Noble Bigot with a Badge

DiGeorgio: Ah, that's one thing about our Harry. Doesn't play any favorites! Harry hates everybody. Limeys, micks, hebes, fat dagos, niggers, honkies, chinks, you name it.
Gonzales: How does he feel about Mexicans?
DiGeorgio: Ask him.
Harry Callahan: Especially spics.

— Dirty Harry

Stereotypical smart mouth, racist, big-city cop — but with a Sympathetic P.O.V., which makes all the difference. Almost always written as a noble, misunderstood "good guy" (or girl). This could give the impression that the writer(s) are downplaying bigotry — or, in a passive-aggressive way, justifying bigotry in certain situations — to the point of making "loyalty" to "your own group" a virtue, thus making lack of bigotry come across as Category Traitor.

Sometimes this guy is shown as honestly mistaken and will moderate his bigoted views over time. This will often involve him coming into close contact with the group that he hates, possibly even being partnered with one of them.

The "noble" part frequently takes the form of not allowing his prejudices to interfere with police work — you won't see him charge a black guy with a crime he knows he didn't do. Is almost always white, but can also be of color. The ethnic version exists for the character to critique their own gender or race without the writers worrying about being called racist. Kinda like an inversion of N-Word Privileges by proxy.

Subtrope of — obviously — Noble Bigot and Bigot with a Badge (the latter group lack the nobility or redeeming character traits required for this trope). Usually a Politically Incorrect Hero.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Huang of Darker than Black is a Fantastic Racism version, but certainly looks the part, being a cigar-chomping, hard-drinking, overweight, Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Toshio Wakagi of Codename: Sailor V comes off as this in his hostility toward Sailor V... Who, in all fairness, is a vigilant involved in some shady business. Once he finds out the truth he actually becomes her Friend on the Force.
• Tetsu Ushio from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds starts out this way, being discriminatory to Satellite citizens who are viewed as Neo-Domino City's trash. Since there is established law that people from Satellite are prohibited from entering Neo-Domino City without permission, Ushio tries for a good quarter of the first season to arrest Yusei for exactly that. However, he does care for the safety of Neo-Domino City's citizens and he would apologize for things he did when he was brainwashed. His mind changes when he helps out in one of Satellite's orphanages. He completely changes to a noble officer from season 2 onwards.

Comic Books

• The DC Universe has Detective Harvey Bullock; like Sam Vimes, he Hates Everyone Equally. (Except for Batman, who he hates just a little bit more). In the DCAU, he hates Batman because he's a "freak", who's hogging all the investigations.
• Lieutenant Burke from Sandman Mystery Theatre probably qualifies.
• Subverted, played straight, lampshaded and deconstructed in The Question #15.
• CIA agent Billy Butcher from The Boys was a Lower-Class Lout who used every slur in the book while writing some new ones into it along the way, but he didn't hold any real hatred for anyone on the basis of who they are other than superheroes.
• Officer Pete "Shock Headed Peter" Cheney of Top 10 is extremely hateful of robots, largely referring to them with the offensive Fantastic Slur "clicker." The Forty Niners prequel features Adam "The Spirit of '76" Pure, who hates robots, vampires, and everyone who isn't white (excepting vampires) — though these were much more popular sentiments in 1949.
• Deconstructed in The Shadow Hero. Detective Lawful, the Friend on the Force of the protagonist, the superhero the Green Turtle, denounces Chinese people in general in a moment of frustration, in a racially abusive manner. The Turtle is furious and reveals that he is Chinese-American himself, and Lawful is ashamed and sincerely apologises.

Fan Works

• Fallout: Equestria: Littlepip finds some journals from the war where an outside observer witnessed Steelhooves patrolling Zebratown, the only zebra settlement in an increasingly racist Equestria. Steelhooves saves a zebra from being raped by a guard, then refuses her thanks because he hates zebras. He states multiple times that he doesn't care how much he hates zebras, it's still his job to protect them, so that's what he's going to do. He's better by the time of the story, but not by that much.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: The US Marshals assigned to Azure Crush are rude, crude, sexist jerks. Despite this, they stand their ground in the face of a supervillain attack and are among the only casualties.
• Troll Cops has Equius Zahhak, who clings to the long-defunct Hemospectrum and looks down on non-trolls and trolls of lower blood castes. However, his belief in his own superiority drives him to live up to his high expectations, resulting in a personal reputation of incorruptibility in the largely corrupt APD. And his long-term partnership with Aradia Megido, a troll officer of the lowest blood caste, is forcing him to re-evaluate his deeply entrenched biases, and he is (gradually) improving.

