Jurisdiction Friction / Live-Action TV

Jurisdiction Friction in Live-Action TV series.

---

• In 24, a great many plots and subplots involve Jurisdiction Friction. 24 being the way it is, the conflict spirals way beyond Fed vs. Local. Past conflicts have involved CTU vs. The U.S. Secret Service, CTU vs. LAPD, CTU vs. The Armed Forces, CTU vs. The FBI; it gets pretty interesting. Subverted though, in that in several instances, various organizations will team up to stop their common Big Bad.
  • In the 24: Live Another Day novel Deadline, a character thinks to himself about the fact that contrary to the way things are usually portrayed in the movies, the arrival of the FBI generally doesn't spark an immediate rivalry with law enforcement agencies.
  In Kilner's experience, the opposite was usually the truth. State or county cops with less manpower and typically with operational budgets that were already stretched to the limit would welcome the involvement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Officer Don's sting operation against a video pirate is taken over by a state cop played by Miguel Ferrer:
  Jack: Jack McMannus, state crime division.
  Don: What? Like the Feds?
  Jack: No. Feds are federal. I'm with the state. See, it's Feds, [gestures up high] state, [gestures slightly lower] you. [gestures way down low]
  [later]
  Tommy: Hey, who's this guy?
  Jack: Jack McMannus, with the state.
  Harry: Ooh, a Fed! [gestures up high]
• In the Agent Carter episode "The Lady in the Lake", LAPD Detective Andrew Henry isn't happy when the SSR take the lead in his murder investigation as they're likely to uncover evidence of his corruption, while back in New York, the FBI claim jurisdiction over the interrogation of Dottie Underwood, a Soviet spy that the SSR spent a lot of time and manpower capturing.
• Alcatraz: Since Alcatraz was a federal prison, Hauser's federal taskforce should have jurisdiction over capturing the returning "63s". However, since the government's been keeping a tight Masquerade on the disappearance and return of the inmates, and the crimes committed by the 63s so far have fallen under SFPD jurisdiction, there's been a lot of headbutting between the groups. Fortunately, since Rebecca's a cop, she's able to handle the cases without stepping on toes.
  • Episode 4 has Hauser intentionally invoking this trope as a delaying tactic — the villain of the week has taken hostages in a bank, and the police have arrived to deal with it. Hauser plays the role of traditional FBI agent in these situations in order to distract the cops long enough for Rebecca to sneak in and extract the target.
    "I'm going to go join that jurisdictional pissing match over there and buy you some time."
• The German KiKa teen drama Allein gegen die Zeit features two BKA officers (Bundeskriminalamt — Federal Criminal Police Office) rescuing top-secret documents from the Ministry of the Interior's archives from two shadowy figures. They later get suspected of being part of the conspiracy when it turns out they just stole files from investigating BND agents (Bundesnachrichtendienst — Federal Intelligence Service).
• Babylon 5:
  • When an alien structure is found on the planet near Babylon 5, an Earth Force cruiser arrives and the Captain argues with Commander Sinclair over who should investigate it. The Captain wins at first, by right of seniority (a Captain outranks a Commander), but Sinclair proceeds to use every trick he can to hinder the Captain's misguided attempts to sieze control of the machine. Both end up teaming up against an alien warship that arrives and attacks the station, wanting to stake their own claim. At the end of the episode, once the crisis has passed, the Captain informs Sinclair that their higher-ups decided that Sinclair was the one in the right, and apologizes before departing.
  • Talia Winters and Susan Ivanova argued on what to do with a teenage thief who just awakened with Telepathic abilities; Talia wanted the teenager to join the Psicorps, and Susan wanted to have her go through the justice system. Dr. Stephen Franklin intervened, saying that since the teenager is unconscious, she is in medical care, and both of them should leave as they could be disturbing the patient.
  • When the war criminal known as Deathwalker turns up on Babylon 5, just about every member race of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds sends a warship that demands that she be turned over or else they would attack the station. Ivanova defuses the situation by getting them to argue with each other over which one of the threatening warships Deathwalker should be turned over to, as there was only one of her. Also, the major powers want her immortality drug or want to avoid a trial. Sinclair negotiates a truce that allows the development of the immortality drug, and a trial. Deathwalker reveals that the drug requires a death for a life. Then Kosh asserts his jurisdictional claim as a Vorlon and kills Deathwalker.
  • When a bomb goes off in one of the fighter bays soon before the President of the Earth Alliance is expected to arrive on Babylon 5, a detachment of his security detail arrives to try and take control of the situation. Garibaldi is accused of being behind the bombing, and ends up going into hiding while he tries to find out what is going on. Commander Sinclair covertly helps him while Lt. Commander Ivanova is as unhelpful as possible for the security detail's commander. The security detail's second in command is revealed to be The Mole and Garibaldi saves the day.
• In the original Battlestar Galactica episode "Greetings from Earth", there's a clash between the military and civilian authorities over who should control a shuttlecraft full of humans in suspended animation.
• An episode of Bones had the Roswell Sheriff refuse to release a mysterious body to the FBI. For good reason.
  Sheriff: I'm not allowing the Feds to swoop in and take off with a mysterious body. (Gets a painful look on his face.) Not after what happened last time.
• Bosch:
  • Cooperation between the LAPD and the FBI is rather shaky in some of the plots. In season 2's adaptation of Trunk Music, when a mob-affiliated producer is murdered, Bosch and Edgar find out he's being investigated by the FBI for his ties to an Armenian outfit based out of Las Vegas. Agent Jay Griffin admits that the FBI was wiretapping Tony Allen's office, but won't say why and won't share any intel. Bosch escalates the matter up the chain of command to Deputy Chief Irving. Irving gets the feds to turn over what they have but is suspicious with how readily they do it.
  • Season 4 sees it happen in the adaptation of 9 Dragons, after Bosch's ex-wife Eleanor is gunned down in a drive-by shooting while helping the FBI pursue some Triad gangsters laundering their money through casinos in Los Angeles.
  • Season 6, which adapts The Overlook, sees Bosch lock horns with the FBI agents while both agencies are investigating the murder of Stanley Kent, with Bosch telling SAC Jack Brenner, "This you bigfooting my case in the name of national security?" Later, one of the agents, Clifford Maxwell, inserts himself into the serving of a warrant on Waylon Strout in an aggressive, cowboyish way, when they'd agreed to let the LAPD lead, provoking a shootout that ends in the death of Travis Strout and an LAPD officer being wounded. Bosch, who is furious about Travis getting killed before he could be questioned, says Maxwell went in "too fast, too fuckin' hard." Maxwell later turns out to be the one who killed Stanley Kent, as he was having an affair with Kent's wife.
