Dirty Cop / Western Animation

Situations in Western Animation involving a Dirty Cop.

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• Roger from American Dad! turns into a dirty cop when he joins the police force in one episode... about three hours after joining, no less.
• Arcane:
  • Sheriff Grayson is willing to make backroom deals with Vander, but it's downplayed in that she doesn't outright break the law, just asks him to grease the wheels so she won't have to bring in more Enforcers which will enflame tensions in Zaun and lead to more violence, never asking him to give up someone who is innocent.
  • Marcus is a straight example, taking bribe money from Silco to look the other way and going after Silco's enemies regardless of actual guilt. After Grayson is killed by Silco and Marcus is promoted, Silco blackmails him with both his unintentional involvement in Grayson's death and threats to his daughter.
• The concept is parodied in the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: P.I.N.K.E.Y.E.", (the story being a lampoon of the old private eye genre) with Numbuh Two's old friend Joe Balooka. Technically Joe is just a grade school hall monitor, but the story depicts him like this, Numbuh Two describing him as "a bad cop and a worse friend", and as it turns out, he's taking bribes from the true villain in the episode.
• Madigan from Coon Skin is a textbook case for this trope when he isn't a bigoted slob.
• Dan Vs. Elise's Parents, sees Dan attempt to frame Elise's father as part of the mafia. Although he successfully gets the police involved, when the undercover agent gathers evidence against Elise's father, he takes it to real mafia instead of the police.
• In the Donald Duck short Duck Pimples, a belligerent Officer O'Hara-type threatens Donald and accuses him of stealing a pearl necklace, then turns around and steals the bracelets off the Femme Fatale's arm. He also turns out to be the one who stole the woman's pearls. Or at least that is what the author who wrote the story in Donald's imagination decided.
• Family Guy: Paraplegic officer Joe Swanson is usually good at his job, but he has outright looked the other way many times when his closest friends – Peter, Quagmire, and Cleveland – break the law, even if not explicitly stated as such in the given episode. Instances include:
  • Numerous episodes: Quagmire's repeated preying on and raping teenaged girls and women (drugging many of them via GHB); and Peter for showing strong, if not outright blatant pedophiliac behavior.
    • However in "Quagmire's Mom" Joe finally arrests Quagmire for statutory rape.
  • Numerous episodes: Peter repeatedly abusing Lois – particularly in "The Courtship of Stewie's Father" – and Meg (countless episodes).
  • "The Road to Rupert": In addition to not only doing nothing to stop Peter, Quagmire, and Cleveland from annoying Meg during her driving test, he joins in the "fun."
  • "Jerome is the New Black": Peter causing a fire at his new friend Jerome's house, out of jealousy and hate when Peter believes that Jerome (a black man) is having an affair with Lois.
  • "Family Goy": From his upstairs window, Peter shoots a gun at his Jewish neighbor Mort Goldman while he is at his mailbox (a scene emulating an infamous scene in Schindler's List). Not only does Joe fail to arrest Peter, but he also shoots Mort with his gun (greeting him with a friendly hello to boot).
  • "Burning Down the Bayit": Peter and Quagmire conspiring with Mort Goldman to burn down Goldman's pharmacy (to allow him to collect an insurance settlement). That last one was also an It's Personal moment when he remembers that his insurance company wouldn't pay for a surgery to allow him to walk.
  • "Cool Hand Peter" involves Peter and company dealing with a corrupt Southern cop who proceeds to take them to jail on false charges that he puts on them (dropping a bag with coke in their car, smashing a rearview window, and even tossing Joe's police badge away to pretend he's pretending being a cop) after pulling them over. He gets his just desserts by the end when he accidentally wanders into Quahog territory chasing the guys and Joe has his partners harass him to teach him a lesson (and Joe shoots his leg).
• In an episode of Justice League, a recently recaptured Lex Luthor asks the guard leading him to his cell how his family's doing. The guard calls him "Mr. Luthor" and says that they love their new TV, to which Luthor meaningfully replies that they'll love their new car even more.
• Kaeloo: Mr. Cat, whenever he's given the job of a police officer. Examples include using Perp Sweating on a guy he hates and beating him up when he knows he wasn't the culprit, accepting bribes and arresting people for minor misdemeanors.
