Turn In Your Badge / Film

Films — Animated

• In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Bruce tells Terry to give back the Batsuit, gruffly trying to stop him from going after the Joker and ending up dead, or worse, ending up like Tim Drake.
• In Osmosis Jones, Ozzy is asked by Mayor Phlegmming to hand in his badge after he and Drix accidentally destroy a zit while trying to capture Thrax. He gets reinstated after finally defeating Thrax and saving Frank's life.
  Jones: Figures. I finally do something right for Frank and I get fired.
• Patlabor: The Movie: Asuma is suspended midway through the film for various rules violations, among them going off-base without permission. However, their Trickster Mentor Captain Gotoh actually arranged it so they'd have more free time to investigate the berserk Labors.
• Renaissance's Cowboy Cop main character gets told to do this as punishment for accusing Da Chief of being on the take from the film's resident MegaCorp.
• Parodied near the end of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, when Stubbs the Clown resigns from Prof. Screweyes' circus and hands in his props. All his props: "Here's my shoes, my nose, my horn, my buzzer, my fake arm, my bug-eye glasses, my backstage passes, my hat, my rabbit, his backstage passes, my fake fangs, a few birds, my pogo stick, my donkey ears, my extending tongue gag, my rubber chicken... ya can't even get these anymore... my lucky whale tooth, and a giant clam that opens to reveal the American flag held by a mermaid and her normal brother Richard!"
• Zootopia features a variant: Judy Hopps voluntarily resigns from the ZPD after her remarks at the press conference inflames historic tension between predator and prey and alienates her new friend Nick Wilde. However, after a "Eureka!" Moment, she ends up returning to Zootopia to solve the case as a civilian and ends up being reinstated to the ZPD afterwards.