  • In season 7, the LAPD eventually determine that gangster Mickey Pena is responsible for ordering the East Hollywood arson fire. However, the FBI refuse to let the LAPD near Pena because they're using Pena as an informant in a big RICO case that's about to go down (and the LAPD won't be able to get to him at all afterwards since Pena will be going into witness protection), with SAC Brenner holding the line even when Irving reminds him that a little girl died in the fire. Then Irving, who's worried about the possibility that he won't get a second term as Chief of Police, remembers that the FBI just closed a corruption investigation into newly elected Mayor Susanna Lopez due to "insufficient evidence". After some consideration, he agrees to Brenner's request to back off Pena in return for Brenner turning over the FBI's files on Lopez, so he can coerce her into endorsing his second term. None of this goes over well with Bosch, who uses a workaround to snatch Pena out from under the Feds' nose, and gets promptly suspended by Irving (which Bosch turns into a resignation after Pena is gunned down outside the police station by the father of the girl who died in the fire).
• The main concept of The Bridge (2011). A serial murderer dumps human remains exactly on the border between two countries, so that the police of the cities on each side of the border have to co-operate unwillingly.
  • Likewise the concept of its many remakes: The Bridge (US) (Texas and Chihuahua), The Tunnel (Kent and Hauts-de-France), The Bridge (Russia) (Leningrad and Ida-Viru), The Bridge (Asia) (Johor Bahru and Singapore) and The Pass (Bavaria and Salzburg).
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • Major Crimes is mostly seen through Detective "The Vulture" Pembroke, who's notorious for waiting until cases are basically solved, claiming jurisdiction over it, and taking all the credit.
  • Jake pretty much starts a feud with the FDNY over an arson case of a beloved pizzeria when he believes that the fire marshal is wrongly going after the owner for the fire.
  • He also refuses to believe that the US Postal Inspection Service is a real federal agency until it takes his case away for not cooperating with them.
• Michael Westen in Burn Notice made use of this trope one time, walking into a torched building and claiming to be from the county government. He didn't get free access to the site, but it bought him a few minutes while the city fire chief called the county office.
• Castle:
  • The FBI shows up in a Season Two episode, and there's a little Jurisdiction Friction but they ultimately wind up helping more than getting in the way (although they still need Castle's insight to actually get the case solved), and the FBI agents in question are nice people. Most of what tension there is seems to stem primarily from the fact that Beckett is seething with jealousy (not that she admits it) about Castle's fascination with the gadgets the FBI bring with them and the way he clicks with the lead FBI profiler.
  • "Setup"/"Countdown," when the Department of Homeland Security pulls rank once the case involves possible radiation and foreign terrorism. The DHS agent in charge, while a hard-ass, is actually a reasonable guy; the fact that Castle had a private meeting with a member of a foreign government's Secret Police is a valid reason to be furious.
  • Comes up again in "Lynchpin." There's Jurisdiction Friction but Castle and Beckett are on the other side of it as they're working with the CIA and required to keep secrets from their colleagues at the NYPD.
  • Once again comes up in "The Human Factor". An American dissident is killed by a military drone missile and the Feds completely block the NYPD's attempts at investigation at an apparent attempt at coverup. Once Beckett gets her hands on the Special Investigator from the Attorney General's office, however, and extracts a promise of help from the Attorney General himself, they get along better.
  • Played straight in the Sixth season episode "Need to Know", only with Beckett now working for a Federal task-force taking the case away from Castle and the NYPD. In order to help her colleagues with the NYPD, Beckett goes against her Federal partner McCord and provides the press with an anonymous tip. McCord later tells her that she thinks Beckett did the right thing, but their superiors disagree, and Beckett is fired.
• A big part of early episodes of Chuck, in which CIA agent Sarah and NSA agent Casey have to work together with Chuck. This fades in later episodes to the point where the writers seem to forget that Sarah and Casey work for two different agencies, though it could just be argued that Sarah and Casey had transitioned from Teeth-Clenched Teamwork to Fire-Forged Friends in that time.
• Clarice: In "Father Time" the DC Police and FBI both get called to a crime scene, which causes a heated argument as their commanders fight over who has jurisdiction until the DC commander at last gives up.
• Built into The Closer, given that Brenda Leigh Johnson, a detective with the LAPD, is married to an FBI agent.
• Largely averted in Criminal Minds: the FBI main cast won't get involved in a case until the local authorities ask for help since they don't want the locals to stop asking. This was a minor problem in one episode until an agent notices that a letter from the UnSub was sent from a different state, giving the FBI jurisdiction anyway.
  • It was a major issue in the Season Four episode "Minimal Loss", where Reid and Prentiss are sent into a cult compound to investigate allegations of pedophilia, posing as social workers (since the FBI isn't welcomed by cultists). Before they sent agents in, the FBI checked to make sure that no other law enforcement organizations were planning operations that could interfere, receiving negative answers from police at all levels. In fact the state AG had been planning a major raid by the state police and lied about it, since he didn't want the FBI co-opting his big operation (which was essentially a publicity stunt for a gubernatorial run next year), and went ahead with it while Reid and Prentiss were still inside, sending the cultists into a siege and endangering the agent's lives. When Hotch takes command of the situation he essentially bans the state authorities from the scene in retribution, relying solely on the county sheriffs.
• In Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa, after Arisugawa is kidnapped by the Shangri-La Crusade, the Public Security Department attempt to take the case from the Kyoto Police. Nabeshima refutes it since Arisugawa was taken in Kyoto, but is told that the opportunity to take down the Crusade is too important to leave out of the department's hands. He is, however, able to negotiate a joint investigation so that he and Himura can still be involved in Arisugawa's rescue.
• In CSI, the titular forensic technicians have apparently unlimited authority to interrogate suspects, pursue fugitives, engage in gun battles, make arrests, and cut deals. In the real world, their obviously massive share of departmental funding alone would make the normal cops psychotically jealous — but the eager and justifiable use of the Law of Conservation of Detail makes many a Fan Dumb believe that in the CSI-verse the normal cops are useless. Also, it seems that CSI also have ridiculous authority to investigate crimes and incidents that clearly would fall under Federal Jurisdiction (The bus accident in CSI, and the plane crash in CSI: Miami being prime examples which would fall under National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency). The first season had at least one episode where the CSIs clashed with the FBI.
• In CSI: NY:
  • Mac butting heads with the U.N. over a French diplomat who died during a New York party. Mac wanted to move the body for an autopsy but got refused for a while.
  • Mac flashing his badge in Chicago to get into the Tribune building didn't amuse Chicago P.D., who quickly reminded him he had no jurisdiction.
  • However, it does mimic the original at times, such with the case involving blood on the Statue of Liberty. That would be investigated by National Parks police in real life since it's a national monument. There was also a case with a dead Marine that would clearly have been NCIS territory in real life. (This last one was Handwaved by a Marine who told Mac that he'd been instructed by his superiors to cooperate with the investigation.)
