2666: When it comes to the serial murders. Evidence is frequently lost, few leads are followed through, and certain steps in logic are never taken. Not even pressure from the government makes a difference.
In The Adventures of Pinocchio, in what is probably a satire towards the flaws of the justice system, features a town called "Acchiappa-Citrulli" (Catch-Fools), where the police officers and the Judge prefer to put the blame and arrest the victims of crimes instead of bringing the real criminals to justice. Case in point: Pinocchio suing the Fox and the Cat for robbing him with a money grows on trees scam, only to be arrested because he fell for it.
Amelia Peabody and her husband, who are detective archeologists, routinely ignore the police in their detective work. Justified, in that their adventures happen in Egypt in the 1880s to 1920s, where the police are indeed ineffectual, violent and corrupt. Things get better by the end of the series, but by then, their habits are ingrained, to the chagrin of the new police inspector.
A variant occurs in Animorphs, where going to the police or even sometimes the army is out of the question because a percentage of the force are controllers and going to either cover up whatever it was to keep the invasion secret or just turn in the Animorphs or both. It's hard to tell who's a controller and who isn't.
In "Bandits in Your Grocer's Freezer", the police refuse to come and rid the Oasis Market of the fantasy bandits who killed the manager and are camping out to rob people. Supposedly the market isn't in the county and out of their jurisdiction; the sheriff recommends Pete talks to the FBI who think it's a hoax and threaten to arrest him.
Beka Cooper plays with this. On one hand, the protagonist is a cop herself, and most others are portrayed sympathetically. On the other hand, the Corus police (known as the Dogs) are understaffed, overworked, and generally making up police work as they go, so even the reasonable Dogs are willing to dismiss cases that don't have enough evidence (like the Opal Murders, which Beka found out about because of her powers) or just don't make enough of a splash (like the Shadow Snake killing the children of poor parents who wouldn't ransom them with some item of value they had), especially in the Lower City. The Port Caynn Dogs fit this to a tee, being completely ineffective against Pearl Skinner, because their boss is a Dirty Coward.
Enid Blyton's popular Famous Five series has the Big Bads committing heinous acts and the police completely unable to find even the smallest piece of evidence against them. In the end, the police are the ones who arrest the Big Bad, but it is a certain group of teenagers and a dog who find all the clues and figure it all out.
The situation in one of Blyton's other series, Five Find-Outers, is even worse: The local constable, Goon, detests the young protagonists (and children in general) and spends most of his time befriending the real criminal while arresting the innocent. (One novel has the villains using him to clear out the innocent bystander who's moved in on top of their stash by tipping him off that the man has a criminal record.) The rest of the police, notably Reasonable Authority Figure Inspector/Superintendent Jenks, do at least respect and work with the children, even if they don't seem to do much without them.
Books of Bayern: In Goose Girl, Ani/Isi is snatched off the streets during the festival and the King's Soldiers, who are there, don't do squat. Later she points this out:
"Did you know that there are men who call themselves Peace-Keepers, obeying their own code of law and not the King's, sworn to keep the streets safe because the King's soldiers do not, or will not?"
The Business Of Dying has the London police force not be bad, since they are doing their jobs with the material and information given to them. But they do get lazy when they get Mark Wells, the dead prostitute's pimp, into custody and are a little too intent on convicting him of the crime.
In the Children of the Red King series, the police appear occasionally, but there's not really anything they can do about say, a murder committed by a 300 year old magically animated sword. Generally, they just ignore it and hope the endowed people can solve their own problems.
Downplayed in The Chosen (1997). The police understandably don't believe Rashel about a monster attacking her mother and Timmy, assuming she's being Innocent Inaccurate; Rashel says the policeman doesn't believe her at all, while the policewoman almost believes her but refuses to accept that possibility. They're kind to Rashel but are unable to really do anything because they're not equipped to deal with this kind of situation. It's for this reason that Rashel tells Daphne going to the cops about the vampires who kidnapped her would be useless, as they will just assume she's misrembering from trauma or won't believe she was kidnapped at all.
