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Hollywood Cop Uniform

 Hollywood Cop Uniform
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The place shown in this feature is real and identifiable. The police officers likewise are of this place. But something is awry. The cops are wearing uniforms with elements that do not look like the ones they wear in that place in Real Life. In extreme cases, the whole uniform will be wrong. This may well fly over the heads of viewers not from said jurisdiction, but to locals, especially those who have some kind of relationship with law enforcement, this may be a bit of an eyesore. Why couldn't the costume department make a bigger effort at authenticity?
This could be caused by several factors. If a show has a low budget and has episodes set in different places, faithfully reproducing various uniforms would likely be a demanding task. Another factor might be that the show is attempting to avoid legal issues based around things like trademarks or jurisdictional laws against impersonating a police officer or unauthorized wearing of a uniform - it also reduces the risk of someone else stealing the uniforms and engaging in criminal activity. In other cases, it just might be that the producers are deliberately trying to obscure the actual setting for one reason or another.
This trope is mainly relevant in live-action visual media. It may be considered a super-trope to Generic Cop Badges and a subtrope of Hollywood Costuming.
Notably, works set in New York City or other major American cities often avert this trope. This may have something to do with the appearance of the NYPD uniform being familiar to many, perhaps also with some shows and films set in places like NY or Boston having a good enough budget to faithfully replicate the look, although may make some minor tweaks (like the order of medal bars).
On the other hand, works, especially American, depicting Canadian Mounties often inaccurately portray them as wearing their distinctive, historical red dress uniform on a normal workday, something no doubt often done deliberately in order to play into the stereotype.
See Hollywood Military Uniform for the military counterpart. It often overlaps with Generic Cop Badges, when the badges are equally misrepresented and non-descript.
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DBTropes
 Hollywood Cop Uniform / int_16fd1a16
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Rookie Blue: The cops in this series, inconspicuously set in Toronto, wear shoulder flashes with an emblem containing similar elements to the real-life emblem/cap badge and have rather generic-looking shield-shaped cap badges. Their uniforms are similarly generic, lacking the red pant stripe and cap band worn by Ontario municipal police forces.
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Invoked in-universe in an episode of Castle when Beckett notices that three uniformed officers in the front row of an arraignment have the clasps and buttons made of the wrong metal (tin instead of brass) and realizes too late that they're three accomplices in place to free the person being arraigned.
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 Castle
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Averted in both Dragnet and Adam-12 — every uniformed officer that appears in either is dressed exactly the same as a real LAPD officer of the period, and the badges used by the main characters are authentic. Jack Webb was a notorious stickler for detail and had a good relationship with the police department.
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In NCIS: Los Angeles, the uniforms of LAPD officers were portrayed realistically in the first few seasons. They changed later with generic badges and LAPD patches.
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In Pinocchio's Promise, a Walt Disney Beginning Reader from the 1980s, a policeman helps Pinocchio get back a clock that J. Worthington Foulfellow (the fox) tricked him into handing over to him. His uniform is fantastical, having elements of an old American Keystone Kops-type uniform (helmet, star) combined with "European", partly civilian elements (cape, knee breeches and hose, buckled shoes). Remember that Pinocchio is set in Italy and that in the original novel, the protagonist has encounters with actual Carabineri, whose distinctive uniforms are well-rendered by various illustrators.
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In Sledge Hammer!, the cop uniforms are deliberately left "generic", just as the city in which Sledge is a detective is never specified. Given that Sledge is a maniacal Cowboy Cop with borderline Dirty Harry tendencies, this is probably wise.
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Arrested Development: In-universe and played for laughs when Gob asks some of his friends to pose as police officers to scare George Michael straight. Said friends work for a stripper agency called "Hot Cops," and show up in very tight "cop" outfits with tiny shorts. And a construction worker for some reason.
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In Departure, a law enforcement raid in Ireland has officers wearing "POLICE" on their jackets. In real life, it would be "GARDA".
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Robin Hood (1973): The Sheriff of Nottingham wears a star like a modern American sheriff's badge.
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 Robin Hood (1973)
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In Kidou Keiji Jiban, Jiban's Cyborg body has permanently mounted rank epaulettes that show the rank of Commissioner, while his badge is an American sheriff star.
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In the first few episodes of The Shield, the uniformed police wear more or less the standard LAPD uniform. Per a request from the actual LAPD, the production changed the uniform so that the badge was different and worn on the right breast rather than the normal left.
 Hollywood Cop Uniform / int_6272adf3
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Goodbye Lenin: when Alex is arrested he's held in a jail manned by police officers wearing the standard green Volkspolizei uniform, while in reality prison guards in East Germany wore blue uniforms with gray piping and insignia.