• Daredevil (2015):
  • The third season sees some of this going on between the NYPD and the FBI, since the FBI are in Wilson Fisk's pocket and corrupt, and the NYPD are not (anymore). Foggy is quick to note that Fisk's "deal" only applies to his federal case, and that he can still be prosecuted for his crimes at state level irregardless of the outcome of his federal case. District Attorney Blake Tower is reluctant to pursue a case against Fisk, citing jurisdictional matters. Foggy sees this as Tower not wanting to jeopardize his reelection chances, though Tower could have other motives (like not wanting Fisk to get a chance to expose the fact that Tower knew all about Reyes ordering a DNR on Frank Castle, covering up the massacre of Frank's family, and later using Grotto as bait to capture the Punisher).
  • In "Karen," Fisk sends Dex to kill Karen as revenge for her murder of James Wesley. As he fails to kill Karen, only succeeding at killing Father Lantom, Dex is forced to return after changing into his FBI windbreaker to smoke out Karen and Matt, who are hiding in the basement, as the NYPD are conducting their investigation. Matt eventually gets an idea as to get Karen out of the church alive. He has Foggy show up to the church, and announce loudly that Karen will only surrender to the NYPD. There's a bit of back and forth between Brett Mahoney and Dex, with Ray Nadeem (who had served as Dex's getaway driver during the hit) defusing the tension by quietly warning Brett about Dex's treachery. So Brett "arrests" Karen and escorts her and Foggy out of the church, puts them in the back of a squad car, and drives them to a point a few blocks away where they then reconvene with Matt.
• Deception (2018):
  • An intriguing version in that the friction comes within the same agency. The FBI Homicide division is investigating the murder of a psychic. Agent Kay finds a suspect is under investigation by the Counter Intelligence division, checking in with him. He tells her it's just a routine investigation into money launderers. Later, he saves Kay and Cameron from a hitman and reveals that the suspect is a major arms dealer and they didn't want Homicide messing up their case. Cameron lampshades on how he somehow always assumed the FBI was on the same side and they both give him a "don't be ridiculous" look.
  • A later episode has Kay's ex-boyfriend, a CIA operative, involved in the chase for a thief. When the thief is captured, she escapes into the building. The agent is forced to admit that she's heading for a secret CIA black ops site that the FBI didn't even know was in the same building for some information on a past case. Kay notes how the CIA's refusal to share information with other agencies just causes a lot of problems.
• The second season of Dexter has a variation. When Dexter's victims are discovered, an FBI taskforce is sent to assist Miami Metro, because the task force leader (Special Agent Lundy) is an expert at difficult serial killer cases. This trope is defied by Captain Matthews, who insists that the case will not be a "jurisdictional circle-jerk". Lundy joins his task force with the Homicide team and generally works well and respectfully with them. When another killer starts copycatting Dexter, Lundy warns that the FBI may seize total control of the investigation; Dexter ends up killing the copycat, so that he won't be locked out of the loop.
  • Happens again (briefly) in the Third Season: A series of murders are blamed on a local drug dealer that killed the kid brother of a Crusading ADA and a high-ranking Miami-Dade Sheriff's Deputy. (Dexter actually killed both the dealer and the brother, the latter by accident.) When a body is found matching the killer's MO but outside Miami's metro area, the Deputy uses this to shoehorn his way into Miami PD and take over the investigation.
  • The fourth season has the FBI take control of the investigation into the Trinity Killer. The Homicide team is especially bitter about this, since they had not only done pretty much all of the legwork by then, but the FBI had been ignoring Lundy's insistence that the killings were connected for 15 years.
• On Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, the FBI, Missing Persons and the CIA are all mixed in investigating the mess of events that is the show's plot and none of them are particularly happy with each other.
• Happened in Doctor Who in "The Claws of Axos". Britain's Ministry of Security wanted to control UNIT, and the Brigadier spends the episode battling bureaucrat Horatio Chinn over the issue.
• Played straight and parodied on Dollhouse. FBI Agent Ballard gets stonewalled by an ATF Agent after the latter completely botches a high-risk warrant on a religious cult (Does This Remind You of Anything??). Later, several of the Dolls and their human handlers are sent to investigate an outbreak, but the handlers are only given cover identities as private security. Topher, as a joke, programs the Dolls to think they are NSA Agents, who act like jurisdiction-stripping jackasses to their handlers.
• The Dukes of Hazzard occasionally saw this, when Hazzard's Sheriff Rosco Coltrane clashed with Sheriff Little of neighboring Chickasaw County. And it usually works in favor of the protagonists. Since Little is honest in comparison to Rosco being in Boss Hogg's pocket, he isn't interested in helping to railroad the Duke Boys any more than he is in getting them on actual crimes.
• In Earth: Final Conflict, this can happen whenever a Companion Protector shows up at a crime scene or at a place of interest and starts to pull rank on the local police. In one case, an American cop clashes with the Protector to the U.K. Companion, who points out that Companion Protectors have worldwide jurisdiction. In some cases, Protectors keep their rank and authority from their previous job, like Agent Ronald Sandoval still being in the FBI, even though his primary loyalty is now to the Taelons, not the United States.
• In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier John Walker in his role as Captain America points out that the Dora Milaje have no jurisdiction in Latvia, even while he has gone off the books in his own investigation. The Dora Milaje are having none of it, and argue that they have authority wherever they find themselves, delivering a beatdown to prove their point.
• Fargo: In season 2, the crimes of the Gerhardt family are spread across three different states and four different jurisdictions. Lou Solverson and Hank Larson, being competent officers as well as family (Lou is married to Hank's daughter), are only to happy to work together. The Fargo PD play nice with the Minnesota State Troopers, but Ben Schmidt resists doing anything to upset the Gerhardts. In the final episodes, however, when the Rock County Sheriff, Minnesota State Troopers, Fargo Police Department and South Dakota State Troopers all must work together, friction comes to a boil, mostly due to the South Dakota State Police insisting on running the show and making bad calls culminating in most of them being massacred after Hanzee Dent tricks the Gerhardts into attacking them thinking they're Kansas City mobsters. When Lou objects to their handling of it, he's petulantly ejected from the state. Even when Lou stumbles on a murder committed by Hanzee on his way out, the troopers ignore his observations and kick him out.
• Arises several times in Fringe, not helped by the fact that the Fringe department generally can't explain what they are doing and would sound insane if they did. They also had to deal with higher-ups who viewed them as a rogue group occasionally.
• In Game of Thrones, Lannister soldiers claiming the king's authority come to arrest Gendry, who has joined the Night's Watch. Yoren asserts that recruits of the Night's Watch are immune from arrest, but the Lannister men refuse to back down, resulting in a fight.