Film — Animation

• My Little Pony: A New Generation: Hitch is the sheriff of Maretime Bay and, while he does buy into the misinformed racism he was raised with, he's still a decent enough fellow. saving a foal from the stampede caused by the panic over Izzy's arrival. He's also childhood friends with the extremely open-minded Sunny, apparently not having put her down despite not seeing things the way she does.

Film — Live-Action

• Heart Condition: Jack Moony. Subverted in the end though, because of a heart transplant from a black man, who ended up staying around to make Moony see things differently.
• The Proposition: Morris Stanley gives people the Sadistic Choice, beats up prisoners, discriminates against Irish people, is a bit blunt on the whole imperialism thing, and doesn't trust his wife with information that might upset her. The thing is, it's all out of a misaimed sense of duty and chivalry, and he's not really a bad guy, underneath it all.
• Crash: The police officer John Ryan starts off as just plain bigoted, then gets slightly more noble when he saves the life of the black woman he sexually assaulted before by risking his life to drag her out of a burning car.
• First Time Felon: The black drill sergeant Calhoun is given a Sympathetic P.O.V.. He despises the black juvenile felons because he hates that when "white people look at me, they see you instead... I love black people, but I hate niggers." He hates the stereotypes that they help perpetuate of decent black people like him. He despises the felons so much he intentionally undermines their rehabilitation by provoking them to hit him. He even goes as far to say "I'm never gonna let you get released back on the streets! I'm gonna lock up your children, and their children's children!" The character can definitely be interpreted and dissected in many different ways.
• Narc (2002): Henry Oakes, for several reasons; not the least of which is that his "daughter" is actually a girl he had rescued from her sexually abusive father, after putting her in a squad car and beating the ever-lovin' shit out of her dad.
• I, Robot: Variant: Detective Spooner's prejudice against robots gets him involved in a mysterious case... although this isn't so much hating robots as simply not trusting them. It's also largely justified.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: A variant with Eddie Valiant as he's a Private Detective and doesn't actually work for a law enforcement agency, but he still risks his own life to clear Roger of murder despite his hatred of toons.
• Bright: Officer Darryl Ward has a low opinion of orcs in general (though he did recently catch a 12-gauge to his flak vest from an orc shoplifter) and is an asshole to his orc partner, Officer Nick Jakoby. At the same time, he defends Nick when other LAPD cops insult him behind his back and makes a point of teaching his young daughter that all races (humans, elves, orcs, etc) are equal and should get along.
• In the Heat of the Night: Variant: small-town Police Chief Gillespie. At the beginning, he seems the stereotypical obnoxious, racist redneck, but — also thanks to Steiger's Oscar-winning performance — slowly emerges as a decent (if bitter) man who befriends the black protagonist, Virgil Tibbs. It helps that Gillespie is shown to be significantly less bigoted than most of the rest of the town.
• Slumdog Millionaire: The police officers hate lower-class Indians and use Electric Torture as a matter of course. However, after the protagonist doesn't confess under torture, they start believing him and are even somewhat helpful.
• The Guard: Sergeant Gerry Boyle, the main protagonist, is this in spades. He makes outright racist comments at a briefing ("I thought only black lads could be drug dealers. And Mexicans) and believes Americans to be overly idealistic. However, when his rookie partner's wife informs him that her husband is missing, he goes out of his way to solve the case. Even when every other guard in the area has been bribed to stay out.
• Philadelphia has Joe Miller, a lawyer version of this trope. He is (at first) homophobic but agrees to help a gay man with AIDS sue his old employers for discrimination because such discrimination is against the law.
• Angel Heart: Det. Sterne. While he initially comes off as a vile racist, referring to blacks as "jigaboos" and fully supporting segregation, he does care about Epiphany and her orphaned kid. He gives hints about being a Beleaguered Bureaucrat as well.
