TV's top police shows seem more concerned with drama than constitutional rights

Seething because you're sure that vicious murderers are pampered and armed robbers are slipping through the loopholes of a loose criminal justice system?

If so, there is one sure place to gain solace.

In front of the television set.

There, on the best cop shows of the day, there is little patience for constitutional nuance or legal nicety. Television suspects already live in a get-tough-on-crime-environment where Miranda warnings are seldom heard and police do whatever they must to get their man.

And those familiar with what goes on in the police interrogation rooms of America say the shows are reflecting real life like never before.

On ABC's "NYPD Blue," where suspects are regularly threatened during questioning, and requests for lawyers are often deferred, it's "100 percent the way it would happen," said Bill Clark, the show's technical adviser, who spent 25 years on the New York City police force, 17 of them in the homicide unit.

"Once a fellow does invoke his right to counsel, we bring in a lawyer. But we are also careful to try and avoid him asking for one. That's reality. Once an attorney enters a case, for all practical purposes the investigation is over as far as getting information from that suspect."

As for Miranda warnings -- telling suspects they have the right to remain silent and what they say could be held against them -- Henry Bromell, the co-executive producer of NBC's "Homicide -- Life on the Street," said the police who work as consultants are clear about when they recite a suspect's rights.

"You can arrest someone and interrogate him -- and then Mirandize him when he is about to say something you want to use in evidence.

"If you have him 12 hours in a box, you can Mirandize him then, and he'll be so rattled it won't matter," Mr. Bromell explains.

Which sounds not unlike a scene from a "Homicide" episode earlier this season.

Detective Frank Pembleton, played by Andre Braugher, vigorously interrogated a murder suspect with a multiple personality disorder. Never was she given a Miranda warning; never was her right to have a lawyer present mentioned, not even when Detective Pembleton flat-out accused her of seven murders and tried to dictate a confession for her to write out word-by-word.