• The Glades: Happens between the FDLE and the Seminole Tribal Police when Jim is called in to help investigate a murder on an Indian reservation in "Honey".
• Good News Week: Invoked by Paul McDermott when John Howard's government was considering sending in the army to deal with a docks dispute:
  "No, no, no. You send the navy in to deal with a dock strike. You send the army to deal with a coal miners' strike, and you send the air force in to deal with a pilots' strike! Otherwise, the navy, army, and air force get into a big demarcation dispute and go out on strike, and the government has to send in the wharfies to defend us against invasion! Which isn't a bad idea — when those wharfies cover the coastline, nothing gets ashore!
• In Gotham, Gotham PD has the Homicide Division and the Major Crimes Division constantly clashing over who gets the murder cases. Not to mention the hostility due to accusations of one side being corrupt over the other.
• Inverted in Homicide: Life on the Street, when a detective takes a corruption case involving a judge and local drug dealers to the local office of the FBI and the friction comes from the fact that the FBI don't seem interested in taking the case or what the cop has to say. Disgruntled, the cop leaves, but one of the agents corners him and explains off-the-record that they're already investigating the case; official policy is not to let on to the locals, hence their apparent lack of interest. Satisfied, the cop agrees not to let on that he talked to them.
• The Indian Detective: With the CBSA in the first episode. Justified as they're suppose to take the lead in any criminal situation on the Canadian side of the American-Canadian border.
  • Later on, between Doug and the officers from the Mumbai Police. Justified in that he's only visiting Mumbai to see his dad and he's not working in an official capacity. He's even accused of working such cases to discredit the force.
• JAG: Occurs in several episodes. Not only with external parties (i.e. non-military) such as local police or FBI; but often the local commanding officer does not like the presence of JAG officers from Washington in his/her fiefdom.
• Played with in Justified, where the U.S. Marshals, FBI, Kentucky state troopers, and local Harlan County sheriffs can usually get along. The friction usually comes into play when somebody on any one of these sides turns out to be a Dirty Cop working with the criminals (with the others either unaware or knowing but unable to touch them due to the fact they haven't done anything necessarily illegal yet and been caught), or when Raylan Givens is getting on everyone's nerves with his actions violating procedures even if for a good cause.
• Kamen Rider Drive: In the Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser movie, a corpse is found sprawled across the border between Tokyo and Futo. Both cities' police departments want to take charge of the investigation, since they suspect that the victim had something to do with their respective city's super-criminals (Roidmudes and Dopants respectively), which leads to Shinnosuke having to deal with Futo's stern and stoic Detective Ryu Terui. It turns out that both groups are right — the perp is a Roidmude who stole a Gaia Memory, and on top of that he's only pretending to be dead. When he springs to life and starts running amok, the heroes transform into their Rider gear and kick butt together.
• The Kill Point: The FBI takes over negotiations from the Pittsburg P.D. after one of their agents, who happened to be in the bank during the initial robbery, dies in the hospital from injuries sustained in the shoot-out. The new FBI negotiator immediately tries to throw her weight around, and proves to be far more incompetent than Horst Cali in dealing with the situation. First, she antagonizes Mr. Wolf instead of agreeing to his comically small demands (he's willing to surrender a hostage in exchange for a birthday cake), then declares that the FBI "doesn't negotiate with terrorists". As Cali points out, this defeats the whole purpose of communicating with the hostage takers at all and means they might as well storm in guns blazing and apologize to the families of the dead civilians afterwards. Some of the things that go wrong are indeed beyond her control, such as an independent sniper trying to kill one of the hostage takers. When Wolf refuses to deal with her any longer and Cali rescues another hostage by giving Wolf what he wants, he is put back in charge of negotations with Wolf and his gang.
• Law & Order franchise:
  • Friction often occurs not only between the NYPD and feds but between their Order equivalents, the Manhattan District Attorney and the US Attorney's office. Also, the other boroughs, other towns or counties in the state, the state government, the Port Authority, New Jersey, other U.S. States, the U.S. military, Canada, and other nations. It's one of the writers' favorite ways to disrupt a case that could be a slam dunk by the 45-minute mark. It helps that New York's unique position in geography and politics — specifically, New York being America's largest city means that Feds are often brought in, while three other states (Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) are very nearby — means it has a lot of overlapping government spheres of influence, second only perhaps to Washington, D.C.
  • In only the first season, for example, one of three Federal inmates in a prison van is murdered during transport to court in Manhattan, leading to NYPD detectives and FBI agents bickering over who has the jurisdiction to question the other two prisoners while the deceased is lying dead on the pavement. It then gets averted when the investigation leads them to Ian O'Connell, an accused killer with ties to the IRA. A British agent observing the subsequent trial not only cedes authority to Ben Stone, he offers to have a character witness from the U.K. fly to New York on the next Concorde to rebut the defendant's testimony. As he says to Stone, "O'Connell belongs in jail. Your jail, our jail, it doesn't matter."
  • Two episodes ("Jurisdiction" and "Bronx Cheer") both dealt with overlapping jurisdictions where the Manhattan DA prosecuted one person and another jurisdiction prosecuted (or convicted) someone else for the same crime. Both times, the people the other jurisdiction prosecuted were actually innocent and had been railroaded for political reasons.
  • This works to the good guy's advantage in one episode where Ben Stone is forced to cut a very cushy plea deal to get testimony out of a member of the Russian Mafia which gives him immunity for any crimes he admits to in Manhattan. As soon as the mobster is off the stand, the police and the District Attorney for Brooklyn show up and arrest him, since his testimony implicates him for crimes in another jurisdiction which Stone smugly points out he has no control over.
    Attorney: We had a deal! No prosecution in New York City.
    Stone: In New York County — that's Manhattan. I never gave your client immunity in Brooklyn; that's Kings County. [To the client] If you want some free advice, sir, next time get a better lawyer.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • Dr. Huang (an FBI profiler) often acted as a mediator between the squad and the feds. One gets the feeling during the times he actually takes the FBI's side, he does so not because he thinks they're right, but because he doesn't particularly like Stabler most of the SVU team.
  • Another episode featured Benson and Stabler going up against the FBI when one of the key participants in their case was revealed to be in the Federal Witness Protection Program as a witness to a key Federal case. Subverted, in that Benson and Stabler's interference in the Federal case merely ended up getting the guy killed and screwing up both the FBI and NYPD investigations.
  • On another episode, Internal Affairs shows up to ream Stabler and Huang after a suspect commits suicide in custody. Since Huang is FBI, everyone in the scene is perfectly well aware IA can't touch him. The IA guy starts blustering ineffectually "And you — Dr. Huang — you better watch yourself too!" Huang proceeds to openly roll his eyes and scoff at the guy in one of the greatest "bitch, please" moments in the series.