• The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed: Gleb Zheglov is a notorious Cowboy Cop who, while not given to prejudice, is nevertheless essentially a vigilante with a badge, having no qualms of opening first and planting the evidence to put the notorious thief behind the bars, circumstances be damned. It is even more pronounced in the original book, where he verges on a Sociopathic Hero.
• Dark Blue: Detective Eldon Perry sees himself as one of these, being a casual racist who catches bad guys. Others, including several black cops, point out that he's just a vile scumbag who abuses his power. It isn't until his younger partner is killed by two criminals in a shoot-out meant to target Perry that he finally chooses to atone for his actions.
• Dirty Harry: Harry Callahan is very equal opportunity in his hate. That said, the conversation in question was more hazing the new guy (Gonzales) than actual bigotry, as he gives a wink to DeGiorgio after saying "especially Spics" and shows no obvious issues working with his new Mexican partner.
  • In The Enforcer, Harry's initial reactions appear to add sexism to his prejudices; however, his respect for Kate as she proves her worth, and his interactions with various minorities in this and the other sequels, show that his real hate is for those who break the law, and his gibes are part of his Knight in Sour Armor image.
• The Untouchables (1987), Jim Malone isn't shy about sharing his anti-Italian prejudice, though George Stone earns his respect.
• Super Troopers: Subverted with Foster. He swings by the police station with some important files and seems adamant about giving them to a male police officer rather than Ursula. It turns out the folder is empty and he was asking for the males because she's the only female police officer and he wanted to make sure no one else was around so he could try and romance her.
• Alien Nation: A sci-fi twist with Matt Sykes. As the film opens, he's merely annoyed by and contemptuous of Newcomers. Then, when his partner Tug is killed by one in "Slagtown," his casual bigotry becomes full-on hatred. It begins to dissipate when he comes to like and respect George, the Newcomer cop he requests to be partnered with so he can solve Tug's murder. By the end, the two are friends as well as partners, and Matt's view of Newcomers has improved considerably.
• Victim (1961): Sergeant Bridie is outspokenly homophobic, but that doesn't stop him doing his utmost to bring a blackmailing ring targeting closeted gay men to justice.
• Deep Cover: DEA Special Agent Carver has no issue hurling the N-word around, but despite being a Smug Snake entirely too satisfied with himself, he does make it clear at several points that he's genuinely trying to combat the crack cocaine epidemic or at least, until his bosses order him to scupper the investigation.
  Carver: Have you ever seen a crack baby? Newborn crack baby... six hours old... screaming its heart out... because it's going through withdrawal? Over the course of the next year it doesn't learn to crawl, or walk, or talk on time... because it's got deformities. Physical deformities, mental deformities. It's got brain damage, lowered IQ, dyslexia—God only knows what else. Maybe it goes to school, but it can't learn. And it's violent, so it gets in trouble with the law. It's unable to form any close emotional ties, so it's faced with the prospect of going through this hideous, miserable life... completely alone. There are millions of these babies, John. There's a whole generation of your people who are being destroyed before they are even born, because these guys are bringing that shit into this country. Now do you remember what you're doing here?
• Inspector Learoyd in Sapphire. After learning Sapphire was black, and frequented black nightclubs, he is quick to jump to racist assumptions about the victim's behaviour, but his boss Superintendent Hazard is nonjudgmental and sometimes counters his assistant's biased views.
• Shaft (2000): Detective Lugger annoys Shaft by calling black criminals "cornbread" and displaying other politically incorrect behavior, and they almost come to blows. However, he's also an honest cop, unlike two of his more seemingly decent colleagues, and helps Shaft steal the money Walter Wade Jr. is paying his hit team with in an effort to save the witnesses's lives and turn the villains against each other, with he and Shaft parting with a Vitriolic Best Buds exchange.
  Shaft: Hey, you still a motherfucking cracker. You know that, right?
  Luger: Ah, fuck you, too, cornbread.

