Mega City Police

[glassstanley]

Is there a listing anywhere of the times when Mega-City Police Patrols turned up at the end of a Dredd story to conclude the case. I remember they turn up at the end of Return of Rico, but I think they turned up later than that as well, maybe even post-Cal.

Has their disappearance ever been mentioned in strip, novel or audio?

[Spaceghost]

From reading the Case Files quite recently, I only remember them appearing once in a very early story, although I can't remember which one. They were just quietly dropped as the workings of Justice Dept were fleshed out.

They definitely didn't feature as late as the Judge Cal story.

[IndigoPrime]

I suspect they were an aberration. It's pretty clear from Origins that traditional police were gone by that point.

[TordelBack]

Easily fan-conned into an early form of Justice Dept auxiliaries, handling traffic, crowd control, paperwork etc.  Police in the loosest sense.

[a chosen rider]

Didn't Dredd's team encounter old style police when they went back in time to the day of the bombs in Fog on the Eerie?  The cops recognised them as being 'those new Judges', but I guess there were still some local police forces around, at least outside of the Mega-Cities.  And considering the number of Judges that were lost in the war against Booth, it would probably have made sense for a temporary police force to be drafted to help pick up the slack until enough new Judges had come up through the academies.  Maybe there was a plan in place to gradually phase them out by 2100.

[JOE SOAP]

I suspect they were an aberration. It's pretty clear from Origins that traditional police were gone by that point.

Weren't the Judges only in the three burgeoning Mega Cities and police everywhere else?

[sauchieboy]

Easily fan-conned into an early form of Justice Dept auxiliaries, handling traffic, crowd control, paperwork etc.  Police in the loosest sense.

Community Support Officers, to use the parlance of our times. Origins's Obama/Mandela President (i) says something suitably vague about the Judge System being widely copied across the world, but that doesn't rule out the existence of cops in the Megacities or elsewhere.

Every US state has at least three levels of law enforcement operating independently (State, County, Municipal, Highway, FBI, ATF, etc)- sometimes in competition with and working at cross-purposes to each other. You can see why the brutal simplicity of the Judge System held a certain appeal.

You can take your pick whether you want to read those early strips (ii) literally or just accept that- like Indiana Jones- our comic scriptwriting heroes were making it up as they went along. Wagner wrote Origins in such a way as to fill in the details about the Dredd strip's pre-history he wanted to focus on, without contradicting any of the already published versions and without limiting his ability to expand on it further in the future.


(i) In his eulogy for Fargo.

(ii) I think cops appear in Robot Wars

[Greg M.]

(ii) I think cops appear in Robot Wars

Yep, Call-Me-Kenneth blows up a few in the first episode.

[sauchieboy]

"Call-Me-Kenneth likes doing bad things!"

[JOE SOAP]

[Dark Jimbo]

Never mind the police - I want to see a return of the saucy valkyrie-type Justice Maidens from the end of Robot Wars.

[sauchieboy]

"All the judges of Megacity One[/b]"!

Given the number of badges on CJ Goodman's 'They Died Defending The Law' mural (i), that Annual page must represent the first instance of the ranks of Megacity's finest being depleted to half-strength (ii).

Weird to see Dredd rendered with the same one colour tint as my old Beano and Dandy annuals; I covet your collection, Soap.


(i) Judge Whitey, prog 2

(ii) See any follow-up story to Apocalypse War, Necropolis or Judgement Day.

[A.Cow]

Given the number of badges on CJ Goodman's 'They Died Defending The Law' mural (i), that Annual page must represent the first instance of the ranks of Megacity's finest being depleted to half-strength (ii).

Mind you, the same story also includes Dredd interrupting a couple in an intimate moment on videophone, immediately followed by Maria asking Dredd "are you going to spend the evening polishing your helmet?"

[Toni Scandella]

The DC Dredd series explored the relationship between the police and the Judges.  I only ever skim-read a handful of them though I have them all (and the Legends of the Law and Lawman of the Future reboots - bought them off EBay as sets a few years ago) - maybe it's time to dig them out of the attic and see if they are as bad as I have always believed or if they were interesting...

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Yeah Policemen as terrorists trying to destroy the new Judge System!

Law and Dis-order!

Beat that for a cheap shot title.

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