Internal Affairs

"You betrayed the law!"

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" ^note "Who watches the watchmen?"

— Juvenal

The Police who police the Police. Very often more evil than the Big Bad, Diabolical Mastermind or Serial Killer, Internal Affairs is the true enemy of the Cowboy Cop and everything s/he stands for, as they're usually on a crusade to get the Cowboy Cop — who they see as being just as bad as, if not worse than, the criminals he pursues — thrown off the force with all due haste.

As the Cowboy Cop is most often the hero and a good cop, the cops working for Internal Affairs are therefore often characterized as humorless, prissy and self-righteous desk jockeys who have no real understanding of what it's really like out there on the streets — because if they did, then there's no way that they'd get so morally uptight and outraged about the Cowboy Cop's complete ignorance of correct police operating procedure and flagrant disregard for the basic human rights of the suspect. Indeed, a frequent method of Anviliciously highlighting the moral superiority of the Cowboy Cop compared to these cops is to have him or her angrily hiss "What about the victim's rights?" when getting chewed out by Internal Affairs — to which the Obstructive Bureaucrat will of course have no answer whatsoever. In these cases, Internal Affairs seems dedicated to promoting a system of justice which actively protects the guilty whilst forcing the innocent to suffer.

It's not just the Cowboy Cop, though; the entire department, even the Noble Top Enforcer, seems to loathe the Internal Affairs cops with a passion. This suits the Internal Affairs cops just fine, however, as more often than not they're depicted as complete ball-breaking pricks who aren't interested in being liked by anyone; protecting the integrity of the force is simply more important. Da Chief often has a grudge against these guys as well, as they often overrule his authority and demand that he force the Cowboy Cop to turn in his badge.

Another role for Internal Affairs in fiction is to have one of their officers infiltrate a police station undercover with the intent of exposing some form of corruption, only to gradually form friendships (and even Love Interests) with the cops they are meant to be investigating. This can result in all manner of complications and angst galore when the undercover officer's role is finally exposed.

In the most positive portrayals, these are the cops that a cop protagonist can turn to when they see corruption and cannot stop it themselves. At the end, when the hero has proved his allegation, the IA cops will be the ones who come to haul away the crooked cops with the hero cop standing back, regretting such measures were necessary. After all, if they play their cards right they are more the natural enemy of dirty cops rather than honest ones. Clean ones shouldn't have things to hide.

This is, in some ways, Truth in Television, as for obvious reasons there's tension between regular police officers and the regulatory authorities assigned to watch over them in real life (just as tensions exist between police officers and civilians, for much the same reasons). However, the Cowboy Cop and his supporters tend to forget or overlook the fact that the rules and regulations that Internal Affairs so staunchly uphold exist for a reason. Like them or not, without Internal Affairs keeping the worst excesses of police authority and corruption in check, things wouldn't be very pleasant (in which case Both Sides Have a Point). Although, interestingly, in real life, the Internal Affairs departments of many countries actually face frequent critique for being too lenient on police misconduct, exactly because their ranks are mostly or even entirely made up of police officers, and it is argued by critics that this structure inevitably creates a fundamental conflict of interest as the people supposed to investigate complaints of overreach are not truly capable of being objective towards their fellow cops.

Occasionally, the Straw Character part will be subverted by making Internal Affairs right, and the Cowboy Cop actually deserve having to turn in his badge. In rare cases, the protagonists are with IA, in which case they'll probably be wholly in the right, pursuing some genuine dirty cops (obstruction from other police then is likely portrayed as very bad).

Particularly nasty organizations may instead turn things over to the Internal Death Squad.