Literature

• IT: In the first 1984/1985 segment of the narrative, the cops interrogating the young men that assaulted Adrian Mellon, a gay man, throwing off a bridge and into the Derry canal to his death (at the hands of Pennywise), would love nothing more than to see the local gay bar close its doors for good. However, they react with anger and disgust at the brutal way in which Mellon was beaten and they look forward to throwing the book at the three punks who did it.
• Dead Famous: Inspector Coleridge makes some Slut-Shaming comments in the climax, can be quite sour when ranting about people who don't share his traditional religious beliefs (Trisha half-seriously compares him to a witch burner) and says that he doesn't get why gay people care about using the label gay even after Trisha points out that he'd just assume everyone was straight otherwise. However, he cares deeply about catching the murderer and is sympathetic and respectful to lesbian suspect Sally for the most part.
• Sam Vimes from the Discworld books Hates Everyone Equally, complete with stereotypes. Especially humans. His officers aren't necessarily happy about this, and will remind him when he unthinkingly crosses a line. But they also trust that, at the end of the day, he absolutely has their back and will see justice done despite his personal prejudices.
  • This is played the most straight with him in Men at Arms when the Watch first takes on a troll, a dwarf (apart from Carrot, who's only a dwarf by adoption), and a werewolf, and he's not best pleased but is strictly professional. He doesn't do much except act surly in their presence. But since he complained to Carrot, who doesn't really understand keeping secrets, it doesn't stay a secret for long. But he seems to change his perspective soon enough; by Jingo he's pretty much friends with Angua and Detritus.
  • He genuinely seems to hate vampires but that's more about class than a matter of species. Vimes especially despises members of the upper classes who abuse their power by exploiting others and taking the fruits of their labor without giving anything back. Vampires represent everything he's ever stood against.
    • As of Thud!, he lets a vampire join the watch though, and lets her stay on even after she's revealed as a spy. Mainly because at first, he is forced to take her on, and after the fact because if he plays it right, no one will be able to tell him who he takes on ever again. He then wonders if Vetinari thinks like this all the time.
    • And by Snuff, he has at least two vampire officers on the force.
  • As mentioned in a throwaway line in Unseen Academicals, he's also employed a medusa. She has to wear sunglasses. Really, the fact that people don't find too much to complain about in this is all you need to know about Ankh-Morpork.
  • Vimes tends to see two kinds of people, Watch officers and non-Watch officers. If you are part of the latter, then he mistrusts you, with only a few exceptions - he mistrusts most races - but if you are part of the former, that is your race, in his eyes. Originally he considered everyone in the Watch a Watch man regardless of species or gender, but he got better about that. Also note that, just as he is even more cynical about humans than anyone else, he is far more cynical about Watchmen than anyone else. After all, thieves are at least honest about it.
  • An interesting aspect of Jingo is Vimes's reaction to genuine racism. Firstly, when having dealt with a racially driven firebombing of a local Klatchian takeaway, he hears Fred Colon casually drop a racist slur. He then summons Colon, who he's known for over 25 years and usually gives a great deal of latitude, to his office. No one hears what he says, but Colon's almost shaking when he comes out again. His Klatchian counterpart points out that Vimes refused to consider a Klatchian could have been the killer because that was the sort of thing men like Rust would have thought. "Be generous, Sir Samuel. Truly treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards, hmm?"
  • Similarly, in Snuff, Vimes' reaction to the casual racism against goblins is to treat the goblins with all the care and respect he shows to any other victims of a crime. He even asks about the name of the deceased without thinking about it, which impresses the goblin chief since most humans refuse to consider that goblins have names.
  • Fred Colon is intended as a parody of this trope.
    • The difference between Fred and Vimes is highlighted in The Fifth Elephant. Fred makes bigoted comments about nonhuman officers during the book, and it upsets the nonhuman officers because of it. However, Vimes has been known to make similar comments, but they tolerate it from him because they know that when things get dicey Vimes has their back, where Fred is a usually-Lovable Coward.
• Fat Ollie Weeks from Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels. He may be the most casually racist man alive, but if he assigned to find your killer, he will find your killer, regardless of who or what you were.
  • Likewise his expy, Ollie Chandler, in Randy Alcorn's books. Chandler softens up a lot more quickly, though.
• Pretty much every non-corrupt cop in the LA Quartet.
• Played with in Empire Of The Wolves with Jean-Louis Schiffer. A retired police officer and somewhat of a legend (albeit a rather sinister one) among his colleagues, Schiffer is extremely knowledgeable about Parisian minorities and is apparently on speaking terms with community leaders. At the same time, he gleefully spouts racist slogans and is not averse to using Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on the suspects. The reader (and Schiffer's rookie partner, Netreaux) is not really sure what to make of him until the end, when he is revealed to be deeply corrupt, serving as a middleman in heroin distribution. He is killed by his courier who has gone rogue and took off with a large shipment and whom Schiffer was tracking down throughout the novel.
