Police Are Useless / Fan Works

• In Fear No Evil, a My Hero Academia fanfic, Izuku is kidnapped by Humarise. They use their contacts in the police force to hide the kidnapping. They fake a note stating that Izuku ran away to join them to Izuku's distressed and horrified parents or outright attempt to gaslight Aizawa. All for One even states Humarise kidnaps many Quirkless members and has corrupt cops report it as running away.
• Half-Life: Full Life Consequences: Not only does the only cop to appear try to give John Freeman a ticket for speeding (when he is trying to rescue Gordon Freeman), but he is headcrab zombie as well!
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: When the Section-2 agents (the security detail tasked with watching and protecting the pilots) are not busy with harassing, torturing or assassinating witnesses, they are highly incompetent. Asuka can very easily slip her bodyguards, even without her superpowers. And a terrorist group was capable of abducing Shinji despite of them.
  • The rest of the Superwomen of Eva series doesn't improves on their portrayal, with them being pretty much Gendo Ikari's Kick the Dog goon squad-slash-Secret Police to enforce The Scenario's route and the loyalty of those who are important to it (as an example: after Shinji talks against Gendo's standing orders to kill the Superwomen on sight in Superwomen of Eva: Lilith's Herald, Gendo simply has Section-2 beat him within an inch of his life and then displayed on NERV Headquarters as an example of what will happen if anybody attempts to defy him).
• D.J.I.N.N.: Way to Home Dee has these thoughts in spades. However she has good reasons not to trust most police officers.
• legolas by laura: Technically they're not police, but the guards - sorry, ''gards'' - assigned to protect Laura are thoroughly useless. The orcs sent to kidnap Laura get in, get out and get all the way back to Mordor before they tell Legolas that Laura was taken. Even then, Legolas had to ask first.
• Thankfully subverted in Camp Nightmare. Calvin ends up ignored by a police officer, but when Jerome crashes through the wall, he's greeted with some dakka to the head.
• Averted in The Newest Challenger: After Mad Gears's chain of command falls apart, the JDSF takes care of the remaining Mooks.
• Averted in Worldwar: War of Equals. When Race forces invaded the town of Belleville, Illinois, local law enforcement fight alongside the Illinois National Guards.
  • Played straight with the LAPD, who are reduced to pockets of officers fighting for their lives against rioters and they helped the riots escalate in the awful state their in thanks to trying to brutally suffocate the unrest in the city.
• A frustrated Grunkle Stan points this out in Home Is Where the Haunt Is.
• The is played with in Kill la Kill AU.In one of the fanfics, when Ragyo suggested calling the police to find a kidnapped Ryuuko, Nui says, "What the-?! No, don't call the police, the last time we had called the police they arrested Ryuuko and not the person that stole that piss couch which is why we had to get a new one and, besides, the police are terrible at finding missing kids, 'cause they haven't found those other missing kids and there are one-hundred of them besides Ryuu in this city alone." Which would make that played straight, particularly when Satsuki actually confirms this. Otherwise averted when they had thrown Ryuuko in jail for truancy in an earlier comic, showing they do enforce laws.
• This is subverted in Petrification Proliferation where it is actually illegal to NOT report the presence of a Basilisk to the Ministry, due to them being considered as Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement promptly shuts down the school in order to check for other potential threats.
• Papa Bear: Zig-zagged. On one hand, Tom finds it disappointing that, despite their searching the Agreste home after Emilie Agreste's disappearance, the police didn't find anything suspicious (let alone the secret lair that proves Gabriel is Hawkmoth). On the other hand, Tom and Ladybug are impressed that the police figured out a way to separate Gabriel and Nathalie from the Butterfly and Peacock Mircaculouses, respectively, without a fight before they arrested them.
• Medicated: Oum has this opinion on the cops after failing to find her kidnapped baby for 14 years. Once she learns the circumstances of Anne's abduction, she notes there's no way the police could have realistically found her.
• Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race subverts it as the story goes on. Initially, the police are useless because they didn't have the weaponry or experience to take on Robot Masters. As the story progresses, we see they're still perfectly good at fighting regular crimes and eventually upgrade their gear to fight Dr. Wily. Mega Man collaborates with the police to minimize casualties and the cops even saved Mega Man's life once when the Mega Man Killers were about to live up to their name.
• When things get especially horrifying for Darci in Claire the Kind, her first instinct is to call her detective father, only for something to shoot it down (either by one of the others taking her phone or talking her out of it). Justified, considering that local law enforcement would be in no way equipped to deal with trolls, and it would make them sound insane if they even tried.
• In The Grinning Snake, Konoka manages to find a video recording of Shizuru massacring the First District, but the officer she shows it to laughs it off as nothing more than a film with good special effects. Konoka is then left with two choices- confront Shizuru and convince her to turn herself in or use Ai's contract to send Shizuru to hell.
• While they wouldn't be much help against the main threat, the police in Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises take uselessness up to eleven. They are shown to be woefully incompetent at stopping crimes in the first place and stopped when the school was being attacked to stop kids in hoodies from listening to rap music. It's bad enough that Morgan and her friends almost always refer to them as "the damn pigs".
• Missing Linc: The police make no attempt to interfere with Lisa's interrogations of Flip and Tetherby. While she is grateful for this (as it allows her to investigate without interruptions), she also plans to write to the mayor and complain about it.
• Subverted in Desperately Seeking Ranma, as the police know the kind of things that Ranma and his friends fight off are way out of their league, so do what they can to channel civilians out of the way, and don’t give them too much hassle about minor collateral damage.
• In The Power of the Equinox, after the Mane Six started taking care of threats, Ponyville's town guard has become complacent. When Cheerilee needs a guard to accompany her to Scootaloo's home, there's nopony at the guard house. Given what she discovers there and what nearly happens to herself, she really would have needed a guard to accompany her.
• Played for Drama in A Rabbit Among Wolves. Ilia tells Jaune one of the reasons the White Fang went from activism to terrorism was because Atlas authorities would not only not defend faunus protestors from hostile crowds, but would straight up attack them if the protestors defended themselves. Jaune himself acknowledges that Atlas did a bastardly thing.
• The Bolt Chronicles: During Soapy's attempts to get himself arrested in "The Clouds," the two policemen who encounter him on the street pretty much ignore or disparage him. In one instance, they applaud and shout encouragement when a woman whose groceries Soapy tries to steal repeatedly whacks him over the head with her umbrella, driving him off. When Soapy tries to break a shop window and fails, they inform him that they've been replaced with unbreakable glass and refuse to arrest him because they've "got better things to do than play pinch the pinhead" with him, giving him a shove and telling him to "get lost and find a nice freeway to go play in." Later, when the woman Soapy tries to proposition angrily drags the man off to the police station, she is told they're short staffed and she'll have to wait; it seems the police are annoyed that she has dragged in yet another homeless person she wants brought up on minor charges.
• One of the reasons Teams RNJR and BRNN go and investigate the White Fang themselves in BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant is because they don't think the police will be of much help. In Chapter 28, the police only show up after the battle has concluded. Ragna even lampshades this.
  Ragna: Fan-fucking-tastic, now the cops decide to show up.
• The Persona 5 and The Owl House crossover, Enchanting Heist, features an example in which the police are actively brutish and oppressive while also being completely incapable of putting a stop to the people actually causing harm. The police attempt to extort a confession to a crime Luz stumbled into out of her, with the only reason she manages to escape conviction being because Sae Niijima took pity on her after hearing her story, and pulled some strings to get her a good lawyer. The dialogue of the head interrogator that Luz meets indicates that a part of this may be because the police in this area are in the pocket of Masayoshi Shido.

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