• The King of the Hill episode, "Lupe's Revenge", has a policewoman who severely abuses her power. Naturally, in accordance with Hank's hilariously bad luck, she falls in love with him.
• In Minoriteam the villainous Dirty Cop is a police officer made of dirt and grime who actively participates in the White Shadow's evil schemes and, like many of his cohorts, is virulently racist.
• In the French cartoon Patrol 03, the series' Big Bad was the chief of police herself.
• Officer Mike Brickowski from the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Cop Out" is a jerk from the start, who's fired after falling asleep on the job, and blames the Powerpuff Girls for it, thinking he's being fired because Da Chief wants to downsize because of them. After trying and failing to kill the Girls (and his plan foiled by more honest cops), Brickowski claims that this was a story of a "good cop gone bad", but as Blossom puts it:
  Blossom: You're not a good cop gone bad. You're a bad cop gone worse!
• On the mean streets of the Citadel of Ricks, what Cop Morty perceives as being practical, Cop Rick sees as bigotry, murder, and graft.
• In Scary Larry, the Insomniac babies run a bar and get harassed by the mob for protection money, so they call the police. But the police threaten to punish them for ridiculous infractions unless they give them 50% of their profits.
• The Simpsons:
  • Chief Wiggum and the Springfield police in are sometimes shown to be corrupt as well as incompetent:
    • Wiggum's badge has "Cash Bribes Only" written on it. Which is odd, as "I Love Lisa" implies that he got the Krusty 20th anniversary special tickets as a result of a bribe when he (unintentionally) caught Krusty in a porno theater.
      Lisa: That story isn't suitable for children.
      Wiggum: Really? I keep my pants on in this version.
    • In an episode where prohibition is reintroduced in Springfield, Fat Tony and his mobsters openly drive trucks of illegal booze past City Hall, casually tossing a handful of cash at Lou and Eddie on the way.
      Fat Tony: You didn't see nothing.
      Eddie: [counting the money] I don't know why people are always badmouthing the Mafia.
    • In one episode, Wiggum agrees to "arrest" Bart in order to give him a bad-boy reputation if he goes to Ralph's birthday party. He later offers the same deal to Fat Tony in exchange for ignoring their drug dealing at the local high school.
    • When Bart loses a baseball game, Wiggum happily encourages the townspeople to throw beer cans at him. And then he actually encourages Bart to kill himself after the latter goes through a Sanity Slippage due to the constant torment from the townsfolk.
    • An inverted example involving Wiggum, he has also been willing to break the law for a very honorable reason: To help Homer's fugitive mother escape arrest, as her crime caused his asthma to be cured when he was younger. He has done so twice.
  • Once, when Homer visited New York City in the '70s, a police officer stole his luggage.
  • From the theme song from Cops In Springfield: "Springfield cops are on the take/What do you expect for the money we make?/Whether in a car or on a horse/We don't mind using excessive force."
• South Park: Every cop is either bigoted, completely useless, or both. They frame and arrest wealthy black men, react with admiration when they're told a kindergartener is in a sexual relationship with his teacher, are completely oblivious to basic clues and forensic science, and usually end up killing/arresting a lot of innocent people when they investigate; and that's just for starters.
• Superman: The Animated Series: Detective Kurt Bowman, who appears as a minor character in the episode "Target", refuses to help Lois in tracking down who was trying to kill her, since she'd written an article about police corruption that costed him a promotion. He's the main antagonist in "The Late Mr. Kent", where it's revealed he'd killed a woman and framed a small-time thief for the murder, sending him to Death Row. He's eventually exposed by Superman, and suffers the same fate as his intended scapegoat.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "An Embarrassment of Dooplers": Mariner claims that station security on Starbase 25 is a glorified band of thugs and thieves, hence why they don't just explain that they were set up.
  Mariner: They'll coerce a confession, then sell our comm badges on the black market.
• Zeroman has Helga, the chief of police in Fair City. She helps Rusty with a scheme of his in one episode because she has a crush on him.
• Zorro: The Chronicles: Technically, Dirty Soldier, but Monasterio is the one in charge of the Los Angeles garrison, which is the time-period version of the local police, and he is anything but honorable.

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