• Soledad O'Rourke of Those Who Walk in Darkness and What Fire Cannot Burn fits this trope to a T, and is the reason given for every one-star review of the former book on Amazon.com as of this writing. She's described as a "good cop" for her honor and devotion to her work, but even her sidekick considers her to have fallen beyond redemption, due both to He Who Fights Monsters and the fact that the "freaks" she hunts aren't Always Chaotic Evil.
  • The other MTacs are more moderate examples, with the character Bo in particular actually being a normal human being shown prone to introspection and a life outside of killing things, while Soledad has nothing in her life except killing mutants and her boyfriend and later, trying to kill her mutant boyfriend. The normal police officer doesn't even manage that level of noble, either.
• On those occasions when Imperials in Star Wars Legends are portrayed as something other than a bunch of not-really-Imperial people who switch sides immediately, they fall into this trope. Admiral Pellaeon might be the best example, both before and after the truce. One of the authors in the New Jedi Order gave him an extremely Narm-ish tract crudely connecting his governing style with gardening, and how one must weed and pinch errant buds.
  • Played with interestingly with Baron Fel, in that his bigoted beliefs are the reason he ultimately leaves the Empire. He starts out believing all the Empire's notions of human supremacy, that humans have the right to rule the galaxy and the duty to look after the "lesser" species for their own good because they're the advanced race. This lasts until he takes part in a battle where the alien admiral Thrawn creates the strategy that led the Empire to victory. Faced with this evidence that humanity is not, after all, a superior species, plus the Imperial bureaucracy's subsequent attempt to downplay Thrawn's role, Fel concludes that the Empire is based on a lie and loses much of his faith in the system, which makes it easier for him to defect later.
• Braxton Underwood, a minor character and newspaper owner in To Kill a Mockingbird, is said to be unable to stand black people and unwilling to let them anywhere near him. Nevertheless, he respects Atticus (even while disagreeing with his decision to defend a black man) enough to have his gun ready to defend Atticus when a lynch mob comes for his client (albeit without making his presence known until after the threat has passed) and all but condemns Tom Robinson's conviction and the shoddy nature of his trial in his newspaper on principle.
• Adjudicator Roz Forrester in the Doctor Who New Adventures. She's a black woman who is totally prejudiced against aliens, but also one of the few Adjudicators in Spaceport 5 who actually makes an effort to help them.
• In Death: Lieutenant Mills from Judgment In Death. He is white, male, and heterosexual, as well as being a fat slob. He doesn't like anyone who is not white, not male, or not heterosexual. He is not all that "noble", even though he did say something about his dead fellow cop Kohli was good at his job, even if he was black. Later, Mills gets murdered, and it turns out that he was a Dirty Cop who wanted money. So much for "noble".
• Anita Blake can be viewed as a Fantastic Racism version of this. She hates vampires but will not blame a vampire for a crime he did not commit.
• Plainclothesman Elijah Bailey of Isaac Asimov's Robot series hates robots but will enforce the law even if it means protecting them. His views are changed when he is partnered with a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw.
• Rafael de la Cruz from Hometown is a tireless, hard-working, conscientious sheriff who cares deeply for his community. He is also a good father...and he considers it his duty, as a good father, to ensure that his daughter is protected, even if she has no further contact with her lesbian best friend. Who knows what happened during all those sleepovers over the years?
• In David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets he discusses one cop who ran an entire African-American family through the police databases after they moved in next door, yet was diligent in his pursuit of any murderer, regardless of the race of the victim. Simon portrays it mostly as about pride; they're not about to let a little thing like their own blatant racism get in the way of proving their smarts.
• In the later books of The Wheel of Time, some of the Red Ajah members are portrayed more like this, viewing men (and male channelers) more sympathetically than the Reds portrayed earlier in the series (while still not necessarily liking them), especially after Saidin is cleansed, and the Red Ajah's entire purpose needs to be reevaluated.
• Anthony Horowitz protagonist Daniel Hawthorne is a brilliant detective, with a fair sense of justice and compassion, but doesn't seem to know the meaning of the phrase "political correctness", to the dismay of his biographer a version of Horowitz himself particularly with an All Gays Are Pedophiles belief that apparently comes from having investigated actual pedophile rings as a cop, clouding his judgment on the issue.
• Sacred Monster: Detective O'Connor is an honest man who shows a certain amount of patience and compassion as he builds up to arresting Jack. When he learns that Jack slept with another man, he reacts with "repugnance", although this doesn't affect the rest of their interactions.

