Jim Gordon is Bad at his Job…

 

It’s right there in the title, and I mean it.  Jim Gordon is not a good policeman.  Let’s jump off with the series that chronicles his eventual rise to police commissioner, “Gotham”.  This is a detective that isn’t very effective.  Sure he starts with that white-knight thing going, the one incorruptible cop in all of Gotham, and he has a really good start, but then cracks start appearing in his veneer.  As the cases escalate in craziness, he starts going more and more to the local criminal element for help.  On more than one occasion he sought out aide from Fish Mooney and Cobblepot.  His relationship with Cobblepot has been, without a doubt, the worst for his credibility, but to make matters worse, he double-crosses Penguin.

Regardless of what I’ve said in the past about Batman’s tactics, there is one indelible truth to the man.  He doesn’t double cross.  Even when he’s had to team with his own villains, he never does it at a compromise to his own integrity, and he never lies to them about the terms of their “cease-fire”. 

And it’s not just in the series “Gotham” where this is evident.  Throughout the various incarnations (with the exception of the 1960’s where it’s apparently acceptable to have a masked vigilante do your crime fighting) the very fact that he associates with Batman and allows him to operate within the city compromises his integrity.  Batman as a vigilante cannot affect an arrest regardless of the circumstances.  Any time he stops a purse snatcher or a jay walker, never mind anything higher, that case cannot be admissible in a court of law.  In order for these cases to stick, some serious blurring of facts has to happen.  Gordon didn’t eliminate the corruption of the police force, he just tweaked it.

In the Nolan Trilogy, Gordon is aware of the ethical challenges in associating with a caped lunatic, however this is taken a step further in “The Dark Knight” when he covers up the facts surrounding the death of Harvey Dent and allows Batman to take the heat for Two-Face’s crimes.  This was at least addressed in “The Dark Knight Rises”, but the failure in that instance is that Gordon is still unethical.  He may have been unethical for the right reasons, but if he’s supposed to be the last ethical man in Gotham, he’s failed in that effort.

In the Tim Burton films he ends the first film allying himself with Batman, and the second film basically endorsing violent crime every time the Bat-Signal is lit.  I won’t address the Joel Schumacher films because, as I said in a previous blog, they are just 1966 Batman with a modern spin.

In the famous animated series, he again has to compromise himself in order to work with Batman and condone Batman’s methods.  Other police officers are seen as heels or bad because they look down on this relationship, but as law ENFORCEMENT personnel, they should look down on it.  It’s a violation of public trust to say that these crimes are bad but this crime is okay.  His hand-shaking with Batman make Bruce Way the most successful violent criminal in Gotham’s history.

Well, that’s all I’ve got.

Have a great day.