  • They also occasionally clash with detectives from other departments. In "Countdown", while searching for an 8-year-old who's been kidnapped and has only three days before she's murdered, they discover that the perpetrator is a Serial Killer with victims from all over the city. The detectives who handled the case of the Brooklyn girl outright refuse to cooperate because of the underhanded way Benson and Stabler got their files until the latter pair remind them that yet another little girl is going to die if they don't help.
  • At the end of one episode then-Captain Cragen lampshades that this trope actually helps criminals get away with their actions far too often because they can actually cooperate while the several police departments have to be convinced to work together.
• Lethal Weapon: In episode 7 Riggs tells a woman he's a cop and that she's interfering with his investigation, only for her to tell him she's a DEA agent and that he's interfering with her investigation.
  Detective Riggs: LAPD! You're interfering with an investigation.
  Agent Palmer: Yeah, DEA. And you're interfering with my investigation.
• The Leverage team uses this to their advantage in one episode. In "The Radio Job", they get barricaded by FBI inside a building, so they fake a terrorist threat and turn the situation into a turf war between the Feds and Homeland Security. While the two team leaders are butting heads, they buy themselves times and escape through a series of distractions.
• This is a recurring problem on Longmire. Longmire has no jurisdiction on the Native reserve and is openly despised by the tribal police because he got their old police chief arrested for corruption. In turn both police forces hate getting the feds involved if they can avoid it. Longmire also gets into trouble when an investigation leads into the neighboring county and that county's sheriff is not happy that Longmire did not notify him.
• In some episodes of "Series/Mayday", this is brought up in a few episodes as in some countries, the police can do their own separate criminal investigation which can have the unfortunate consequence of making things more difficult for the full time air accident investigators who now have to put up with people they want to interview clamming up out of fear of anything they say could result in facing criminal charges.
• On The Mentalist, the CBI often finds itself bumping up against local police departments who are not happy about them having jurisdiction.
  • A finger of a missing (later revealed to be murdered) man from Nevada was found in the desert and a team of experts was needed to establish which side of the California-Nevada border the spot where the finger was found was in. If it was in Nevada, the CBI would have no jurisdiction. If in California, they'd be allowed to work on the investigations. Considering who the protagonists of the show are, it's obvious which state the finger was found in.
  • In the fifth season premiere "The Crimson Ticket," the F.B.I. and C.B.I. agents have a throwdown regarding the events of the previous season's finale.
  • Subverted in another episode in which the titular mentalist actually expresses hope that they could just pass the buck on a missing persons case involving a rich-and-well-connected type he's not interested in investigating to the FBI.
    Jane: Can't we just give it to the FBI? They love that stuff.
    Lisbon: Oh, I wish. Boss is doing on-cameras - it's our baby.
• Miami Vice did this often with the standard local vs. Feds variety. Sometimes averted when the Feds specifically asked for Vice assistance. Notably, sometimes the Vice squad bumped heads with detectives in other Miami police divisions like homicide or theft.
• Midsomer Murders: In "The Incident at Cooper Hill", the commander of the local RAF base is very keen to tell Barnaby that he has no authority on RAF property.
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: In "Murder and the Maiden", tension between the police and the military complicates the investigation of a murder on an RAAF base.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Near the end, Monarch discovers that Lee Shaw is operating in a country where they don't have any operation jurisdiction, the ex-Soviet republic state of Kazakhstan, and they send a small team in in an off-the-books operation to capture him. When the mission goes wrong due to the old Kazakh power plant imploding into the Hollow Earth and local law enforcement notices, everyone Monarch sent who doesn't immediately make it out ends up in a foreign prison.
• Monk:
  • "Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty", involved an actual dispute over jurisdiction: the San Francisco Police Department captures Top Ten Most Wanted fugitive Miguel Escobar and charged with him with a local homicide case. But the FBI and the DEA want to try Escobar first because he's wanted for drug trafficking charges in multiple states. Stottlemeyer is reluctant until the FBI agent who passes him word of the transfer of custody produces a warrant from the U.S. attorney general.
  • Whenever the Feds get involved in an SFPD homicide case, what usually happens is that the Feds and SFPD have very tense cooperation, and in the end, Monk and the SFPD end up invariably closing the case and embarrassing the feds.
    • "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect" has a mailbombing case which is handled by the ATF (who technically do have jurisdiction as crimes involving the postal service are federal offenses). Stottlemeyer does show contempt for Special Agent Josh Grooms, the agent in charge.
    • "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather" does this with the investigation into the quintuple homicide of some mobsters in a barbershop, and the mob family they worked for was under investigation by a joint ATF-FBI task force. When boss Salvatore Lucarelli recruits Monk to look for the man responsible for the shooting, Monk finds himself getting involved with the FBI who want him to go undercover to recover evidence implicating them in other crimes, which Stottlemeyer is against as the Lucarelli family killed and dismembered the last guy who tried to infiltrate the family.
    • "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever" has Monk get put in Witness Protection, under Agent Grooms's custody. Stottlemeyer and Natalie also are brought along, with Stottlemeyer not only doing so out of loyalty to Monk, but also because he doesn't trust Grooms with Monk's safety.
    • "Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy" had jurisdiction friction over a particularly gruesome homicide involving a street musician who was killed six ways (struck over the head, suffocated with a plastic bag, poisoned, stabbed four times, shot two times, and run over with a car, in that order). In that one, the Mayor has called in the Feds, and Stottlemeyer doesn't like this, nor the fact that the FBI guys treat Monk with contempt. (In reality, the FBI wouldn't have jurisdiction over this case, unless the victim was a political figure, someone in the witness protection program, the homicide was committed during a crime that is a federal offense (like a security guard being killed during a bank robbery) or the killer crossed state lines in committing the crime. The entire case should have been handled by the SFPD only.)
  • There is evidence that the Feds and SFPD sometimes get along: in "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else", there's smooth cooperation between Team Monk and the FBI Los Angeles field office. In "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head", Randy persuades the FBI to lend the SFPD a plane when Monk is found with amnesia in Wyoming. And in "Mr. Monk and the Election", when evidence shows up at the crime scene that the shooter used an AK-47, Stottlemeyer tells Randy to call the ATF and request their help (though the ATF doesn't show up onscreen, it is mentioned that the two forces are working together on the investigation: the SFPD to look for the suspect, and the ATF to locate the gun).
• The Murder, She Wrote episode "Mrs. Parker's Revenge" features an FBI sting operation to expose a bioweapon-purchasing terrorist that, of necessity, brings in the head of security for the virology lab, who insists that as long as his lab is involved, so is he, long after the senior FBI agent thinks his role in proceedings is over. The FBI guy also doesn't understand why a CIA agent has muscled into the operation, although he and the CIA agent have a moment of shared annoyance when the NSA guy shows up. The police detective investigating the lab security chief's murder, on the other hand, tries to avoid stepping on any agency toes, even if that means not really investigating at all. It eventually turns out that the FBI guy is part of a conspiracy to use the sting as cover for actually stealing and selling the virus, so naturally doesn't want too many other parties taking an interest in the situation.