Live-Action TV

• In Babylon Berlin, Bruno Wolter is the resident Dirty Cop (not that the rest of the force a lot better), but also shown to be a loving husband to his senile wife.
• Beforeigners: Lars, to an extent. He isn't overtly hateful towards timeigrants, but he's clearly uncomfortable around them goes out of his way to have as little as possible to do with them. Of course, that his wife left him to marry a timeigrant and become a 19th century housewife, that he is the only up-timer to still live in his neighborhood and that he wrestles with a crippling addiction to the sedative developed to help timeigrants deal with sensory overload don't help.
• FBI agent Seeley Booth in Bones is generally a nice guy with no apparent bigotry, but he displays contempt toward the BDSM and Fantasy Role-Playing subcultures, as well as Voodoo practitioners (although the Voodoo episode treated the religion realistically and avoided Hollywood Voodoo.)
  • Bones herself (technically not a cop, but acts as Booth's partner in the field) often shows bigotry toward religious people, particularly Catholics. Note, however, that Booth is Catholic, so she clearly bears no ill will toward them—it's more a matter of general insensitivity. She is also extremely contemptuous of psychologists/psychiatrists, even though she works with one.
• In the late Eighties, a semi-sequel to the 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night aired on television.In the Heat of the Night starred Carroll O'Connor as Sheriff Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs, working together again after twenty years, this time with Tibbs as a part of the police department in Sparta, Mississippi. It seems Gillespie is still bigoted in many ways, but wants to prove he's progressive. Tibbs suggests the Noble Bigot with a Badge remember the "Mister" when addressing him.
• Det./Sgt. Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue.
  • Who was an Expy of Det. Norman Buntz of Hill Street Blues (both played by Dennis Franz)
• Speaking of Hill Street Blues, Howard Hunter had frequent moments of this, much to the frustration of Ray Caitano.
• Agent Doyle of 24. Seemingly a bigoted, arrogant, stuck-up, ends-justifies-the-means agent who won't take crap from anyone and isn't afraid to make things physical if they disagree. Has also secretly covered up honest mistakes and screw-ups of his co-workers to make sure they don't get hot under the collar with their Obstructive Bureaucrat superiors, and admits he's spiritually lost. He also later defies orders when he realizes it's the right thing to do and encourages his superior to do the same.
• Officer Maurice "Bosco" Boscorelli from Third Watch.
• Life On Mars comes with a rather good selection of these, Gene Hunt being the star.
  Gene: Now. Yesterday's shooting. The dealers are all so scared we're more likely to get Helen Keller to talk. The Paki in a coma's about as lively as Liberace's dick when he's looking at a naked woman, all in all this investigation's going at the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory. (Sam drops his radio) What?
  Sam: Think you might have missed out the Jews.
  • Illustrated well in the American version when he learns that the murder they're investigating may be a homophobic hate crime and still refuses to treat it with anything less than his usual "professionalism", calling out Ray for suggesting otherwise.
• A rare, non-white male example: Det. Frank Pembleton of Homicide: Life on the Street (Though he was more an intellectual snob than racist)
• Detective Sergeant Jimmy Beck from Cracker.
• Dets. Stabler and Tutuola from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, while not especially racist or sexist, tend to be...less than fans of the LGBT community.
  • Fin learned later he has a gay son, which softened him somewhat.
  • They're both interesting cases in that they don't outright hate members of the LGBTQ community; they just don't really understand much about it. As mentioned above, Fin softens up after learning that his son is gay, and Stabler has become increasingly tolerant after repeated interactions with various members of the LGBTQ community.
    • Fin especially, being how culturally conscious as he is, knows the dangers gay men face, especially in minority communities, and clearly doesn't want that added pressure on his son's life, along with being a black man.
• Since the show is, in many ways, a procedural, House is like this, with "badge" replaced with medical license. On top of being generally misanthropic, he makes crude racist remarks—despite his background and linguistic abilities being quite cosmopolitan.
  • House is bigoted against everyone. Racist, sexist, pick an -ist. He just doesn't like anyone, including himself. The times he makes racist and sexist remarks usually come across as him trying to push people's buttons.
    • Cameron, of all people, explicitly lampshades this in one episode, telling him that she knows he's "a misanthrope, not a misogynist."
• Sgt. Troy of Midsomer Murders might count- granted, he's a young guy rather than a grizzled hard-boiled type, but he is notably close-minded in his views (especially towards homosexuals) but is a nice guy regardless.
• NCIS:
  • The episode "Designated Target" showed Tony DiNozzo as uncharacteristically hostile toward African immigrants. It hasn't been mentioned much since then but he does still tend to get a little politically incorrect when trying to get under a suspect's skin.
  • McGee once made a remark about Italians and the mob, only for the Italian Tony, who was right there, to call him on it.
• Rescue Me:
  • Not cops, but otherwise fits pretty much the entire cast. At sensitivity class:
    Franco: See, that's another thing. Puerto Ricans, we get shafted even when it comes to racism. Chinks got what, like four ethnic slurs? We get one— spick. That's it. The Irish they got mick, patty, donkey. The Italians they got guinea, wop, dago.