Downplayed in Agatha Christie's novels, where the police officers are typically described as quite competent, but because their actions are limited by the standard procedures, they are frequently misled by false evidences, leading them to arrest the wrong suspect. On the other hand, the amateur sleuths often perform better because the people they talk to are less on their guard during the "interrogations", and are therefore more willing to reveal information about the case, which is usually vital to solving the whole thing.
In The Cloak Society, they do not appeal to the police for most of the trilogy — indeed, the danger of coming to public attention, the warrants on some of them, and the villains' report that one of them has been kidnapped mean they avoid them entirely. Later, however, they appeal to the police for help — more on the reasoning that Jurisdiction Friction means the police will want to support them than because the police ought to handle it.
In Neil Gaiman's Coraline, the titular character calls the police after her parents disappear without a trace. While she explains herself in terms that may sound like a child having a nightmare, it's still no laughing matter when she tells how her Other Mother probably made them disappear; rather than brush her off, it would seem more likely for the modern police to interpret what happened as murder or kidnapping over custody disagreement.
In the children's book Corduroy, the night security guard takes a stuffed bear as a perfectly logical explanation for the crash he heard. He puts Corduroy back on his shelf and does no further investigation into the incident. Then again, he was right about Corduroy being responsible for the crash. Given that he works during the hours the department store is closed and the toys come to life during that time, maybe he knows they can come to life.
A common problem in the Cormoran Strike Novels, but only to a degree, as the police are not so much incompetent as they are unwilling to explore other possibilities when they already have a perfectly reasonable suspect or explanation at hand.
In The Cuckoo's Calling the police are convinced that Lula Landry committed suicide, and don't appreciate the hero's investigation that aims to prove otherwise.
In The Silkworm they latch unto Leonora Quine as the murderer for some fairly reasonable reasons, but then absolutely refuse to consider other suspects.
In Career of Evil Strike provides the police with 4 suspects from his past that could be responsible for sending him a severed human leg in the mail. They latch into the wrong one and ignore all the others.
In Daughter of Fortune, Tao Chi'en is a Chinese practitioner of traditional medicine living in San Francisco during the mid-19th century. He is concerned about Chinese girls who are victims of Human Traffickers and forced to work into brothels. Yet he knows he cannot go to the police for this, because it is viewed as a "Chinese" people problem only.
A military variant happens in The Destroyer #113, "The Empire Dreams". The neo-nazi villains successfully blitz London three times because the same obstructive RAF officer keeps refusing to take the reports seriously. The first time he rejects the reports because they were made by a farmer and a meteorologist and who would fly WW2-era planes anyway? He later rejects a second report because it says the planes come from the direction of the English Channel, and the first planes obviously came from Ireland. In the third case they actually have a tight security net up, but fail to consider planes launched from within Britain, so he rejects those claims too, because "nothing can get through our security measures". He then accuses the near-hysterical official reporting the bombings of being drunk, while gunshots, explosions and screams can be heard in the background. The villains later seize Paris by kidnapping roughly over a dozen important officials, including the French President, and torturing them until they sign a surrender. The entire coup is carried out one morning without any mention of interference from bodyguards or police, and the new regime has their jackbooted neo-nazi skinhead troops marching in the streets the same day, with no visible resistance at all.
The City Watch in the Discworld novels started out in Guards! Guards! as basically an intentional parody of itself; the Thieves' Guild was better at regulating crime, for one, and eventually the watches were filled up by Vetinari with useless no-hopers, led by an alcoholic Sam Vimes on nights. Then events happened, propelling things to the current status- where the Watch is one of the most effective and best run parts of the city, and admired throughout the Disc.
In A Dog's Purpose. Bear's owners are reported for keeping him tied up on a leash in their yard all day. They don't pet him, play with him, let him loose, etc. The police come over to inspect, but their hands are tied because Bear's situation doesn't fit the minimal legal requirements for animal neglect: he has housing, food, and water.
Averted with the Special Investigations unit in The Dresden Files, led by Karrin Murphy, who among other things has taken down a tree-monster with a chainsaw. Though the unit still calls in Dresden for consulting, it's mentioned a few books in that they've learned enough to handle most of your usual supernatural riff-raff without the wizard's help. There are also things with enough power that getting the police involved would lead to a bloodbath. Several times Dresden convinces Murphy not to involve her unit by telling her what he's facing is "worse than the loup-garou", a Nigh Invulnerable variety of werewolf that rampaged through the station in the second book.