A Sub-Trope to The Inspector Is Coming. A Sister Trope to The Inquisitor General, which corresponds to military settings.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The titular ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept.. They audit the 13 branches of Acca in the 13 districts of the kingdom of Dowa.
• Fire Force has the understaffed and oft-disrespected "Company 8", which consists of the main characters. The team was created in order to keep every other group in check, as higher-ups started noticing that the other companies were starting to engage in questionable actions such as side dealings with the military and hiding pertinent information about previous cases.
• The Inspectors from Lyrical Nanoha franchise are this for the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Although the fluff claims there are inspectors assigned to each Bureau branch and administrated world, we only see one, Verossa Acous, who is in charge of monitoring the Riot Force 6 in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Unlike most examples, he is on extremely amicable terms with them since he views their commanding officer as a little sister and their sponsors are his older sister, best friend, and best friend's mother. This obvious conflict of interests is never really addressed.
• In Soul Eater, Joe is a member of DWMA's Internal Affairs branch, called in to investigate when it looked like there was a mole sabotaging their missions. In spite of the circumstances, he is amiable and seems to be on good terms with the staff. As the reader can see, the person he is looking for is Crona acting on Medusa's orders. It comes as a surprise when there is another mole — Justin Law — who kills Joe moments after the investigator recognizes the "priest"'s Face–Heel Turn.

Comic Books

• A secondary character in Astro City: Dark Age is an IA investigator trying to crack a ring of corrupt cops in the Astro City PD, and is constantly harassing one of the protagonists (who is honest but has a dirty partner) to inform on them. She is portrayed as a bit of a Jerkass, but it's made clear that she acts like that out of frustration that she can't even get honest cops to report on the dirty ones.
• Batman:
  • In Batman: Gordon of Gotham, Bullock is harassed by an IA cop for viciously beating a costumed criminal who slightly injured a rookie cop. The IA cop does make some legitimate arguments, but is an Obstructive Bureaucrat and has been stealing office supplies.
  • Gordon mentions why the police dislike IA in Batman: Year One, claiming that they might dangle the carrot of good integrity, but after the day is over, everyone still treats you like any other scumbag if you take down a cop.
  • The Straw Character element is largely subverted in Gotham Central, since most of the main cast are by the book cops. That doesn't mean they like IAD cops — but IAD are generally shown as honest guys doing an unpleasant job without malice. The main IA cop featured even goes a bit rogue in one of his investigations. In order to help Detective Allen stay on the force, he surrenders a crucial bit of evidence in his investigation of corrupt CSU Jim Corrigan. He knows that it's better to have Allen on the force than Corrigan off it, and that Corrigan will screw up again.
  • In Robin (1993), there are enough corrupt IA cops in Gotham that they become a problem when they clear Detectives Wise and Cavallo of charges after Officer Harper arrests them for murder among other things, though admittedly, she was expecting them to get out quickly due to the amount of blackmail material they have on other GCPD officers.
• In Green Lantern, the Alpha Lanterns serve as this, having originally been Green Lanterns who've been given robotic implants to better serve the Corps. They're also portrayed as complete jerks. To no one's surprise, they wind up turning evil: it turns out that the Guardians' idiotic attempt at "improving" them by removing their emotions made them easy targets for Demonic Possession by Granny Goodness and the Cyborg Superman.
• Judge Dredd:
  • The Special Judicial Service perform this function for the Judges of Mega-City One. They weren't always so stellar, however, since in the early days their head Judge Cal used the resources of the SJS to assassinate the sitting Chief Judge, take his place, and rule the city as a lunatic despot for a while.
  • In the storyline The Pit, Dredd finds himself in this role, sent to clean up what was at the time the worst sector and the worst branch of the Judges in the city, with the Chief Judge unwilling to trust the local SJS. Needless to say, things improved by the time he left.
• In Powers, a rather friendly internal affairs cop begins investigating Deena, easily the more violent of the protagonist duo, about a suspect's death in a hospital that occurred years ago in the comic. Deena's nervous for an entirely different and much more credible reason: she just murdered her ex-boyfriend in a fit of rage after secretly contracting Contagious Powers.
• In Tex Willer, the Texas Rangers sometimes cover this role, investigating sheriffs and marshalls because they or their command (or, on one occasion, the governor of Texas) have reason to believe they're crooked — and if they are, they apprehend them. In a variation, they have this role because they're invariably Cowboy Cops who care only for the spirit of the law, so finding a corrupt sheriff who hasn't broken the letter of the law just means the Rangers will have to get creative in busting them.

