Benson and Stabler: Worst cops ever

I love Law and Order. I've seen pretty much every episode of every spin-off except that Los Angeles disaster. I once owned a cat named Briscoe, after Jerry Orbach's character, Lenny Briscoe, on the original. In college, I would watch re-runs on TNT when I studied, as I fell asleep at night and I lived for the three-day weekends when Mondays were nothing but back-to-back episodes. I once bought a wedding magazine just because Mariska Hargitay, Benson from SVU, was on the cover and I had more than a passing crush on Elliott Stabler.

All that said, Benson and Stabler may be the worst cops ever to appear on television. That includes Barney Fife and his one bullet.

The last few nights, the husband and I have been watching the most recent season of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix. And with pretty much every episode, at least once, we look at each other, laugh and roll our eyes at something.

I realize that this is a TV show and of course they make it more dramatic than it really is. But if an actual police officer fire 1/10th of the bullets any SVU cop has, they'd still be on desk duty at the pearly gates.

It's also astounding what they put their victims through. I'm going to go ahead and say this and it might be a controversial position but when you're dealing with a rape victim, I don't think questioning them until they're a sobbing puddle of Wicked Witch of the West is a terrific strategy. Putting them in an emotionally-charged confrontation with their attacker also seems a bit unnecessary.

Now I don't usually like to tell people who carry guns how to do their job. That includes not only cops but also soldiers, career criminals and people who work at laser tag facilities.

But I have a suggestion for Detectives Benson and Stabler: Please, for the love of God, use your damn radio. You do not have to be the first ones on the scene. You are not the only person who can save your victim and you could probably prevent a lot of unnecessary deaths and traumas by just alerting the bazillion other cops in the city and letting the closest officer get there first.

But no. Not Olivia and Elliott. They'd rather ride in themselves, after the ish goes down, and then stand there, dumbstruck, as if they couldn't possibly understand how they could have been too late. Never mind that if one of them had just picked up the stupid radio en route to the scene, someone could have been there long before them. Then what excuse would they have for Mariska to stare off pointedly, tears welling in her eyes? She has Emmys to win, people.

But perhaps the most disturbing part is how many of the people they are supposed to be helping end up committing murder themselves. At least a couple times a year, the episode ends with the accused struck down and a sobbing, shaking victim clutching the weapon. Most of the time, the jerk deserves it and truthfully, probably deserves a whole lot worse. But still, I think the fact that your victim turns vigilante as often as Stabler draws blood from a perp or, I don't know, knocks up his wife, has got to come up on your yearly review somewhere.

And yet, I keep on coming back for more. But as a journalist who sometimes has to cover these types of things, I'm glad the Bonnie and Clyde of law enforcement are based in New York City and not Ohio.