    Sean: Yeah, and spaghetti-bender.
    Franco: Ah, spaghetti-bender went out of style during Sinatra's first marriage.
    Mike: Greaseball.
    Franco: Yeah, greaseball. There you have it; that's four.
    Tommy: That's great. Same thing with the Jews, right? Heeb, kike, Jew boy, Benny.
  • Later...
    Tommy: ...Let me tell you somethin' the next time I run into a burning building and refuse to bring out anybody who's not the same color as me, then that's when you can bring my angry, pink, sober, Irish, a* back down here. Got it?
• Detective Sikes from Alien Nation.
• A medieval version, King Uther from Merlin with his "all magic users are evil" outlook. No actual badge here, but he *is* the king.
• Hank Schrader, the Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist from Breaking Bad, has a habit of stereotyping his subjects and making somewhat, shall we say, politically insensitive remarks, particularly about Hispanics and poor people. When judged by his actions rather than his words, however, he is a good cop and a heroic man who is supremely dedicated to fighting crime and protecting his friends and family. Ironically, his two closest friends on the force (and quite possibly in the world) are Hispanic and black, the former of whom laughs off his racist jokes most of the time.
• During his time on Law & Order, Detective Mike Logan would frequently make remarks that could variously be described as xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, and disdainful or mocking of religion in general, and he was openly disrespectful to Lieutenant Van Buren during her first few episodes because of his sexist attitude toward female police officers (and especially female brass). During his final episode on the show, however, he publicly coldcocks a gay-bashing city councilman (and probable murderer) for claiming they aren't so different. When he finally returned for Law & Order: Criminal Intent years later, this aspect of his character was dropped entirely.
• Lieutenant Provenza on The Closer is very politically incorrect (sensitivity training bounces off him like rain on a raincoat) and usually makes plenty of inappropriate remarks. He is also a good cop who takes his job seriously.
• In Supergirl (2015), Hank Henshaw is shown to have a distrust of aliens, though he is willing to work with Supergirl to bring in more dangerous criminals. Then again, the real Henshaw wasn't so noble and is dead, and the "Henshaw" Supergirl's been working with is the Martian Manhunter and hence this is a disguise.
• Inspector George Gently: Detective Sergeant Bacchus is this in a Hates Everyone Equally fashion, but ultimately always does the right and sees justice served, no matter who the perpetrator or victim is. He is also a chauvinist and does not think women belong in the police in general, and especially not in CID. His attitude towards women in the force improves, at least a little, when he is promoted to Inspector.
• For reasons of Deliberate Values Dissonance, Ripper Street has Bennet Drake, who is somewhat homophobic (he gets better). And of course lots of other, minor police characters who are varying levels of racist or sexist. This serves to emphasise how much ahead of his time Inspector Reid (and Jackson) is on most social issues.
• Murdoch Mysteries: Especially the early seasons often set up a dichotomy between conservative (mildly racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.) Inspector Brackenreid on the one side, and progressive, liberal Dr. Ogden on the other, with Detective Murdoch in the middle. Though over the years, Brackenreid's attitude has improved a lot. Also, even Murdoch himself, for all that he's very polite and by instict always leans to the side of least human misery, was initially judgmental about homosexuality and women who had abortions, because he couldn't square these things with his Catholic faith. But he got over both prejudices quickly enough once faced with people who were actually affected.
• Surprisingly Zig-Zagged on The Shield. Villain Protagonist Vic Mackey is one of the dirtiest cops ever depicted on television (his rap sheet including, but not limited to, assault, blackmail, extortion, and murder), but he was always visibly angered by any form of discrimination. He had a tendency to use racial slurs in casual conversation, but he lacked any genuine prejudice and strove to protect civilians regardless of their ethnicities.
• Penny Dreadful: City of Angels: Lewis realizes that the LAPD sent him and Tiago to investigate the murders because it's purportedly a "spic thing", but he physically defends Tiago against other racist cops and is secretly investigating the Nazi conspiracy in Los Angeles. He's far less bigoted than most other white cops too, having requested that Tiago work with him and being generally fair toward Chicanos as well.
• Blue Bloods: Danny Reagan, a retired Marine who served a tour in Fallujah, Iraq, is contemptuous of Muslims and once gets called out by his partner Detective Baez for making a snide remark about the daily prayers in a Post-9/11 Terrorism Episode. He doesn't really let it affect his policing, though: in an earlier episode he remarked that he doesn't know why Muslims "come here", but "the sign on the door says everyone's welcome so we gotta back that up, partner."
• Downplayed with Inspector Fowler in The Thin Blue Line, who isn't really racist or sexist, might be mildly homophobic, has deep prejudices against some Acceptable Targets like teenagers and the French ... and is a By-the-Book Cop who strongly believes his personal opinions have no place in police work. He is sharply contrasted with Inspector Grim, a Rabid Cop who Fowler thinks has watched too many American police shows. In one scene, Grim begins ranting about all youths being troublemakers and there's a war on the streets, and Fowler retorts that there isn't a war on the streets, and while he doesn't like young people either, none of the reasons he dislikes them are actually crimes.

