworld to have Verbal killed.
• Vice (2015): Much of the police department and even Roy's boss are in Julian's pocket.
• Virtual Combat: The hero turns in his badge to track down the people who killed his partner. The *only* person he is shown to keep in touch with is Da Chief, while the bad guys keep finding him wherever he goes. Obviously, it turns out the Chief is actually The Mole, though the hero doesn't figure it out until his boss attacks him with a knife.
• The protagonists of War On Everyone, who are taking down some real scumbags, but also taking the opportunity to get rich (and high) while they're at it.
• In Wild Thing, seemingly the entire police force is in the pocket of organized crime. A cop even witnesses the murder of Wild Thing's parents by a drug dealer, and instead of intervening, tries to shoot Wild Thing as he runs away.
• Towards the end of Wild Things, Ray Duquette is revealed as one of these. He was corrupt, beat hookers, murdered anyone he didn't like, and got Suzie sent to prison just for the hell of it.
• Noburo Mori from The Wolverine. A minister of justice with ties to the Yakuza.
• The World of Kanako has at least three of them:
  • Main protagonist Akikazu is a violent, alcoholic, unscrupulous, bad-tempered and cynic ex-cop. The only way to separate him from a villain is his goal (finding his daughter and return to a happy family life).
  • When Nagano (one of Kanako's classmates) tells the police about the prostitution ring, they order a sociopathic cop named Aikawa to kill her, because the cops profited from human trafficking too. He is very violent and unscrupulous.
  • Detective Asai (a cop whom Akikazu trusts initially but does not help him very much with his search) is this on a more subtle level. When Akikazu and Aikawa engage in a very bloody fight on the freeway, Asai interferes and smilingly kills Aikawa and tells everybody it was a suicide (although Aikawa wanted to commit suicide anyway and just ran out of ammo). He has interest in the prostitution ring too but wants to keep this undercover.

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