Fan Works

• The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas features Natalya and Ronda Rousey as members of IA in the LVPD.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell:
  • In the sequel Picking Up the Pieces, a group of them show up to arrest Memorizing Gaze for being a Changeling holding down a job, which is illegal. Gentle Step points out that there has always been an exception, by decree of King Blueblood the Great, for Changelings who serve in the Hidden Guard, but they’re still required to take him in until he tells them he’s already resigned and has a meeting with the King to discuss his new role.
  • They come to cause trouble again, this time for Gentle Step, in chapter 11 after she and Memorizing Gaze are photographed kissing during their date, violating anti-fraternization rules. The omake chapter that follows has a self-insert character show up and chew them out for harassing her.

Films — Live-Action

• Bad Boys (1995) involves a subplot with Internal Affairs attempting to shut down the Miami PD's Narcotics division because they think that just because a guy was found dead in a police uniform that the Narcotics division had stolen a multi-million-dollar drug bust to sell for themselves, despite the police quickly finding out that the dead man in the uniform was not a member of the police. On the other hand, she's right that it was an inside job.
• These show up at the beginning of Black Rain, investigating the main character. They're portrayed as smug and pompous, with Nick angrily telling them they'd being looking in City Hall if they really wanted to find corruption. It turns out that their suspicions about him are correct.
• In Blue Streak, Logan is a thief pretending to be a police detective. When his rookie partner checks out his backstory, he finds out it's fake. Logan takes him aside and pretends to be IA, claiming that the entire precinct is corrupt.
• Cobra features a stereotypically nebbishy IA cop who angrily challenges Cobra as to whether his decision to execute a criminal holding up a supermarket might have been excessive; Cobra's response is to punch his lights out. Stallone also punches him at the end of the movie when the IA cop makes a snide comment over how he'd have handled things a bit differently, but "No hard feelings". Stallone: "Sure. (WHACK!) No hard feelings, Monte."
• Cop Land: Moe Tilden is a New York IA detective investigating the cops who work in the city but live across the river in New Jersey. Thus, he has to turn to Sheriff Freddy Heflin for information on what the cops are doing outside of IA's jurisdiction. The cops, who actually got Freddy appointed sheriff, hate IA's guts — naturally, since not only are they dirty, they're trying to cover up some old murders by committing more murders. Tilden is abrasive and rude as he prods Freddy to take some action, but he's also right.
• The Corruptor: The FBI think that Danny Wallace is a double agent for the mob, but it's then revealed that Danny is an Internal Affairs officer sent to investigate Nick Chen the head of the Asian Gang Unit (the FBI agent says something about how "Internal Affairs is worse than the mob"). Even later in the film, Danny's ex-cop father returns the money Danny gave him (to pay off some debts to the mob) saying something along the lines of "I might have been dirty but at least I didn't stab my partners in the back." In the end, it turned out that Nick was dirty, but Danny chose to whitewash his report after Nick's death so that he'd be remembered as an honest cop who died in the line of duty.
• In Dark Blue, Assistant Chief Holland, heading the IA department, is a major actor trying to expose Jack Van Meter's department for their constant abuse of power in the name of the law. The movie opens with Perry and Van Meter getting Bobby through an inquiry for alleged excessive use of force. Later, Bobby helps them to atone for his homicide of an innocent man whom he and Perry framed for another crime.
• In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent (currently the District Attorney, but previously in internal affairs) does his best to clean up the incredibly corrupt police force of Gotham, something that doesn't endear him to Lieutenant Gordon — despite Gordon being one of the very few straight cops on the force. (In the previous movie, Gordon even says "I'm no rat!" despite his partner blatantly extorting money in front of him, though this may be explained by his weary, "Who's there to rat to?") However, Dent turns out to be right all along, and a few of the crooked cops in the Major Crimes Unit lead to Rachel's death, and his own facial scarring. Needless to say, Harvey isn't very happy about this. Those cops aren't exactly Cowboy Cops as much as straight-forward corrupt bottom-feeders, however.
• The Departed: The Massachusets State Police just is lucky enough to appoint the resident snitch of The Irish Mob as their internal affairs officer. He is soon tasked with finding himself.
• Dirty Harry:
  • In the first movie, the D.A takes this role, complete with indignant "what about the rights of that little girl?" demand from Harry. In point of fact, the movie is probably the trend-setter for unsympathetic portrayals of IA.