In the Ancient Egyptian mystery novel Eater Of Souls, a serial killer's initial crimes go unsolved — indeed, virtually unnoticed — because the head of the city's police force is a lazy status-seeker who writes the victims off as "A death, not of the city", simply because he doesn't think his superiors in the nobility would want to be troubled about something as sordid as murder among visiting merchants or villagers.
Eleanor & Park: When Eleanor calls the police after hearing gunshots right outside her house, not only do they seem less than interested, they make Eleanor get inside the house and let them despite the possibility there could be a violent criminal. To make matters worse, despite Richie telling them that he shot at teenagers for being loud with an unlicensed handgun, they don’t arrest him.
Emily the Strange: The Lost Days combines this and Dirty Cop for the Blackrock police. A 13-year-old girl is living in a refrigerator box behind the local diner, and they just give her a ticket for doing so. When she is taken in for complaining to the local postal clerk, she tells the officers for hours that she had no memory of who she was and they release her, implying that the next time her "uncle" give him money to avoid this.
In Barbara Paul's The Fourth Wall, somebody (who is unknown for most of the book) is killing members of an acting troupe. The police are sympathetic and well-meaning; they are honest and competent. But somehow, no matter how many times the villain attacks people (using methods ranging from lacing someone's cold cream with acid to blowing up someone's house), the police never have any clues to follow, and the surviving actors must take matters in their own hands.
In Hammerjack, all the real law enforcement power rests with Corporate Special Services. Civilian police services still exist but are largely irrelevant and only handle matters that CSS considers too unimportant or too unpleasant to bother with themselves.
The Aurors from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix do very little good, unless they work with the Order of the Phoenix: since the Ministry officially refuses to acknowledge Voldemort's return, they end up helping the Death Eaters more than anything. They start averting it in the sequel, and actually try to stop Voldemort. But then again, most of the aurors who aren't part of the Order of the Phoenix still never do anything useful (for their side) anyway. Even the ones with the Order are still incompetent, except for Moody. Tonks loses every fight she's in. No Auror can handle Bellatrix Lestrange... who is beaten by a housewife. Another Auror loses a battle with Neville's grandmother. It would seem McGonagall was fibbing when she told Harry about the high standards just to qualify for training for the Aurors in an effort to trick him into focusing more on his studies.
Holmes on the Range: Often averted, although the brothers are the ones to do the real mystery-solving, the actual authorities are generally competent at their jobs (although there are exceptions).
Jim Martin is a bit of a blunderer and somewhat cowardly in the first book, but is introduced out searching for an escaped killer, and during Old Red's summation, gradually shows signs of believing him. He spends the final shootout that follows this cowering in a corner, but does get off a couple shots, one of which might have hit Ully [McPherson.
The brothers themselves are the police (railroad police anyway) in On the Wrong Track, and while a bit gruff, Colonel Crowe is a fairly shrewd fellow, who has another agent planted on the train who also does a good job.
Mahoney from The Black Dove is an active menace to the characters and has no interest in solving the crime, but is corrupt rather than incompetent.
Milford Bales in A Crack in the Lens spends a lot of the novel hostile and pursuing a vendetta against Old Red, and has obviously overlooked quite a few crimes in his town over the last five years, but he does come around and prove helpful in the end, and has forced the local Den of Iniquity to relocate to outside of city limits. His deputy also works to prevent the brothers from falling victim to a lynch mob. The county sheriff on the other hand, is an utter jerk who is either complicit or willfully blind in the various murders.
Sergeant Ryan in World's Greatest Sleuth is described as "Shockingly Reasonable" in the appendix, and while he does voice the belief that the death was an accidental one, he voices some decent logic for doing so, is shown to still be thorough investigating things anyway, and ultimately doen't obstruct the brothers at a key point in the case.
Marshal Hinkle in The Double A Western Detective Agency is a fair-minded, inviting man who works hard to keep the peace and doesn't kowtow to corrupt local interests, while his deputy Flip Hinkle is an earnest, well-meaning guy who steps aside and lets the brothers and Diana do their thing when the choice is in his shoulders.
