by BJW Nashe
A single crime story in the news can have a tremendous impact — it can even ruin your whole day, if you’re not careful. The juxtaposition of two or more seemingly unrelated stories can really get the neurons firing. Today I’m bouncing three stories around in my brain: a police brutality trial in Southern California, a case involving use of deadly police force in Iceland, and an interview with novelist Jo Nesbo about his latest Nordic noir extravaganza, Police. Taken together, these three stories raise troubling questions about police brutality and the ways in which law enforcement are portrayed in crime fiction.
The SoCal Police Brutality Trial
The first item comes to us from Southern California, where a trial is now underway at the Orange County Superior Courthouse involving two Fullerton police officers charged with beating a mentally ill homeless man to death.
The incident occurred on July 5, 2011, when a 37-year-old man named Kelly Thomas was hospitalized after a violent encounter with police that led to him being tasered multiple times, and then severely bludgeoned both with batons and with the blunt side of a taser. Thomas, who lived on the streets and suffered from schizophrenia, fell into a coma as a result of the incident and was removed from life support five days later. A coroner’s report stated that chest compression and blunt force trauma to the head resulted in Thomas’s death. There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of his hospitalization.
Fullerton Police Officer Manuel Ramos, 39, has been charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. A second officer, Jay Cicinelli, 41, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and the use of excessive force. Both are pleading not guilty. The defense is expected to argue that Thomas was at fault in the incident. According to the Los Angeles Times, attorneys for both officers claim Thomas ignored orders and attempted to fight with police. They intend to focus on the victim’s criminal history, drug abuse, and violent tendencies.
Key evidence for the prosecution consists of surveillance video footage that captured the physical confrontation. Officers were evidently responding to a report of a possible vehicle break-in when they encountered Thomas, and the video recording from a nearby bus depot shows police striking Thomas with batons and taking him down to the ground. Thomas is also on record calling for his father’s help multiple times, as well as telling police he could not breathe before eventually losing the ability to speak. Photos of the victim in the hospital show a man who has been beaten beyond recognition.
Use of Deadly Police Force in Iceland
A second news item also deals with use of deadly police force, but in an entirely different context. Earlier this week, police in Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland, offered a public apology for killing a man during an incident that occurred on Monday. This marks the first time in the nation’s history that armed police have ever killed anybody. It has simply never happened before.
The unnamed victim, a man in his late 50s, was apparently firing a shotgun from inside his apartment in the early morning hours. When unarmed police officers responded to a complaint about the gunfire, the suspect fired at them through a window. A SWAT team was summoned, and repeated attempts were made to calm the man down, including lobbing a tear gas canister into his room. When the man kept firing, officers entered the apartment and shot him. Two cops were wounded in the operation, neither of them seriously. The suspect was removed from the scene on a stretcher and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
In a news conference, national police chief Haraldur Johannessen told the BBC that the incident is “without precedent.” Johannessen said, “Police regret this incident and would like to extend their condolences to the family of the man.”
A Brief Comparison
The United States and Iceland are no doubt vastly different countries. The entire population of Iceland — just over 320,000 people — is just a fraction of the population of Los Angeles alone. Any side-by-side discussion of the two countries risks falling into an “apples and oranges” comparison.
Still, one can’t help but marvel at the fact that police in Iceland don’t regularly carry guns. They have never killed anyone, until the unfortunate incident that occurred earlier this week. Like its neighboring Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Iceland enjoys a low crime rate — mainly as a result of its large, predominantly stable middle class, low poverty rates, and thorough screening requirements for gun permits. A report from GunPolicy.org states that Iceland suffered only 4 deaths as a result of firearms in 2009 (the last year for which data was available). This breaks down to 1.25 gun deaths per 100,000 people living in Iceland.