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Ernest Goes to Jail: For some reason, the prison guards have pink jackets. Even though the jail, Dracup Maximum Security Prison, is fictional, this is implausible to say the least.
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The Three Investigators: One story featured a Classy Cat-Burglar using a henchman dressed as a cop. When arrested for (among other things) impersonating a police officer, he pointed out that the henchman was wearing an NYPD uniform (the series is set in California) and thus that charge didn't apply to him.
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Dan Vs. gives us "Sergeant Saskatchewan", the most intently overly patriotic Canadian superhero ever. As he's based on a Mountie you'd assume he'd wear the RCMP sergeant emblem (three chevrons pointing down with a crown above them) or at the very least the Canadian Armed Forces sergeant emblem (same deal, just a maple leaf instead of a crown). Instead he wears the American staff sergeant emblem (three chevrons pointing up).
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Carl in Family Matters is a police officer in Chicago, but his uniform has a generic shield-shaped badge instead of the star-within-a-circle badge of the CPD, his cap doesn't have the "Sillitoe Tartan" checkerboard pattern, and the patches on his sleeves are also wrong.
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In the pilot episode of Due South, there are a number of inaccuracies in the RCMP uniforms worn, ranging from Bob Fraser's boots not being laced up the proper way to Benton wearing a cap badge (from a fire department) on his Stetson hat. Subsequent episodes would remedy these errors, but still have RCMP members wearing the red ceremonial uniform far more frequently than would be the norm in real life. Apparently when Leslie Nielsen guest-starred, he took Paul Gross to one side and showed him how to correctly tie his boots (Nielsen's father had been a Mountie, so he knew the proper way to lace them up).
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Fargo: The sheriff-like uniforms worn by Chief Marge Gunderson and her subordinates, with their seven-pointed stars and brown and tan coloring, are nothing like that of the real police of Brainerd, Minnesota, which is a standard blue one with an oval shield-shaped badge (however, the state trooper's uniform was more accurate). This seems to have been done deliberately to underscore the small-town nature of the characters.
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In The Green Mile, the prison guards wear uniforms; however, uniforms were not standard for death row corrections officers in the 1930s. The filmmakers knowingly fudged this detail for creative reasons.
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In the season 5 episode "Exit Wounds" of Criminal Minds, this is taken even further, by using a typical sheriff deputy uniform and title "deputy" in a show set in Alaska. Alaska's constitution bans sheriffs and sheriff's deputies, as well as borough (county-level) police.
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Zigzagged with Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. Some episodes taking place in Japan and Singapore show actual depictions of police uniforms that are researched, even if the show was filmed in the US. In an episode set in Cuba, not all uniformed officers wear berets and have shoulder patches. They also don't use Western-made pistols.
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Unsolved Mysteries: Zig-zagged. Many episodes actually avert this trope, perhaps in part due to use of footage of actual law enforcement officers, but there are slip-ups. For example, one episode, set in part in Ireland, has two Gardai (Irish policemen) with American-style shield-shaped breast badges.
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In Home Alone, the uniform worn by Joe Pesci at the beginning of the film doesn't match that of a proper Chicago Police officer; for one thing, the cap is a generic octagonal police officer's hat and doesn't have the CPD-style "Sillitoe Tartan" checkered band. Another inaccuracy is that his badge is a generic shield-shaped badge, not the star-shaped CPD badge. Justified, however, because he's not a real police officer, but a criminal casing several homes in the area to see which ones will have their owners away for the holidays so he knows which houses to rob.
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In the episode "The Killing of a One-Eyed Bookie" in Ultimate Force, Henno and Caroline run into what was suppose to be a Royal Ulster Constabulary checkpoint designated to surprise anyone who's suspected of being a paramilitary member of either pro-Republican or Loyalist groups. It was only until Henno steps out of an unmarked sedan to face the supposed RUC officer eventually led to a shootout. The SAS finds out that the gunmen were pro-Republican fighters and had acquired genuine RUC uniforms, but got details wrong such as having old cap badges on peaked caps and using dress uniforms while one of them had a green web belt and a green holster. The armored Land Rover SUV was also reported to be looted from a RUC station. Caroline says that they could've fooled anyone who doesn't pay attention. But not Henno.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Hollywood Cop Uniform
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Costume Tropes
 Fargo / int_fdce712a
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Hollywood Cop Uniform
 Mayor of Kingstown / int_fdce712a
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Hollywood Cop Uniform
 Rookie Blue / int_fdce712a
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Hollywood Cop Uniform
 Inspector Gadget / int_fdce712a
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Hollywood Cop Uniform