• Murdoch Mysteries:
  • "Anything You Can Do" begins with a Mountie taking control of Murdoch's investigation on the grounds that the victim is a suspect he's been pursuing.
  • In "Kommando", the Toronto Constabulary clashed with the Army over has jurisdiction over the case of a murdered soldier, with Inspector Brackenried threatening to arrest Colonel Haywood for obstruction of justice at on point.
  • In "Shadows Are Falling", an old friend of Murdoch's comes to him for help when he's accused of murder by Station House No. 1, who resent Station House No. 5 getting involved and asking awkward questions, especially since they know Murdoch's station considers them to be incompetent and corrupt.
    Inspector McWorthy: This is not in your jurisdiction, Murdoch.
    Murdoch: At the moment, it's in my home!
• Comes up frequently in NCIS. Is the dead body of the week a matter for NCIS, their counterparts in the Army, the FBI, or a local enforcement agency? Sometimes, characters on all sides get so snappy about jurisdiction that it seems they're more interested in having cases on their records than catching the bad guys... and the main characters are not above playing some dirty tricks in order to keep control of an investigation, such as when they agree to hand over a corpse to the FBI but put one of their own (live) agents in the body bag instead.
  • The pilot episode both played it straight and subverted it. First, a Navy Commander dies on Air Force One, and the case is fought over by NCIS, FBI, and the Secret Service. Then a Marine Major dies in identical circumstances and the local police have no problems handing the case over, 'cause they've got another body across town to deal with.
  • A couple of episodes later, the NCIS team manage to basically seize a crime scene from the local cop after browbeating him over his slipshod approach to crime scene investigation (which included handling evidence with his bare hands, allowing reporters onto the scene, and presuming that the victim was a drug dealer without evidence). A few miles away, meanwhile, there are a couple of dead drug dealers at a crime scene controlled by Army CID, who happily turns it over to NCIS and the DEA because the two crime scenes seem related, and because the local CID office is shorthanded that day.
  • Gibbs has a frontierish eye-for-an-eye attitude toward justice that in some ways resembles that of a clan chief more then that of a cop. The cases he demands are often those in which he vaguely feels he has some reason to think It's Personal.
  • Averted in another episode of NCIS; the local cop offers to cooperate fully, in exchange for all credit.
  • Played with in an episode where the case is under clear FBI jurisdiction and NCIS is called in only as a courtesy since the main suspect is a spy NCIS once arrested. When the NCIS team starts investigating, FBI agent Fornell makes a big stink about NCIS interfering in his case. He is then told that the NCIS and FBI directors talked about the issue and the FBI director used his discretion to transfer the case to NCIS jurisdiction. It is then revealed that Fornell was pulling a Batman Gambit on NCIS. He did not want the case so he made a big stink about jurisdiction specifically so that the NCIS team would go above his head and take the case from him. However, in the end, the joke is on him since the directors decide that the FBI should be represented in the investigation and Fornell is assigned back to it.
  • Sometimes it goes well, though; Team Gibbs has a comfortable working relationship with CGIS Agent Abigail Borin, who shows up on a fairly regular basis when NCIS and the Coast Guard both have an interest in the same case.
  • Gibbs in particular has an excellent relationship with Army CID Colonel Hollis Mann — so good they begin dating each other in fairly short order, and stay together for nearly a year — though that doesn't stop them from bickering over jurisdiction when their cases overlap. It's fairly clear that one of the reasons Gibbs is so into her is that she can go toe-to-toe with him on equal terms.
    Hollis: If this is going to turn into a pissing match, you'd better bring an umbrella.
  • Hilariously subverted in "Under Covers" where Tony and Ziva's undercover mission leads to NCIS accidentally starting a Mexican Standoff against the FBI agents running a similar operation on the hotel Tony and Ziva are staying at. Fornell angrily marches into NCIS and it looks like him and Gibbs are about to have a heated argument in the conference room over jurisdiction rights...only to immediately happily agree on a joint operation in the elevator and the fight was just for the sake of politics.
    Fornell: And people say we're bastards?
    Gibbs: Only because they know us.
• Mostly ignored on NCIS: Los Angeles as the LAPD usually isn't informed of what's happening. Did show up in an episode where each group was conducting an undercover op into the same people, which caused enough of a problem that the team gained an LAPD detective as a liaison and member of the team. Los Angeles also tends to give this a nod whenever the team has to do something that would require going through local channels, but don't have the time — Hettie goes a long way back with a lot of people and can easily procure the warrants needed to veto the usual chain of command. This gets played for laughs at one point where the local cops hand over a case with absolutely no hesitation. The team thinks this is suspicious... then notice the dead guy kept a meticulous filing system without a computer.
  • A major case is when Callen and Mosley work with the ATF tracking some weapons dealers. Mosley, naturally, tries to assume command only to be told by the ATF that this is their case. It gets dramatic when an ATF undercover agent is killed when one of the gang members recognizes him. Mosley wants to charge in but the ATF agent insists they keep to the plan so the agent's sacrifice won't be for nothing. When the arms dealer is about to escape, Mosley demands Callen arrest him with the ATF head telling her they need to let him go in order to track his clients. When Mosley demands again, the ATF operative snaps that she will arrest Mosley on the spot if she opens her mouth and lets the man go. While Mosley rants about this, she's put in her place that this was an ATF operation and Mosley nearly ruined it.
• NCIS: New Orleans is currently featuring a lot of friction between the FBI and the NCIS branch in NOLA. Especially now that there's an FBI agent full-time in Pride's office.
• On New Tricks the team occasionally experiences this when a cold case they are investigating turns out to be connected to an active case. They are not supposed to be investing active cases since most of them are not actually police officers any more.
• Mostly absent on NUMB3RS — when the LAPD show up, it's usually to provide the FBI with more boots on the ground. However, Don Eppes did clash with a narcotics detective in the episode "Man Hunt", and with the NSA in the episode "Finders Keepers".
• A rare example from Power Rangers, of all shows — the teamup between Time Force and Wild Force is instigated by a dispute between the Wild Force team and the Silver Guardians (whose leaders, Wes and Eric, are/were the Red Time Force Ranger and the Quantum Ranger, respectively) over whether the monsters they fought were either mutants (which Time Force and the Silver Guardians fought) or Orgs (who the Wild Force team is currently fighting). It soon emerges that they're both mutant and Org (dubbed "Mut-Orgs"), and they got this way thanks to Ransik, the Big Bad of Time Force, who then becomes a Boxed Crook of sorts to make up for his part in their re-emergence. The two teams' cooperation is somewhat stymied at first because, at the start of the episode, Eric happens to pull over the Yellow Wild Force Ranger, Taylor, and gives her a ticket for speeding (which quickly turns into Unresolved Sexual Tension).
