On Call is a new cop show on Prime

some first impressions

As a police chaplain I am privileged to freely walk into detachments, sit in on meetings, and go on ride-alongs with officers on patrol. These experiences are expanding my understanding of how things work, and why some things we often see in tv portrayals simply can’t happen.

It takes some of the fun out of watching cop shows, which used to be one of my favorite ways to pass time while chugging out the miles on my basement treadmill.

An officer I rode with recently mentioned they’ve been watching Amazon Prime’s new offering, On Call, which they endorsed as “more true” than expected. The officer said, “they (the officers) act and talk more like us, and they get the politics right”.

The officer was talking about the politics within the organization, and also the pressures and expectations brought to bear on the organization and its members.

Encouraged by this recommendation, I’ve watched the first few episodes.

The show follows a training officer and her latest trainee, out on patrol, as they answer calls in the aftermath of the violent death of a fellow officer at the hands of a gang member, in Long Beach, California.

I’ve noticed this team seems to move from call to call very quickly. This may be to illustrate the desire of the training officer to chase down the killer. She trained the officer who was murdered, and argues early on that she should be assigned to the task force on that case, citing special knowledge of the area and the gang.

While it makes for a compelling story to watch the officer jump on radio calls that just might relate to the case she wants to work, I notice this duo does not hang around to finish the calls. They seem to leave the mop up to other, often more senior officers.

In the first two episodes, the training officer and her rookie have been in several altercations, have discovered physical evidence related to a homicide, and engaged in a high speed pursuit that ended with a fatality. They have literally run or driven away from all of these incidents without being asked to account for their actions.

It may not make exciting television to watch officers take field notes, or sit in the cruiser and type on the onboard tablet, but it’s definitely a big part of what I see each time I go out.

Other small points:

The Long Beach cruisers aren’t equipped with Automatic License Plate Reading tech. In the episodes I’ve watched, the rookie is asked to enter the plate numbers manually.

The training officer tells the rookie they need to develop the habit of always knowing their location, in case the proverbial hits the fan. That rings true as good practice, but suggests that either their cruisers are not tracked with GPS, or the writers aren’t aware of that common feature.)

As happens on many American cop shows the ranks of the Long Beach Police Department seem to be filled with uniformly (pardon the pun) good-looking officers, except for the grizzled old-timers.

My observation of the men and women of the organization I serve, is that they come in all shapes and sizes- they are ordinary people doing extraordinary work. (And writing a lot of reports!)