  • In Magnum Force, Harry ends up becoming a Cowboy Internal Affairs Cop, taking down a vigilante cop death squad that turns out to be organized by his old boss Briggs.
• Exit Wounds:
  • After his transfer, Cowboy Cop Boyd is accused of being an Internal Affairs mole by several cops who take a fast dislike to him and have something to hide.
  • Captain Mulcahy is a former Internal Affairs detective who ended corrupt activities in several precincts and is viewed respectfully by her more sympathetic subordinates. She is quick to warn Cowboy Cop Boyd to rein himself in around her but is fairly reasonable about it.
• A Few Good Men: Lieutenant Commander JoAnn Galloway is Internal Affairs — because she's a rotten lawyer, so making sure everyone else is doing things right is a perfect fit for her. When there's a military conspiracy that needs taking down, that's a good combination to have.
• In Insomnia, the main character Detective Engström/Dormer (in the Norwegian and American versions, respectively) has some particularly nasty things to say about the Internal Affairs people hounding him. Of course, they're out to get him because he fabricated evidence to send someone he thought was a child murderer to jail.
• Internal Affairs are the heroes in the movie unsurprisingly titled Internal Affairs.
• The Judge Dredd movie gives the Special Judicial Squad a uniform change to include face-concealing helmets. They're gunned down in large numbers by Dredd after he's framed for murder and has to go on the run.
• In Lethal Weapon 3, Rene Russo plays an Internal Affairs officer Lorna Cole, who harasses Cowboy Cop Riggs before falling in love with him. However, Lorna is revealed to be, in her way, even more of a Cowboy Cop than Riggs is.
• In The Man, ATF Special Agent Vann is a Cowboy Cop who is being investigated by IA after his partner turned out to be corrupt and was killed by a criminal. The IA investigator believes that corrupt cops usually have corrupt partners. He ends up leaving satisfied that he was wrong after Vann returns the money he borrowed for a sting operation.
• Max Payne: Lt. Bravura first seems to play the antagonistic part straight by trying to pin the murder of a Valkyr addict on Max. Later, though, he starts to (correctly) suspect that corrupt officers are trying to set Max up and calls in the FBI to capture Max alive and figure out what really happened.
• The Negotiator: Internal Affairs cop Niebaum is a sinister Jerkass who is quick to accuse the main character of embezzling from the police disability fund and murdering his partner, even though Danny's Dead Partner questioned Niebaum's trustworthiness before dying. Danny ends up taking Niebaum hostage to try and get some answers, with Niebaum remaining oddly silent throughout most of the ordeal. Eventually, it's confirmed that after being given the evidence needed to arrest the embezzlers, he instead took a bribe to cover up their misdeeds and told them who had ratted them out.
• Saw 3D has the Metropolitan Police Department's Internal Affairs Division take charge of the Jigsaw case when Dirty Cop Mark Hoffman is publicly identified as the wanted second Jigsaw apprentice. The three named members of the division seen in the film are Matt Gibson (who had a backstory with Hoffman before being moved to the division), Palmer and Rogers.
• Serpico: The title character wants a permanent external commission to supervise the police, because Internal Affairs has proven ineffective, and corruption is rampant in the NYPD.
• Sleepers: Internal Affairs cop Davenport is an ally of the heroes and helps them bust their former rapist, Stryder, a Dirty Cop protecting drug dealers for money and murdering them when they won't play ball. Davenport is described as eager to make busts to further his career, but he's professional, friendly, and doesn't act on the claims against Stryder until he has reliable evidence.
• Star Wars has the Imperial Security Bureau acting as this for The Empire. Most of their actions are shown in ancillary works, notably Star Wars Rebels, but the ISB first show up in A New Hope, with ISB Colonel Wullf Yularen (the mustachioed man with the white tunic) present in the Death Star conference room. Of course, this being the Empire, the ISB is exactly as evil as the rest of the Imperial forces — they're just hated by their own side as well.
• Street Kings: The first part of the movie makes it look as if the Internal Affairs Department has some kind of personal vendetta against cops who are "only trying to do their jobs". This is subverted when it's revealed that they were totally justified, as the cops they were investigating actually were corrupt. As it turns out, a large portion of the film is actually a Batman Gambit set up by Internal Affairs to try to get the one honest cop in the group to turn on his corrupt partners. The lead Internal Affairs agent even admits that there are uses for a Cowboy Cop.
• Striking Distance: Sarah Jessica Parker turns out to be an undercover IA, sent to investigate Bruce Willis, but winds up testifying on his behalf instead.