• In Powers in season 2 the FBI is called in to investigate Retro Girl's murder.
• Psych:
  • Parodied when the Treasury Department horns in on a case. Naturally, they have their own Federal psychic consultant.
  • When Chief Vick (police) and her sister (Coast Guard) get in a fight over which of them has jurisdiction over a case. Vick's sister even hired Shawn and Gus and sidelined them just so Vick wouldn't have their service.
• Reno 911!:
  • Subverted when the clearly-more-competent FBI comes to town to investigate a serial killer and the local crew try desperately (and fail) to (in the words of Lt. Dangle) "not seem like dicks" to them.
  • Played for laughs on another occasion where the Reno sheriffs' drug sting operation (posing as a buyer) nets-a DEA sting operation (posing as the seller), after both go through a Long List of humorous drug euphemisms.
• The rivalry between the Metropolitan Police and the City Police causes problems in the Ripper Street episode "The King Came Calling".
• Rizzoli & Isles: When the FBI shows up, the only real friction is between Detective Frost and the head agent, and it's immediately obvious that it's something personal. She was Frost's former fiancé.
  • Some serious jurisdiction friction crops up "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" when the NSA decides a murder has national security implications. Although the NSA has no authority to investigate homicides, they seize all of the evidence they claim has security implications and refuse to grant the BPD team access to it.
• Although the Sanctuary team has no real jurisdiction, this trope comes into play a few times as they try to gather abnormal-related evidence before the law enforcement comes in and sets up jurisdiction.
• The Shield: Played for serious drama, as Vic manipulates the LAPD and ICE against each other in an effort to get a job offer and an immunity deal from the latter.
• Happens a fair bit in Sons of Anarchy; there are various clashes between the local police, the local sheriffs, the ATF, the FBI and even the CIA at the end of season 4.
• An episode of Southland sees two LAPD officers, one of them Jessica Tang, argue with a pair of LA County officers over who takes responsibility for cleaning up a guy hit by a train, with his remains spread from the track (County jurisdiction) to the road. However, when Tang tongue-lashes someone down the phone over getting help for a homeless retired Marine, the County officers quickly agree to take the body.
• Stargate SG-1 bristles when it comes to the NID, but it all gets really simple once they turn out to be the Bad Guys anyway.
• Star Trek:
  • The Maquis freedom fighters were attacking Cardassians, but while based outside Federation space they were still technically Federation citizens, making it very testy—if not an outright race—as to whether Starfleet was going to find them and stop them, or the Cardassians were going to find them and kill them.
  • You won't find many Starfleet officers who actually like (or even know about) Section 31, and most 31 operatives regard Starfleet as idealistic dreamers with no idea of how the universe truly works. Yet both are sanctioned forces of the Federation.
  • The initial Starfleet/Bajoran Militia team up at the beginning of Deep Space Nine was like this.
  • It's implied in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Face of the Enemy" that many Romulan military commanders are resentful of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan Secret Police.
  • Similarly, Deep Space Nine goes in depth into the rivalry between the Cardassian Central Command (military) and the Obsidian Order (very powerful civilian secret police.) Given that the Obsidian Order is an extremely powerful entity in Cardassia, which is basically fascist, it's inevitable that they and the military will come into serious conflict on a regular basis. Really, any time a secret police force exists in Star Trek, you can expect it to come into conflict with the military at some point, probably quite a lot.
  • In the Deep Space Nine episode "Hippocratic Oath," Worf, new to the station and acting on behalf of Starfleet, arrests a smuggler. However, Odo, the station's Chief of Security, operating on behalf of Bajor, had planned to allow the smuggler to go free, having shape-shifted into the smuggler's bag of latinum, allowing him to infiltrate the entire smuggling operation.
  • This is a major problem in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Doomsday Machine". Commodore Matt Decker, mad with grief over the loss of the crew of the Constitution, takes control of the Enterprise while Kirk is investigating the rest of the Constellation-class vessel. Since communications between both ships are spotty, Decker takes control of the ship and goes on a Suicide Mission to stop the titular weapon. The crew knows this is crazy, but they can't actually stop him without a checkup and he's not stopping for one. It isn't until Kirk is able to finally get ahold of his ship are they able to stop Decker.
• Stranger Things: The Indiana State Police find Will Byers's body in a quarry near Hawkins. They refuse to give the Hawkins police access to even see the body close up, and even have the local coroner sent home so someone "from state" can perform the autopsy. Hopper finds this all to be very suspicious, combined with the fact that the body looks way too intact for someone who supposedly fell into water from a high cliff, and suspects there's some sort of cover-up going on. To prove his theory, he strikes up a conversation with O'Bannon, the trooper who called it in. O'Bannon claims the quarry was state-owned, and Hopper agrees, only for him to then immediately reveal the quarry is actually privately owned, so O'Bannon would have no business being there, and makes O'Bannon quickly fess up. Hopper then goes to the morgue, and tries to bluff his way past the state trooper assigned to guard the door, but quickly catches on that he's in on the conspiracy, there to make sure no one gets close enough to find out that the body is actually a fake mannequin stuffed with cotton:
  State Trooper: Hey, you can't be back here!
  Jim Hopper: Yeah, I just got off the line with O'Bannon. He said that he needs to see you at the station. It's some emergency ...
  State Trooper: What the hell are you talking about? I don't work with O'Bannon.
  Jim Hopper: Did I say O'Bannon? I meant ...
  State Trooper: (vacant, hostile staring)
  Jim Hopper: (grimaces) Okay. (punches the trooper out cold)
• In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), Kevin blackmails a Navy officer to persuade her to allow Sam and Dean, who are posing as FBI agents, to investigate a crime on the Navy base where the FBI would not have jurisdiction.
• Total Recall 2070: The main characters, including Hume and Farve, work for the CPB (Citizens' Protection Bureau), a civilian agency that deals with general criminal investigations. Calley represents the Assessor's Office, another agency that has official judicial oversight over the Consortium, the five most powerful Mega Corps. Although they're both generally opposed to the Consortium, at times the interests of the CPB and the Assessor's office would conflict and Calley would run his own investigation behind the detectives' backs.
• An episode of A Touch of Frost has David Jason's Inspector Frost (Britain's answer to Columbo) seeking to investigate a suspected murder on an Army base. Frost is hindered and frustrated by the Royal Military Police (who at the time of screening were following the old principle of demarcation between British civilian and military authorities: if a serious crime happened on a military base, it was for the RMP to investigate and no business of the civilian cops, whose remit ends at the barracks gates). Frost sees how amateurish and incompetent the Army cops are at investigating murder, and gets involved anyway: as he uncovers skullduggery, financial corruption, bullying, illegal sale of military equipment, etc, the Army cops eventually realise they're all on the same team. Eventually.