Films — Live-Action

• 10 to Midnight: After he admits he'd planted evidence against Stacy, Kessler's fired the same day.
• In The Big Heat, the police commissioner, who is corrupt and in with the mob, does this to Glenn Ford's character in an effort to stop Ford's investigation.
• In Birds of Prey (2020), Renee Montoya ends up doing this after her investigation of Roman Sionis breaks too many rules with nothing to show for it. Harley Quinn even narrates how this happens to every good movie cop at some point, and is the point where they really start getting things done. This briefly turns out to not be the case as the movie shows Montoya on the path to giving up, but then her investigation gets her informed of a climactic rendezvous with Sionis after all. In spite of this, she is (once again) denied credit for saving the day and is never reinstated, which leads her to forming the new Birds of Prey to fight crime herself.
• The protagonist of Cop is ordered to turn in his badge and gun by Da Chief (who is portrayed as an uptight WASP, although he has good reasons to dislike his Cowboy Cop subordinate) for his continual reckless behavior, which has even made him a suspect in a murder investigation. He continues to hunt down the serial killer in his spare time, since he simply doesn't give a damn anymore.
• In Day of the Wolves, the police chief of Wellerton is fired after he tries to arrest the mayor's son. This causes him to be not at the police station when the villains who are Taking Over the Town arrive; allowing him to stage a "Die Hard" on an X.
• Dragnet: Happens to Friday. However, he deserves it as he arrests the suspect in public and only has the testimony of an eyewitness who briefly saw the suspect. Captain Gannon then threatens Friday's partner with the same fate if he goes anywhere near the suspect.
• Happens at the end of the movie in Dredd, when rookie Judge Cassandra Anderson hands in her badge to Dredd, thinking that she's failed her probation. However Dredd passes her, having been impressed how she Took a Level in Badass during the course of the movie.
• Brian Dennehy's character in F/X: Murder by Illusion is told to turn in his badge and does so. Then he steals his superior's badge.
• In The Guard, Sergeant Gerry Boyle is told to turn in his badge. Subverted when he refuses, turns out to have critical information regarding the case and finally proves to be the only cop NOT on the take from the drug dealers.
• I, Robot: After shooting up, crashing, and beating the crap out of two entire sixteen-wheelers' worth of robots, but having no evidence to prove it was self-defense, the chief orders Detective Spooner to turn in his badge.
• It's being acted out in one scene of the 2003 The Italian Job remake. Rob, whilst trying to drive through the city as fast as possible to time the escape route, is waiting at a light where he needs to make a left turn (green arrow only). Unfortunately, he is trapped behind an actor rehearsing the phrase "Give me your badge and your weapon; I don't want to see you anywhere near this case (pretends to crush cup)" in such a variety of different voices and emphases he fails to notice there's a green arrow, until the very last second when it's turning amber and Rob starts honking at him, so he's the only one that gets to go through, with a very disgruntled Rob saying, "Unbelievable" in disbelief. Also, the actor copies Rob's accent and decides to use that accent for the audition.
• James Bond:
  • Subverted at the beginning of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. After M takes Bond off the hunt for Blofeld, Bond tells Moneypenny to write a memo tendering his resignation (presumably with the intent of pursuing Blofeld as a rogue agent). Moneypenny instead writes a memo requesting two weeks' leave.
  • In Licence to Kill, Bond pretty much turns in his badge to go after the iguana-stroking villain who dumped his best friend into a shark pool. The attempt to resign is countered forcefully by M: "We're not a country club, 007!"
• Inspector Li Ying from John Woo's The Killer (1989) is taken off the case of the Hitman with a Heart that he's beginning to develop a bond with when he completely botches his attempt to capture him at the airport and brings in the wrong guy, allowing the killer to get away with his blinded girlfriend. He's taken off the case because the superintendent is convinced that Li is siding with the suspect rather than trying to bring him in.
• Bud White from L.A. Confidential fits the brutal-cop part of the trope perfectly, but his Turn in Your Badge moment is undercut by the fact that Da Chief only did it to get leverage over White when he recruited him as muscle for a criminal enterprise.
• Lampshaded by Danny Madigan in Last Action Hero.
  Danny: He only took your badge, because you destroyed more of the city than usual.
• Major Grom: Plague Doctor. Apparently this happens so often to Major Grom his fellow police officers have a Side Bet on whether he really will get fired this time. He gets chewed out by Da Chief Fedor Prokopenko, who orders Grom to write out his resignation letter and hand in his badge. But after he leaves Fedor crumples up his letter and hands back the badge the next day, as Grom is like a son to him. When Fedor is ordered to fire Grom for real halfway through the movie he's not happy, and Grom takes out the crumpled resignation from his drawer and signs it to spare him from having to do so.
• Happens in Miss Congeniality when Gracie correctly hypothesizes that The original threat wasn't from the recently caught "The Citizen" but a copycat, and wants to investigate Cathy Morningside. Da Chief wants to hear nothing of it and tells her she can only stay as a civilian, prompting her to turn in her badge and sidearm.
• No Name on the Bullet: Deputy Miller resigns out of fear after seeing the dangerous gunman John Gant draw and knowing he couldn't beat him a fair fight (and might have to try with Sheriff Hastings gun hand shot) while Hastings himself eventually throws down his badge out of disillusionment after failing to prevent violence in the town.
• Happens offscreen in Saw. David Tapp was discharged from the police force after his actions in pursuing Jigsaw inadvertently got his partner killed and himself severely injured.
• Shaft (2000). When Samuel L. Jackson's Shaft is requested to turn in his badge, he does so by throwing it like a shuriken, causing it to embed itself in the wall next to a judge's head. Awesome? Very much so.
• Played straight in Showtime, after the two protagonists (who are forced to be part of a cop reality show) cause a lot of damage to the city, Da Chief (normally, a nice guy) tells one of them (a patrolman) that he's no longer a TV detective and is back on patrol. The other cop (played by Robert De Niro) is suspended. Averted in that, when he asks if the chief wants his badge, the guy just tells him to get out of his office. Also, they don't immediately start following up on the case. Only when they see the latest episode of the show that they notice something strange that gives them a clue.
• Starsky & Hutch: Captain Doby chews Starsky out for chasing down a purse thief and firing his gun into a crowd. Starsky replies that Doby can have his badge if he wants and throws it on the desk. When Doby actually tries to take the badge Starsky hurriedly snatches it back and mutters that he was just making a point.
• In Star Trek Into Darkness's opening, Kirk gets demoted for violating the Prime Directive and then trying to hide it in his report.
• Happens at the start of The Stone Killer (1973). Charles Bronson plays a detective who has to hand in his gun and badge after a controversial shooting depicted in the Action Prologue. Rather than wait to be cleared by an inquiry, he resigns and joins another police department on the other side of the country.
• They try to do this to Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact. After his harassment of an old mobster at his daughter's wedding results in a heart attack they order him to take a vacation. While on vacation some punks try to take him down with a Molotov Cocktail and he forces them off a pier to their deaths. They end his vacation, but send him out of town on another case.
• Played with in S.W.A.T. (2003). After reckless actions rescuing hostages from a bank robbery leads to a civilian getting wounded, creating a PR nightmare and a hefty lawsuit against the department, Captain Fuller wants the people responsible gone. Lieutenant Velasquez, however, insists they should stay within the division, for a chance at redemption; Fuller relents just enough to assign them to the Gun Cage. Brian Gamble, who caused the whole problem in the first place, blows up and walks out; the other one, Jim Street, accepts the demotion calmly, but won't sell his partner out to get back on the team.
• Played straight in the So Bad, It's Good French film La Vengeance. The problem? French policemen don't carry badges.
• Ray Duquette in Wild Things is asked to do this after his second lawful shooting, due to the (well-founded) fear of Da Chief that with that kind of luck, the shootings might not be so lawful after all. Of course, this isn't where the consequences end...

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