Oh Bell, where art thou realistic representations of the New Zealand Police Force?

Having been a long term fan of New Zealand's most prominent entry in the "Crime as entertainment" category of reality television, several trends of Police Ten 7 immediately come to mind in a discussion of racism in media. This program has been a staple of many peoples television viewing since 2002, won two TV Guide 'Best on the Box' awards in '10 and '11, and its large following of current viewers certainly suggests a high degree of potential influence in society's perception of crime in New Zealand.

This is the classic case of being absolutely positively certain that your conclusion is the correct one, and, after finding a proper empirical study to back said certainty up, feeling absolutely no sense of surprise at the outcome whatsoever. For the many years I've followed PT7, and indeed several similar programs such as Cops, Motorway Patrol and Worlds Wildest Police Videos, one cannot help but be fully aware, of what I assume is an inherent insistence by the producers, to portray a hugely disproportionate number of ethnic minorities as criminals. I've seen several episodes of PT7 which solely featured Maori and Pacific Islanders, often engaging in violent criminal acts such as assault of Police officers, willful property damage, et al. Even if some of the 'ride along in the Police car' videos involved arrest of the occasional white person, the latter part of the show appealing for public help to find offenders at large would predominantly involve these minorities, complete with a giant "DO NOT APPROACH" warning emblazoned across the screen. Looking through a 2012 thesis for the Victoria University School of Social and Cultural Studies, which examined the 2010 season of PT7 and investigated the extent to which it provided a truly realistic depiction of crime, criminals and the Police, my observations were right on the mark.

Firstly, when tallying up the number of appearances by criminal Europeans, Maori and Pacific Islanders, then comparing these figures with actual statistics from the justice department, this thesis found PT7's depictions to be downright fanciful. Official figures put the percentages of European and Maori convicted as criminals at 43% each of the total, with Pacific Island populations accounting for a mere 9%. According to PT7, however, Europeans were vastly underrepresented at 20%, Maori less so at 30%, and Pacific Islanders were suggested to have been involved in 26% of 2010's criminal convictions! (Podvoiskis, 2012). Furthermore, given the occasional difficulty of ascertaining ethnicity on PT7 due to blurred faces, poor lighting and similarity in accent, a further 18% of criminals on the show were marked down as definitely either Maori or Pacific Islander (Podvoiskis, 2012). Effectively, the show is suggesting that white Europeans are less than half as likely to be criminals as the real statistics show, and Pacific Islanders potentially twice more likely to be.

Crime as televised entertainment is an offshoot of classic reality television, aiming to give the viewer something of an educational insight into the workings of law enforcement, whilst also appealing to popular lust for action and excitement on screen. For a show which claims to provide an insight into the actions of New Zealand Police and the kind of work they do on a day to day basis, in other words a representation of reality, any misrepresentation of the ethnic makeup of criminals in this country has potential for dire consequences. Sure enough, the thesis also brought attention to the tendency of PT7 not only to portray a disproportionate number of Maori and Pacific Islanders as criminals, but also to suggest that the majority of New Zealand Police staff are white. Indeed, while the actual number of white police officers in New Zealand made up 72.6% of the total in 2010, PT7 suggested a far less racially diverse Force with 88% being white (Podvoiskis, 2012). Showing white people as far more likely to be Police officers, together with non-whites being far more likely to be criminals getting arrested by them, echoes Stuart Hall's writings on race-based power, and in this case the literal domination of minorities by whites as marking the former as inferior.

Such gross misrepresentations were also evident in the types of crime committed by offenders featured on PT7, once again being very unfavorable to Maori and Pacific Islanders. Violent crimes in particular, the depiction of which are perennial favorites among viewers of the show, involved a wildly unrealistic 82% nonwhite participants (Podvoiskis, 2012). The actual figure quoted by the Department of Statistics was 57.9% in 2010, with whites at the far greater proportionate figure of 43% (Podvoiskis, 2012). During the comparatively few occasions whites were featured on the show, they were usually shown partaking in far less serious crimes such as drug abuse, general antisocial behavior, and traffic violations. This suggests to viewers that nonwhite people are inherently more violent and savage in nature than their white counterparts, especially when confronted with what is suggested to be the rational and moralistic authority of the Police. The dynamics of this relationship show a serious power imbalance between whites and non-whites, sanctioned by New Zealand law and, because no context or backstory is offered to explain which societal forces might have made one particular non-white person a criminal, supposedly a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Somewhat more disturbing than the skewed statistics was an analysis of Det. Inspector Graham Bell's famous rhetoric, the wonderfully colorful (by PG standards) vocabulary used to describe criminals featured on the show. Although I've never noticed any such descriptions being harsher for Maori or Pacific Islanders than Europeans, the assertion that someone committing a crime is a "vicious ape", "murderous thug", "stooge" or "lunatic scumbag" serves to have a dehumanizing effect and contributes greatly to the "US vs THEM" depiction, though in this case between viewer and televised criminal. Perhaps indirectly in this case, the proliferation of ethnic minority groups featured on PT7 assures far more of them receive this treatment, which definitely draws parallels with traditional racist depictions of minorities as "savages" or somehow "less civilized" than their white counterparts.

Stereotypes suggesting ethnic minorities in New Zealand - Maori and Pacific Islanders in particular - are sadly in abundance, in typical fashion perpetuated by the media rather than through actual personal experiences of those who believe them. Reality television programs like PT7, so hugely popular with viewers and accepted by many as realistic, use selective presentations of data to perpetuate these stereotypes and pander to audiences who are unable, or unwilling, to further analyze the issue at hand. The end result of the producers and editors irresponsibility is that any progress to eradicate these stereotypes is undermined, and even more viewers become inclined to believe them.

REFERENCES:

Podvoiskis, G. (2012). Reel Cops: Exploring the representation of Policing on Police Ten 7 (Master's thesis, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand). Retrieved from http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/2458/thesis.pdf?sequence=2