By comparison, the rampant violence in the United States seems nearly apocalyptic. GunPolicy.org reports that in 2009 there were 31,347 deaths as a result of firearms in the USA — the equivalent of 10.22 gun deaths per 100,000 people. So we can conclude that 
the USA has eight times as many gun deaths as Iceland. Furthermore, as the police chief in Reykjavik apologizes for their first fatality, here in the States deadly police force is a common fact of life. The trial in Orange County is yet another grisly reminder of this. In fact, so many people are killed by police each year in America that we don’t even keep an accurate nationwide tally. A Wikipedia page, for instance, lists over 500 people killed by police during 2011, but we cannot be sure that this data is comprehensive and accurate, due to reporting irregularities. Moreover, this listing does not include the “justifiable homicides” that occur during police operations on an average of roughly 400 times per year. Then there are the thousands of non-fatal shootings and beatings that accompany police operations. It all adds up to a very disturbing state of affairs.
The Crime Fiction Disconnect
Americans and Icelanders may as well be living on completely different planets, when it comes to their experiences with crime, gun deaths, and police violence. When it comes to tastes in reading material, however, each country shares some distinct common ground. Whether we are in Los Angeles or Reykjavic, we sure do love our crime fiction. Not all of us, by any means, but more than enough to matter.
We all know that American books and films and television shows about crime tend to be wildly popular. Now Scandinavians have more than made their own solid contributions to the genre. The Scandinavian crime wave has been a thrilling development in recent years, more than delivering on the initial promise held out by the phenomenal success of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. And Iceland is definitely on board with this trend. One of the rising stars of Scandinavian crime is Iceland’s own Arnaldur Indriðason.
What is particularly fascinating, and sometimes infuriating, is the very different ways in which both American and Scandinavian crime fiction tend to be disconnected from the realities of crime on their own indigenous soil. The Scandinavian disconnect is nearly quaint, and certainly easier to discuss, since it points to a set of positive facts. This is not the case in America, where the level of disconnect verges on a form of derangement.
First, let’s consider the Scandinavian situation. Printers Row Journal recently ran an interview with Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, whose series of crime novels featuring the tormented, alcoholic Detective Harry Hole has now sold 20 million copies worldwide, and whose latest novel, Police, has just been released to positive reviews in America. The interviewer, Kevin Nance, poses the following question to Nesbo:
“Scandinavian crime fiction, including yours, has become extremely popular around the world in recent years, which is strange because, as I’ve heard people ask, ‘Don’t they have a really low crime rate?’ Is there a disconnect between the world of Scandinavian crime fiction and Scandinavia as it actually is?”
Nesbo feels no need to deny this, and his response is quite illuminating, even as it might appear somewhat baffling:
“Yes, the two things are not connected, but I think there’s no reason why they should be. Crime stories are seldom truly documentaries of crime scenes in Scandinavia or, for that matter, any other country. Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people — about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition. And I think the reason so many Scandinavians like crime fiction is exactly because you have that disconnection; there’s no misunderstanding that crime fiction is about crime, per se. I actually think the more unrealistic the crime is, the less you have to think about the crime, and about in what way it may actually be connected to the society. In my case, I use Oslo and Norwegian society as a backdrop. But in Norway, you know, there are typically 30 to 40 people murdered every year. That would be like two or three of my books, I guess. (Laughs.)”
Nesbo goes on to explain that he prefers to use his tormented protagonist, Detective Harry Hole, in order to explore the dark side of humanity:
“If you look at my books as a whole, it is a dark journey, about a man who starts out ethically in the right, but who has been gradually drifting toward the dark side. Along the way, he has become a criminal, a man who has committed many of the same crimes as those of the people he’s chasing. And that’s what you can do in a crime novel — you can ask moral questions, and, if not give answers, at least give suggestions, and give people motives for why they choose to do the right thing or the wrong thing. And of course there’s always the question: What is the right thing? What is the wrong thing?”
Nesbo’s response signifies part of what makes him such a compelling author. His deep investment in the dark progression of his main character pushes him to transcend the typical limitations of the crime genre. His statement that “crime fiction is not really about crime” seems odd — sort of like claiming that cookbooks aren’t really about food. But this is just his way of justifying his own brand of “unrealistic realism.” Of course Nesbo’s horrifying plots, featuring an entire menagerie of serial killers and sadistic psychos, do not represent Norwegian reality. His unreal fiction, however, is used to investigate very real human problems. Detective Harry Hole is a superb vehicle for Nesbo’s dark tour through a world that seems to exist beyond good and evil, where the line between cops and criminals is not simply blurred, but often wholly obliterated. Far from romanticizing law enforcement, Nesbo prefers to drag his cops into a hellish world of amoral violence and confusion, then watch them lose their minds. You get the sense that Nesbo would have no problem working the Orange County police brutality trial into one of his novels.