Played completely straight with Marshal Nickles, from one of the short stories in Dear Mr. Holmes. He is a bullying, bigoted man who is quick to seize the obvious solution and reluctant to admit that he's wrong
After Honor Harrington is attacked by a crewmember who tries to assassinate her, she instantly deduces that he was under some kind of mind control, which the military police brush off as denial that someone she knew was an enemy agent.
The police in Hush, Hush are laughably useless. While some of it can be attributed to many of the characters making Nora hallucinate some of the stuff she reports, but it doesn't explain some of the random conclusions they come to (the first book has a detective argue that Nora and Patch must be dating, because Patch gave Nora a ride home), various uncalled-for remarks (Crescendo has the detective flat-out tell Nora, "I think you're crazy", in response to her telling him she was drugged and chased), unprofessional behavior (in Silence, the police handle a girl going missing for months and showing up out of nowhere with no memory whatsoever of her abduction by releasing her without taking statements or examining her mental health/bringing up the possibility of therapy), and enforcing Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers. Of course, given that we really only see one particular detective who is actually an angel undercover, it's possible that it's just him who's a terrible cop.
I Am Not a Serial Killer has an appropriately dark example. Not only are the police helpless enough to either believe or be unable to refute John's increasingly flimsy excuses for why he's always around when bad things happen and always manages to survive, even when he's outnumbered or outclassed, the FBI agent who investigates the Clayton killer case in Mr. Monsteris trying to find the Serial-Killer Killer to stop them because he's even worse than the now-dead killer.
This trend continues in the second trilogy-John and the rest of the slayers only work with the local force because they have to, and have clear contempt for them. Even when repeatedly warned by Ostler, Kelly, and John, they refuse to stay out of an obviously strange and dangerous case. Predictably, it bites them in the ass.
The police in Incompetence, as the book's title suggests, are completely useless. Examples include an officer suffering from "Non-Specific Stupidity" who manages to handcuff himself while arresting a suspect, a food safety officer who brings SWAT teams on restaurant inspections and a police captain with anger management problems so severe that he opens fire at the pavement when told to calm down. The one police officer shown to display any form of competence is said to have zero promotion prospects due to this fact.
Played with in the In Death series. Protagonist Eve Dallas is a skilled and highly motivated detective; her Commander and (starting in the second novel) the Chief of Police are Reasonable Authority Figures, and many other members of the police force in New York City and elsewhere are portrayed as taking their jobs seriously and doing them well. At the same time, the series repeatedly shows that the police as a whole are as mixed a bag of people as one might find anywhere, and Eve and her close colleagues encounter plenty of cops who fail at their jobs due to inexperience and lack of instincts, laziness, lack of caring, stubbornness, territoriality, greed, desire for personal glory, and so forth.
In at least one book, deaths occur in part because civilians assume that this trope is in play and that the police will not be able to help them, leading them to try to take matters into their own hands without contacting the police for help. In Brotherhood In Death, for instance, the killers are rape victims who know enough about law to understand that their rapes are now past the statute of limitations. Initially they hope to have a fellow victim, whose rape was more recent, go to the police, but after she breaks under the pressure and kills herself, they assume that they have no choice but to make justice for themselves. It's only after the damage has been done that Eve gets a chance to tell them that what was done to them would be considered not just rape but conspiracy to commit rape — among several other crimes — which has a longer statute of limitations and could still have been prosecuted had it come to light before they'd resorted to murder (and the two surviving rapists have indeed been arrested and face prosecution).
The Infected the police aren't useless per se, but entirely unequipped to deal with superpowers, and it makes them trigger-happy. The protagonist of the first book, Brian, is almost killed twice in police custody, though this is later shown to be a result of mind-control, his feud with the police for the rest of the series causes no shortage of headaches for everyone.
In The Inkworld Trilogy, Meggie and her aunt go to the police, but the police refuse to come. Also subverted, when one of the police turns out to be employed by the Big Bad. Precisely one cop, who is able to hide the illegal activities of a town, which include regularly kidnapping people.