Literature

• 2666: If there were, they've long since been bought out or killed.
• Mainly appear as antagonists in Artemis Fowl, but the worst of them all is eventual LEP recon commander Ark Sool.
• In Joseph Wambaugh's The Choirboys, long-serving vet Sergeant "Spermwhale" Whelan, a wily 19-year cop who knows all the tricks, is eventually brought down by IA, who have been gunning for him for years, with a threat to withdraw his twenty-year service pension for "gross misconduct".
• The Dresden Files: Even compared to the poverty, vampires, homicidal FBI werewolves, necromancers, fallen angels, Eldritch Abominations, and normal thugs Harry Dresden faces, Internal Affairs of the Chicago PD is probably his worst enemy, undermining him at every turn and convinced that he's nothing but a charlatan stealing city money... even after his extremely positive track record with the police. This isn't even going into how much they hate Murphy and try to undermine her at every turn. They even try to throw Harry in jail in the second book, and try to make him look like a terrorist. Think that's bad? The actual governing body Harry's part of, the White Council, is even worse. Morgan, one of the Wardens (the White Council's police and IA all in one), actively tries to kill him repeatedly, once with a really terrible excuse. Much of the council hates him and thinks he's a dangerous element who practices black magic.
• The Grace of Kings: As Huno Krima becomes a paranoid Caligula, he forms the elite Black Caps to root out subversive elements within his forces, then the White Caps to spy on the Black Caps, and finally the Grey Caps to spy on the White Caps. Before he can issue any more headgear, he's unexpectedly decapitated.
• Harry Bosch: Internal Affairs is usually at odds with Cowboy Cop Bosch. This is tweaked in The Black Box, however. Not only is Mendenhall of IA an honorable cop who gives Bosch a fair shake, she winds up saving his life when her investigation of his Cowboy Cop antics winds up with her tracking him right to his confrontation with the bad guys.
• Internal Affairs play an unusual role in the In Death novels since despite Eve's kneejerk hostility to them, their gestures in the direction of investigating her are perfunctory and they're basically on her side any time someone accuses her of misbehaviour. It may help that an IA guy has a firm case of unrequited love for her.
• Kira of the Night Huntress books tells Mencheres about her mentor, an IA officer who helped her put away the abusive, drug-dealing cop who was her first husband. He is portrayed as the man who came through for her in her darkest hour, against an example of the worst of what a cop can be.
• Spy School: Agent Nora Taco, head of the newly formed Double Agent Detection Division.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Not cops, but in Star Wars: Allegiance, we see that the Imperial Security Bureau, or ISB (don't you love sinister three-letter acronyms?) serves much the same purpose as Internal Affairs, but for the Imperial military. Their major issue is loyalty to the Imperial cause; rights don't mean much. In fact, they go after a stormtrooper for refusing to gun down unarmed civilians; see, he was disobeying orders and may have been a Rebel sympathizer. Darth Vader doesn't like them, though for reasons involving suspicion and paranoia, not principles.
  • Implied in the X-Wing Series. Corran and his partner were Space Police, and while their actual affairs guy, having once been active himself, was good about it, their Imperial liaison was unpleasant. As well as being unsociable and tending to frustrate investigations, he disliked Corran enough that when Corran's father was murdered by a Bounty Hunter, the liaison let the murderer walk, saying that the bounty hunter's poor manual dexterity meant it could have been an accident.
• A.E. Pessimal in Thud! is a thoroughly Pratchettian take on the trope. He's not really investigating misconduct so much as bad accounting and inefficiency. He ends up on the force specifically because of his skills in this department being badly needed...and because he always wanted to be a cop. The trope is also reconstructed beautifully in the same book by the Guarding Dark, Vimes' inner watchman who watches him when there's no one else around to do so.
• In the Thursday Next series, SpecOps-1 is Internal Affairs to the rest of the SpecOps network.
• Imperial Auditors in Vorkosigan Saga. Their mission is not precisely defined; it is well summed up in, "To investigate whatever The Emperor wants investigated if it can't be handled by normal channels." They have almost unlimited powers (As the Emperor's Voice, any order they give has the Emperor's authority, so the only people who can countermand an order from an Auditor are other Auditors and the Emperor himself) which is why they are usually chosen from old men who have reached the pinnacle of ambition.