By contrast, most American crime fiction these days tends to glorify cops in order to meet the formulaic demands of popular entertainment. Perhaps the reality of crime and police work in the USA is so abundantly terrifying that novelists have a hard time keeping up with news. Even when we finish a book by our most hard-boiled authors — James Ellroy, for instance, or Michael Connelly — we have to admit that the reality out there is probably far worse than anything we encountered in the book. Americans don’t need to darken the setting, like Nesbo, in order to churn out their nightmarish tales. In fact, the very opposite seems to be true. Reality must be downplayed. Writers are willing to work in a purely escapist mode just to meet the market’s demands for entertaining crime stories. Maybe they hope to provide readers with some sense of relief or reassurance from the shock of the daily headlines. This may be understandable, but it is seriously disconnected from reality — sort of like Nesbo in reverse.
Police State Fiction
When we read about cases such as the police brutality trial in Orange County, and then take a long, hard look at the reality of police violence in America, chances are we won’t be too eager to rush out and buy the latest riveting cop thriller — unless, that is, it comes from Scandinavia. There is only so much willing suspension of disbelief we can be expected to muster. In its crudest form, the American “law enforcement novel” might even strike us as a kind of perversion, if we are paying attention to what’s really going on in our cities and towns. Rather than succeeding as entertainment, the ongoing adventures of fantasy cops and vigilantes such as Jack Reacher or Alex Cross will come across as little more than thinly veiled exercises in crass ideology — crude and simplistic stories that mainly serve the interests of the rapidly expanding American police state.
We all know cops have a tough job. We know they all are not evil individuals. As with any group of people, some of them may be warped and twisted, but most simply want to do a good job. Sometimes they behave quite heroically. But there is no denying that in the USA our criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies are deeply problematic. And the problems are far more 
complicated than “good guys vs. bad guys.” Police violence is best treated as a systemic problem, rather than a personal one. The same is true for a host of other issues: institutional race bias, overcrowded prisons, mistreatment of prisoners, wrongful conviction, criminalization of mental illness, etc. These problems are the result of flawed policies and troubled institutions, rather than regrettable mistakes made by specific individuals.
Likewise, we know that crime fiction is not sociology. People look to crime fiction for a specific kind of thrilling entertainment. The genre presents unique opportunities for telling stories about deeply resonant human conflicts, as Jo Nesbo demonstrates again and again in his Harry Hole series. Documenting reality is not the top priority here. Still, a certain level of veracity is required if the stories are going to work at all. Some American crime writers understand this. They go out of their way to resist and/or subvert the standard cliches and formulaic conventions of the genre in order to tackle real issues pertaining to U.S. law enforcement. These writers seek to both entertain us and help us dig for the truth. They would rather not be wholly disconnected from reality, simply to meet the demands of the marketplace. The disastrous War on Drugs, for instance, has been explored in considerable depth and detail in numerous American novels. Clockers, by Richard Price, is just one example that comes to mind.
Yet the biggest cash cow in contemporary American crime fiction — the popular “law enforcement novel” — continues to be dominated by variations on a basic formula in which heroic cops who are bravely fighting to maintain law and order are pitted against an evil horde of cartoon villains modeled after Scarface and Hannibal Lecter. When our brave heroes resort to violence, we as readers are supposed to cheer them on. We are never meant to question their authorized use of excessive force. All the gunfire and car chases and beatings are supposed to be cool, and devoid of serious consequences. In reality, none of it is cool at all. And there are many consequences. If you don’t believe me, head on over to the Orange County Courthouse, and get a solid dose of brutal realism.
If people want to revel in simplistic glorifications of police work, they are free to go ahead and have a blast. But crime fiction is more than just cheap entertainment to many of us. Given the rapid expansion of the American police state, where more people are incarcerated than anywhere else in the world, and where an entire paramilitary force stands ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice (as we all witnessed following the Boston Marathon bombing), I’m not sure it makes sense to retreat into ideologically-driven police fantasies. It certainly isn’t “entertaining.”