In the Midst of Winter: When Padre Benito comes over to Concepción's home after the attack on her grandchildren, he finds that all evidence of the murder and rape has been contaminated, but he figures that in their Guatemalan village, the local police is so useless against the Mara Salvatrucha gang that evidence would not help.
The Police in Level Up Hero are helpless against horrors and terrors. They usually put up barricades to keep civilians away. It is policy to usually wait for a hero to fight against the horrors.
Cops tend to be fairly useless in Stephen King's books. Even when they're persuaded to investigate the strange goings-on in a particular novel, they have a tendency to get bumped off before they can help the heroes. There's a BIG exception in Needful Things, though; the main character, a small-town sheriff, manages to single-handedly fight off a demonic puppet master. Most of his deputies manage to handle themselves half-decently considering the circumstances, too.
In Lovecraft Country, the story is set during the Jim Crow era, and the protagonists are a working-class African-American family while the villains are wealthy white men. To whom the police are useful is unfortunately historically accurate.
In the Montmorency series, especially the fourth book, the police do very little to help, including capturing the wrong person on a few occasions. But they try. Really, they do.
In the Moon Cops on the Moon series, the "civi police" are shown to be utterly uninterested in doing anything about the rampant crime, corruption, or injuries around the city. Amusingly, the corporate police actually bother to do their job and have a better reputation despite answering to Megacorp masters.
Played with in Murder at Colefax Manor. While the chief inspector is reasonable, the player can decide to be one by deciding to arrest any of the cast without having any evidence or proof as to if they committed or were complicate in the murder.
Part and parcel of the Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys books, since having a competent police force would render the need for crime solving 18-year-olds unnecessary. The same goes for Trixie Belden. Later books try to fix this slightly, making Chiefs McGinnis and Collig less actively incompetent and more of an "understaffed, overworked, Slave to PR encouraged to wrap up cases in a pretty bow to keep their records looking good" kind of situation.
Generally played fairly straight in the Nero Wolfe novels and stories, though it is often justified and played with as well. As a Great Detective, Nero Wolfe is naturally the genius who solves the cases the cops can't, and his assistant Archie Goodwin — as the Deadpan Snarker and narrator — naturally has some sarcastic things to say about this. And certainly, a high percentage of cops and prosecutors who show up tend to be either spineless careerists who are so invested in personal advantage that they're terrified of making a single step lest they make a mistake and end their careers, or pig-headed authoritarians who'll latch on to any excuse to throw their weight around and bully someone. However, Wolfe himself acknowledges that in nine out of ten cases, the police are more than capable of solving the crime, and indeed have plenty of advantages that he himself lacks (such as a sheer volume of manpower to chase down leads that he, with only Archie and a handful of freelance operatives, cannot hope to summon); it's just that when that tenth case comes along, they're out of their depth and his genius is needed.
Of particular note is the series' Inspector Lestrade, Inspector Cramer, who is generally depicted as a good detective in his own right (and certainly, compared to most of the aforementioned careerists and authoritarians, is a certified genius) but who just has a bad habit of latching on to an obvious solution without adopting a more creative approach to the problem like Wolfe. In one story, the nine-out-of-ten-cases point raised above is lampshaded when Cramer dryly notes that he actually has cleared nine cases by himself between the last case Wolfe was involved in and the current one.
In Nickel Plated, police fail to make any progress on the investigation into Shelby's disappearance, requiring her sister to hire Kid Detective Nickel instead. When Nickel finds evidence the police missed, cops fill the area with footprints, destroying any other evidence that might have been there.
In Night of the Freaks, there are multiple police officers looking into the grisly murder of a young couple, but the only ones who show prominence are Detective Inspector John Andrews and Detective Sergeant David Harris. When both of them discover that William Wilson is involved with the murders, Andrews decides to visit his traveling freak show with no backup, outside of town, and without informing anybody where he's going. Andrews and Harris are killed with little effort, and none of the other police officers do anything to assist the other protagonists before they're also murdered.
