Looking for experience with police policy. Specifically, what would happen to a detective if it was discovered he was having an affair with a witness? I've seen one real life case of this in the news but looking for more input. If a detective was having an affair with a witness for one of his cases, could his supervisor cover it up? If the affair was with a witness for a case not assigned to the detective, do different rules apply? Any input here would be appreciated.
I don't actually know the protocol and there are people on here who would know this better than me, but the first thought I had was "that depends on how corrupt your cops are or aren't". There are a lot of things that CAN be done - it's just not legal or proper to do them - but cop stories often make of point of having characters who bend the rules and suffer consequences. There could be one bad apple in a mostly solid department, one honest guy in a mostly crooked department ("Gotham"), or an entire department that is a systemic dumpster fire of various forms of corruption ("L.A. Confidential")
Thanks for this, Commandante! I guess what it boils down to how much the detective could get away with, which it seems could be a lot based on the environment of his department. The affair will be discovered and the detective's supervisor will bury it but makes sure he's far removed from the case. I want to be sure it's possible to bury something like this without huge repercussions for the case.
Well, whatever I can do to help without having any real knowledge. Although, one other peanut gallery comment - I've seen a couple people say "can I do X without massive repercussions to the plot" (I think the last one I saw was "can there be a genocide without consequences for my alternate history"). This is one man's opinion but the answer to that question is almost always "no". Every major decision you make has consequences in both real life and fiction. That said, do it anyway and figure out what the consequences are - that's part of what makes fiction fun. Figuring out the consequences of your characters' screw-ups and how badly they've effed up your brilliant plans for them often is a ton of fun and it gives you a more vibrant, twisty, realistic story when you're done - especially if you're "discovery writing" rather than writing from an outline. I'm not one of those writers whose characters mentally "rebel" all the time and mess up the entire plot - but when they do it's usually glorious, forces the plot in fun directions, and is often more true to the character than what I had planned. It's for a future book that's still in planning, so I can't prove it with prose yet, but one of my characters who I was planning to have a successful career as a TV reporter once ran off and joined the military, ruining all my plans for her.
