231 The Big City Rogue Cop as Monster: Images of NYPD and LAPD Cecil Greek Introduction In part of the concluding chapter, Gothic serial killers in Hollywood films are compared to vampires (Picart and Greek, this volume; 2003). Law enforcement agents exemplified by the FBI‟s Behavioral Science Unit set out to track down these criminals, imitating the actions of vampire killers such as Van Helsing. One is less likely to think of agents of law and order themselves as monsters. According to Ingebretsen (2001, p. 5), monsters embody our cultural traumas, and thus reflect human beings back to us as somehow unusual, abnormal exotic or alien. Typically their capture and ultimate destruction is called for. Criminologists such as Joel Best (1995) have long recognized this feature in the criminal monsters like Halloween sadists or Satanic child abusers that the news media feeds us. Such monsters appear as reflections of our fears that we have somehow left our children unprotected by handing them over to baby sitters, day care workers and teachers rather than caring for them ourselves. While police are often sent out as monster catchers and killers, this essay will argue that a predominant image of American law enforcement officers, as depicted in Hollywood movie and TV screenplays, is that police are themselves sometimes monstrous. In particular, police appear as roguish monsters, raised up and sent out like the Golem of Jewish folklore to save the population from the scourge of evil. The similarities are worth noticing. The goals of both police and Golem are “to protect and to serve”