In The Nowhere Girls, all the powerful adults in Prescott know each other, including the parents of the boys who raped Lucy. As a result, Chief Delaney refuses to take the accusations seriously and does everything he can to shut the Nowhere Girls down. Averted by the sheriff of Fir County, where another one of the boys' victims lives. He takes the accusations seriously and is able to pressure Prescott law enforcement into bringing the rapists to justice.
Nowhere Stars: Zig-zagged. Police can do next to nothing against Harbingers — and they know it. Instead, they intentionally leave that to Keepers, who are a known and recognized force. In fact, police are very useful for quarantining areas where a Wound has opened, and for getting survivors to medical attention. After Liadain defeats her first Harbinger, she's actually surprised that emergency call operator quickly takes her seriously, rather than asking for her identity.
In One of Us is Lying And how. Granted, there would be no plot if the police did an even half-competent job of investigating Simon's murder, but this novel reads like McManus has a personal grudge. Every time we see the police, they're being played like fiddles and out-copped by Bronwyn's fifteen-year-old sister. It's implied that they don't care who really did it, just who they can blame it on, for example when Nate is told early on that he's "the obvious outlier and scapegoat." Sure enough, he's the one arrested on evidence that could easily have been planted, and was.
Less prominent in One of Us is Next as the main characters aren't suspects, but near the end one of the detectives from the first book is seen again, still being played like a fiddle, still apparently taking what known murderers tell him at face value.
In Pretty Little Liars the police(and later the FBI!) are so incompetent that they can't even determine when a security video has been obviously faked. They do apologize to the girls at the end but still.
The gay republic of Proud Pink Sky has some less-than-competent policing. 'Lily Law' appear a few times throughout the novel, but never manage to accomplish anything but arresting an innocent Howard. This sends Howard into a state of deep paranoia, which culminates in him joining a terrorist group.
The NYC police in Psmith, Journalist don't take any of the gangsters seriously, even when they're out to kill the main characters. Even if taken into custody, the gangsters can always provide each other with alibis and get themselves released.
In The Supervillainy Saga the police of Falconcrest City are hopelessly overwhelmed by the city's supervillains. To be fair, they have super-tech and an army of thugs while the police... don't. It's also implied that many came to the city after the Nightwalker's death.
The Railway Series: A humorous example, but the Fat Controller has to buy Toby after a constable attempts to ticket a train by fining Thomas for not having side-plates. The Island of Sodor book makes it clear this constable was extremely heavy handed and hated in Ffarquhar for his zealous enforcement of the law. The local pub "The Toby's Jug" renamed itself to just "The Toby" after the locomotive of the same name scared said constable, and the pub in the engine's honor painted the locomotive onto their signage just to continue taunting the constable about how he was spooked by a train! The constable ultimately got his come-uppance when he ticketed a group of cars parked outside a church on Sunday, not realizing that one of the cars he ticketed was of his own Sergeant.
Reaper (2016): Unilaw are now the global law enforcement agency, and they stink at their job. Jex and Nathan are drawn into the investigation when every teenager who worked in the body stacks (where the frozen bodies of Game players are stored) who had a player die is pulled in for questioning. At one point, they're on the point of arresting a baby whose identity has been used to hack something. Justified Trope as they are dealing with an unprecedented attack, and most of them are teenagers because of the way society is shaped around Game, a virtual reality.
In the early Sherlock Holmes stories, the police inspectors of Scotland Yard were outright idiots, overlooking clues and coming to false conclusions. In The Sign of the Four Holmes proclaims, "I would rather have the help of Toby (a dog) than the entire detective force of London!" This was improved in later stories, as Inspector Lestrade, especially, was shown to be more lacking in the specialized knowledge and Hyper-Awareness that Holmes possessed, than simply being a moron. Holmes even praised Lestrade and Gregson for their courage and tenacity, even if their own detective skills were lacking by comparison.
This was in response to the development of forensic science; when Doyle started writing the stories, the police often failed to take statements from witnesses at crime scenes. As time passed and investigation improved, so did their treatment in the stories. Holmes was always better than them.
Indeed, it's said that the real Scotland Yard detectives read Holmes novels, and took hints. It's worth noting that many things that Holmes does that are common police procedure today were barely given a lip service in the 19th century.