Radio

• While Detective Polehaus of Adventures in Odyssey is not racist, he does believe that criminality is In the Blood and that people with a history of wrongdoing do not change for the better, plus he considers ComicCon attendees subhuman. However, while he's quick to suspect former criminals or relatives of criminals of crimes, he's willing to admit when he's wrong, and if someone he considers a suspect gives him a lead, he will do his due diligence and investigate it even if he suspects they might be lying.

Video Games

• In Disco Elysium, it's possible to play the protagonist as a foreigner/woman-hating fascist who openly uses racial epithets as well as subscribing to a nonsensical version of racial theory while still attempting to be as much of a good cop as possible. Your partner Kim (who's a racial minority as well as being gay) will naturally have deeply mixed feelings about you.
• Dragon Age II: Knight-Captain Cullen is strongly opposed to granting freedom to the mages, but he's also the first templar to show mercy to them if they deserve it. Ultimately, he ends up turning against his boss, Knight-Commander Meredith, when he realizes just how far off the deep end she's jumped. By Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's clear that he's regretful of the bigot part.
• inFAMOUS: Second Son: Reggie Rowe openly regards Conduits as threats to society (generally referring to them as Bio-Terrorists) and thinks of his brother Delsin as infected with a disease of sorts when he first gets his powers. Nonetheless, he can be convinced to give them a chance and is generally helpful (if somewhat reluctant) when it comes to Delsin.

• Mass Effect:
  • Ashley Williams, although less in the sense of hatred than a refusal to completely trust or rely on them. She appears to have her reasons for disliking aliens, as her grandfather was commander of the Shanxi garrison during the First Contact War, and her whole family was blacklisted in the military as a result. She also apparently spent next to no time in space and was forced into planetary garrison duty on safe, human-populated worlds, so she's had no contact with aliens prior to joining Shepard's crew. If the player is feeling indifferent to the topic of aliens, she'll get over her issues on her own.
  • Garrus starts out as this as well, demonstrated especially by his tendency to make You Are a Credit to Your Race statements to Wrex and Tali.
• Red Dead Redemption II: Agent Milton has signs of racism. Such as believing that Native Americans are savages that need to be cleaned out for the sake of civilization and during his second encounter with the gang, he condescendingly calls a black member "Boy."
• XCOM: Chimera Squad: Agent Torque is distrustful of offworlders, especially aliens that underwent gene therapy to change their appearance to be more human-like. The twist is, Torque is a Viper, but since she was born on Earth, she considers herself a native. The fact that she has scales, fangs and venom sacs just proves that "some Earthlings are hatched lucky."

Western Animation

• Chief Randall Crawford from Paradise PD is a racist, misogynistic, anti-semitic, homophobic, ableist, fatphobic asshole, who bases his viewpoints on politics and society on the crap he hears on FOX News and from Donald Trump's fraudulent Tweets. He is chief of police at the Paradise Police Department and many of the groups he's prejudiced against work for him; Gina, who's a woman, Fitz, who's black, Hopson, who's LGBT, Dusty, who's fat, and Kevin, who's Jewish. He gets along with them just well enough for them to complete their police work but he still makes a regular routine out of insulting and berating them all on the bases of their protected classes.
• Captain Fanzone from Transformers: Animated hates machines, and this extends to the Autobots. Despite his frequent annoyance and disdain towards them, he's willing to work with them to save the day.

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