The media never misses a chance to portray law enforcement as trigger-happy and itching to use excessive force. In a scene plucked straight from the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, “Gotham’s” Officer Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) draws his service weapon on a group of unarmed, hoodie-wearing looters as they attempt to abscond with a street vendor’s trinkets in the second season premiere episode "Damned If You Do..."
As if Gordon’s over-reaction wasn’t ridiculous enough on its own merits, it also comes immediately after he holstered his weapon to arrest a violent criminal who had already discharged a firearm in public and threatened an innocent civilian. If killing an armed criminal in self-defense is “too much paperwork,” I can’t imagine the clerical Everest he’d have to summit for discharging a firearm to stop petty theft.
FOX’s “Gotham” is full of corrupt characters from whom we might expect such behavior, but the future police commissioner should know better. In the real world, Gordon’s cowboy antics would have already gone viral on YouTube and given the sitting commissioner a far more plausible justification for Gordon’s termination than shoving his partner, the flimsy excuse offered in the episode.
Watch:
-I am Zaardon...The Soul Reaper! Foolish slaves! You cannot escape me!
-Sir, drop the guns!
-Your primitive weapons cannot hurt me! Prepare to die, insect.
-Hey... Listen, I don't want to shoot you, man, all right? Too much paperwork. So why don't you just... Put the sword down. (Yelling) Stay down. Relax.
-Officer: Yo, Gordon. What's up? Busy shift?
-You're late.
-Geez, relax, will ya? What's the matter with you, man?
-Hey! Bad idea.
