Anyone Else Sick of this Story?
It's a regular on cop shows, and it goes like this:
A crime is committed in Chinatown.* The locals don't want to go to the police, but you can't really keep a death/explosion/kidnapping secret, so they find out anyway. The cop assigned to the case suspects the local Chinese organized crime group (LCOCG), but since no one who witnessed or knows about the crime will talk to him**, he's blocked at every turn and the LCOCG continues to threaten and harm and generally cause mayhem until finally, out of desperation, someone close to the original crime victim agrees to talk to the cop, whereupon she is rewarded for her wise trust in the police by seeing all the leaders of the LCOCG arrested and, if applicable, all kidnapped people returned unharmed. Unless, of course, she waited too long, in which case the mob bosses are still arrested and she is sternly reminded that if only she had come forward sooner poor Nathan Wu would still be alive and what has she learned from all this?
Does anyone else feel like they're being forced to vicariously act like a patronizing asshole when they're watching these sorts of things? Cuz I do.
You know, just once I'd like to see a story where a crime committed in Chinatown is not committed by the Chinese Mafia, the victims and/or families thereof cooperate with police as much as the details of the story allow, and cooperating with the police is not a deus ex machina for getting the damn crime solved. I feel like that's not really a lot to ask.
*Extra points if Torontonians can identify the streets they're shooting on.
**Even more points if a woman on the police force makes some halfhearted comment about the Chinese people's fear of white cops being justified on account of a history of institutionalized racism, which comment is promptly forgotten by all.
