On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:41:18 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 5/10/11 5:31 AM, mm wrote:
OT HIghway Patrol cars

This is especially directed at my fellow old codgers, but anyone can
join in.

I've been watching reruns of Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford
for the past few months.

I really like them. Some parts are more realistic than average, and
others are less realistic. For example, they're almost never in a
hurry, even when a baby can't breathe.

But one thing gets me. The police cars are all full-size (since
that's almost all that existed in the 50's. But they are all 2-door.

Did any police have 2-door cars?

When they arrest someone, they put him in the back seat, usually with
his hands cuffed behind him, but not always iirc. Sometimes maybe
they put him in the front seat. I forget.

I wonder how the practice of transporting prisoners in patrol cars
developed. Into the 1960s, Baltimore's Cruising Patrols were trucks. A
cop could sit in back to watch any prisoners, and the driver was
isolated from them.

This show was maybe the first and only cop show set in rural areas
(not counting the Andy Griffith show, and I guess that was not rural
but small-town - they stayed mostly in Mayberry.) So it routinely
takes 20 minutes for another car to get to where they are**.

This same notion has led them to leave a dead body alone in a field
(or a wounded victim alone in his home iirc) while they go check out
any lead they have, even just the closest store or gas station. I
tend to think this is unrealistic, even then.

Do you folks think they would really leave a dead body alone? Was
chain of custody was no big deal then? That is, no defense attorney
would claim the body was tampered with while the police were gone?

Also, and probably most important, the show was only 30 minutes long
(the way I like them) and they only show transporting when it comes in
the middle of the show. When they catch the guy, the show usually
ends within 30 seconds. The shortness of the show must have many
consequences on the script, though I'll admit it doesn't seem to lead
to weird things on Sea Hunt or the Patty Duke show.

**They never say what state they are in and when they show a map,
often with 100 miles showing and many towns and/or cities, I've never
been able to identify the location. In addition, once they were only
10 miles from Mexico, but another time they were on the route from
Oregon to Chicago, and they've been other moderately identifiable
locations too, maybe even Indiana, but never east of the Appalachian
mountains, maybe not even east of the Mississippi, and never where
people had a Southern accent.