Even leaving aside the lack of development in forensic science, at the time Doyle started writing the Metropolitan Police had developed a reputation for being woefully incompetent and corrupt. It was also around this time that the Jack the Ripper murders occurred, and it soon became apparent that the police were completely ill-equipped to deal with what was going on; partly as a result of the lack of success in identifying the murderer, serious and long-needed reforms began to be introduced.
Averted with Inspector Baynes in "The Adventure of Wysteria Lodge", whom Holmes gives high praise.
Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Played very straight! The cops know who killed Barbara Rutledge in a hit-and-run in Weekend Warriors, but can't do anything about it because the driver uses Diplomatic Impunity. Indeed, the Vigilantes operate under this assumption, and considering how the police are often incompetent or in the bad guy's pockets, that assumption may not be too far off!
This is a defining theme in Smaller & Smaller Circles. In at least one murder, the Quezon City police do nothing to process or contain the crime scene properly, and as a result, a vital piece of evidence goes missing, possibly stolen by locals for scrap. Luckily for Intrepid Reporter Joanna, her camera footage of the scene is just clear enough for Father Saenz to later identify the evidence as a dental instrument.
The Spare Man: The chief of security immediately locks up the first suspect without any attempt at an investigation, openly tells the other passengers that they caught the murderer, twists any evidence he finds to fit his assumptions, and when he tries to do The Summation it gets pulled out from under him as it becomes clear that he has no idea what he's talking about. In fairness the first suspect is being framed rather well, but he never stops to consider alternatives even when they're shoved in his face. He also ignores proper police procedure, such as cutting people off from talking to their lawyers, and justifying it as "we're not looking for evidence to prosecute." If the first suspect's wife hadn't solved the murder before they reached their destination, the actual police would have had to throw out all his evidence regardless. The cruise line fires him at the end, partly for this, and partly for being a sexist misogynist in an era where such things are largely unheard of.
The basis of Lance Manley's possibly true memoir Stab Proof Scarecrows: about his (short) time in the English police. It shows an organisation obsessed with looking good at the expense of public safety with Race & Diversity the focus of attention rather than actually solving crime.
Tortall Universe: In the Beka Cooper trilogy, this seems to be the case for Night Watch and any of the Dogs portrayed unsympathetically. Taken up a notch with Sir Lionel of Trebond, which causes this trope in the Port Caynn Guard by extension — he's not only incompetent, he's an incredible coward willing to put up with huge amounts of criminal activity to save his skin.
Even the Evening Watch, which is depicted as the best of the bunch, is limited, as much as they loathe to admit it. They're understaffed, underfunded, and have to put up with an unfortunately high level of laziness, corruption and brutality because of it. The well meaning cops do their best, but sometimes that's not enough.
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Guards, or the Town Watch, are completely useless. They only ever arrive on the scene late when a tavern brawl or riot breaks out. Guards are few in number and uniformly stupid. However, Tourists will be glad of this when having to make a hasty exit from a Town.
Detective Lieutenant Willer and his entire force in Tyrannosaur Canyon are dismal at every point of the story. They allow the scene of a murder to degrade for several days before following up, blame the protagonist for everything, and are cowed into submission by the feds right before they could have been useful.
Up Schitt Creek: Almost all of the deputies and sheriffs exist to be killed off effortlessly by the Comanche tribe and Remington Ralph's gang. One deputy in particular refused to stand up to Ralph's goons just to prolong his life (Glen rectifies this with a bullet to his head) and the only competent Sheriff, Cal, ends up getting shot in the head by the Comanche Chief with no fanfare.
In Veniss Underground, the police in Veniss city operate as a pay-to-hire business. They ignore the missing persons report filed by Nicola because she isn't rich enough to make investigating worth their while.
In Very Bad Deaths, Russell is hunting Alan, a serial torturer/killer, from information gleaned by his telepathic friend's brief brush with Alan's mind. When Russell gets a police officer to listen to him, she can only help him as a civilian because the police can't legally act on any of the (scant) information he has on the Alan.
In You Are Dead (Sign Here Please) the city of Dead Donkey does have a police force, but they are very determinedly guarding the q-tip factory, and thus avoiding doing any real work.