Live-Action TV

• 24 does this all the time, from individuals sent from the Attorney General's office to moles placed by the White House. Some manage to contribute, most are unhelpful, and some end up being revealed as actually working for corrupt, if not terrorist, interests.
• Adam-12: In one episode, Reed and Malloy exchange fire with a sniper at a residence. Reed has to be investigated and his actions checked out to ensure that he was justified in firing his weapon and shooting the suspect. Reed is stressed, but ultimately, his actions were found justified.
• Against the Wall is about a police officer who just joined IA, with the full belief that she can protect innocent police officers. Her family full of cops practically disown her after this.
• In Ashes to Ashes (2008), we have the sinister Jim Keats, who is determined to bring Gene's shady past to light and is literally the Devil.
• Barney Miller has Lt. Scanlon, who embodies all the negative IAB stereotypes. He genuinely hates Barney and his men and constantly tries to nail them on something (which he never does). In fact, the squad reacts with glee when Scanlon himself is accused of sexual harassment.^note He had taken a liking to an attractive crime victim who happened to be at the 12th during one of his pestering visits, and so he took it upon himself to drop by her apartment numerous times to invite her out. When asked by the woman if he "belongs" to the 12th, Wojo, with undisguised joy, replies "He does now." In the last episode, he's really annoyed that he turns out to be the one to break the news of Barney's promotion to Deputy Inspector.
• Between the Lines (1992) centers around the London Metropolitan Police's variant of Internal Affairs — the Complaints Investigation Bureau (since renamed the Directorate of Professional Standards). The officers are seen as decent individuals performing a totally necessary role (in a world where policemen generally are corrupt enough to beat suspects, forge confessions and run their own private businesses on paid time). While the show is sometimes cynical about the outcomes of investigations, it makes it quite clear that corruption exists and shouldn't be condoned.
• In Blue Bloods, the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau needs to tighten up its recruiting standards. Season 1's Lt. Alex Bello is at first seen to be hard-nosed-but-professional... but is later revealed to be part of the ultra-corrupt Blue Templar fraternity. Capt. Derek Elwood is introduced in Season 2, again tough-but-fair... but is also later revealed to be crooked and behind a Frame-Up of Danny in Season 3.
• The French series Les Boeuf-Carottes ("Beef-carrots") starring Jean Rochefort is about cops from the IGPN (General Inspection of the National Police), the French IA. They're actually nicknamed "les Boeuf-Carottes" because they have a tendency to "grill" the people they question.
• Bosch:
  • The second season has a pretty rare heroic portrayal of the LAPD Internal Affairs Division. The villains are a group of murderous Dirty Cops who are into a huge variety of violent felonies. Deputy Chief Irvin Irving's son George works with them to penetrate the gang, but is murdered by them when they find out he's a mole.
  • The fourth season, as an adaptation of Angels Flight, is about the murder of Howard Elias, a civil rights attorney who was suing the LAPD over the Black Guardian case. Because of heavy conflicts of interest, Irving creates a special task force for the investigation comprised of Bosch, Edgar, Pierce, and Robertson from Hollywood Division, and two Internal Affairs investigators, Amy Snyder and Gabriella Lincoln. Bosch initially doesn't get along with Snyder because she investigated him for an IA complaint in season 3 over a public altercation Bosch had with District Attorney Rick O'Shea, though warms up to her after