• In season 2 of True Detective, this is how our protagonists are brought together: the city manager for Vinci, CA is found murdered on the side of the highway, and state, county, and local law enforcement all want to take the case (he was a city employee, but found outside city limits, by a member of the highway patrol), so they form a task force with agents from all three. Each group has their own hidden agenda to pursue: the state and county want to investigate corruption in Vinci, while Vinci's corrupt administration needs to find out who has tanked a particularly lucrative land investment deal. Additionally, a local criminal whose attempts to go legitimate have now been ruined due to the murder pursues his own leads into the investigation. Additionally, one of the other investigators has a personal motive in finding the murderer, as he was involved with the victim in a decades-old theft.
  • To top it off, the actual murderer had nothing to do with any of these various plot threads except the last one: a boy who'd been orphaned in the theft had waited years to get his revenge on the men involved.
• Twin Peaks:
  • The events surrounding the murder of Laura Palmer crossed the county line, thus necessitating the presence of FBI agent Dale Cooper. When he arrives in Twin Peaks, he tells Sheriff Truman that he's encountered this trope in past dealings with local law (see above under Film for an instance of his colleague dealing with it) and hopes to avoid any friction here. In pleasant defiance of the trope, Truman completely agrees and the two quickly become friends, with one exception: when Cooper advises Truman, on scant evidence, to release Ben Horne and drop the charge of Laura Palmer's murder, Truman, for the first time, refuses point blank, declaring he's "had enough of the mumbo jumbo" involved in Cooper's eccentric approach to law enforcement. Of course the whole thing is quickly resolved when they discover the killer was Laura's father Leland, possessed by BOB.
  • Played straight in Sheriff Truman's antagonistic relationship to Agent Rosenfeld, the FBI forensics specialist, who acts much more like the classic Jerkass fed trope until eventually chilling out.
  • In the second season, when Cooper's pursuit of cocaine smugglers crossing the Canadian border puts him in a feud with an RCMP officer (who turns out to be crooked) and under investigation by the DEA. The DEA agent turns out to be an entirely reasonable cop who ends up helping Cooper to prove his innocence.
  • In sequel series Twin Peaks: The Return, Denise Bryson's gender identity (she's either a transvestite or transgender- it's never made entirely clear, though Season 3 seems to lean towards the latter) became a source of this while she was transferred to work for the DEA and before eventually returning to the FBI. Gordon Cole recounts that he instructed them to "open their hearts or die".
• A non-law enforcement example occurs in the last episode of The West Wing, where a train is caught in an ice-storm at a point hazily around the Massachusetts / New Hampshire border and both state governors are dithering about exactly who's responsibility it is to send the rescue teams out. This means that one of President Bartlet's last official acts in office turns out to be calling both governors at the same time, picking one at random, and basically telling him not to be such a damn idiot and send his state's National Guard out anyway, since no one cares who's job it is to rescue the train as long as someone does it.
• The Wire:
  • In most cases, it's actually a reverse of the standard version. One law enforcement jurisdiction will often try to foist murder cases onto another to avoid having their numbers go down when the case inevitably goes unsolved. The city police actually go to the FBI, begging for their assistance in busting criminals or solving crimes, but the Feds usually turn them down due to their new, mandated focus on terrorism.
  • In Season 2, the Baltimore City police, the Baltimore County police, the Port Police, and the Coast Guard all fight not to take a huge murder case, as they know there's no chance of solving it and will damage their clearance rates (ratio of homicides solved to homicides reported). Jimmy McNulty—a City cop—eventually sabotages City's attempt not to be saddled with the murders because he wants to get revenge at City Homicide's bosses for exiling him to the Harbor Division.
  • Valchek brings the FBI into the investigation of his nemesis Frank Sobotka, which is welcome news to the police unit, but it also means they'll have to re-prioritize their targets. The feds ultimately withdraw their support when union corruption charges are made, since the feds were only interested in international racketeering.
  • When Frank Sobotka's son Ziggy gets arrested for murder, Ziggy gets arrested, taken to Homicide, and processed by Jay Landsman. But Landsman forgets to bring the Sobotka detail in the loop about this important arrest, meaning that the Greeks are able to clear out their operation before the police can serve warrants on them, including Glekas' store. Understandably, Daniels is very pissed.
    Daniels: Let me ask you, who exactly am I working all these dead girls for? The Homicide unit, right? The same Homicide unit that can't put two and two together and pick up a phone leaving me to read it a day-and-a-half later in The Baltimore Sun. (Beat) What did you take from the scene?
    Jay: Photos, latents, spent casings... Fuck, they cleaned everything else?
    Daniels: Even for a supremely fucked-up police department this takes the prize.
  • Season 5 features a straight version: the FBI expressed a willingness to take on the massive drug/murder investigation of Marlo Stanfield, but only if the Baltimore State's Attorney (the local prosecutor) would hand over the prosecution of corrupt State Senator Clay Davis to the United States Attorney (the federal prosecutor). Everyone knows that a federal case would be much more likely to get a conviction, because the jury pool would include the suburbs in Baltimore and Anne Arundel Counties, and possibly even rural areas even further out (where jurors would either not know Davis or regard him as a corrupt City politician long overdue for a commuppeance), while a state trial would draw only from the City of Baltimore (where Davis had his base of support and could grandstand as a defender of Black interests—never mind that the State's Attorney was himself Black). However, the State's Attorney shuts down this deal, because he wants to take Davis down personally so he can run for Mayor after Carcetti runs for Governor. Sure enough, the City jury acquits Davis after he engages in just the kind of grandstanding everyone predicted, and the State's Attorney is left a laughingstock of Baltimore politics. Another factor complicating the whole mess beyond jurisdiction is party politics: all the Baltimore politicians including Davis are Democrats, but the US Attorney is a Republican.
• Played variously on The X-Files. Considering that Agent Mulder is the Trope Namer for a conspiracy-believing weirdo, understandably some local cops are annoyed when he shows up spouting his nonsense, others are happy to let him take the case off their hands, a tiny minority even believe him, and a few are in on the crime.
• Yellowstone: This is Serious Business when all three law enforcement agencies in the area are just minions of rival strongmen. The livestock agents are loyal to the Duttons, the Broken Rock tribal police are loyal to Rainwater, and the sheriff's office serves any interest the sheriff finds expedient. Asserting jurisdiction over a case means that someone gets control over it. In the pilot episode, livestock agents and tribal police nearly get into a shootout over a jurisdictional dispute involving a fortune of stolen Yellowstone cattle.

---