Snyder gets on his case and demands to be shown some respect. Lincoln, meanwhile, turns out to be dirty, and tries to frame one of the Black Guardian detectives for the murder. It's eventually discovered she was part of a scheme with Elias and police commission president Bradley Walker where she'd sell inside information to Elias via Walker, Elias would sue the city for large settlements, and Walker and Lincoln would get a cut of the settlement money as kickbacks. The scheme fell apart when Elias decided he wanted to take the Black Guardian detectives to trial after seeing a video of the torture they subjected Michael Harris to, which would've meant exposing Walker's part in the conspiracy, prompting Walker to personally murder him.
  • By the start of season 6, Jerry Edgar is helping out Internal Affairs with their investigation into Ray Marcos and Daniel Arias, the corrupt cops who set up Edgar's informant Gary Wise to be murdered in season 5. The investigation is quickly complicated when the corrupt cops are murdered by the Jamaican gang that employs them for becoming a liability.
• The Bridge has Internal Affairs being corrupt and going after any cop that the division commander or deputy chief do not like. Their ham-fisted handling of two incidents causes the protagonist Frank Leo to call for a walkout and then for him become a candidate for head of the police union.
  • IA investigates a veteran cop for accepting a bribe from a pedophile and the cop kills himself. The IA investigator on the case is actually about to exonerate the cop fully and is so angry at his superiors that he becomes an ally of Frank.
  • IA tries to pin a murder and numerous robberies on Frank with no real evidence. The death was a clear case of self-defense and Frank had nothing to do with the robberies. His union lawyer is so incompetent that he actually lets them get away with making the accusations and thinks that Frank should plead guilty.
  • In the end, Frank has to become this trope himself since there really are some very bad cops on the force, and as the new head of the union, he has to root them out to protect the good ones.
• In Brooklyn South, Nice Guy protagonist Frank Donovan is secretly an IA field associate. Viewers know from the first episode, but his co-workers don't find out until midway through the series, and most of them do not take it well, despite the fact that Frank has been well liked before this, never got any of them in trouble, and actually helped a few of them out secretly.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the Watcher's Council, who keeps its Slayers on a tight leash. In fact, they have an entire wetworks team dedicated to taking down rogue Slayers. The Watchers themselves (poor Giles) are also under close scrutiny.
• At the start of Caïn (2012), the eponymous French cop is under surveillance by the DRPJ (the main French "police of the polices").
• Castle (2009):
  • IA shows up in the form of Lt. Holliwell shows up when a case touches on Detective Esposito's old partner, who it transpires faked his own death under suspicion of corruption, with significant evidence pointing to him being the murderer of the week. Although none of the detectives are exactly Cowboy Cops, naturally Holliwell takes the opportunity to renew his antagonism with Esposito and, in general, the other members of the unit. In something of a subversion, Holliwell turns out to be the corrupt one.
  • Captain Victoria Gates, the replacement to Captain Roy Montgomery, was also previously assigned to Internal Affairs, which creates tension with her new subordinates. She eventually explains to Beckett that she worked in IA not because she hates other cops (her father and uncles were cops), but because some of them really are dirty and people need protection against them just as much as against ordinary criminals.
• In Chicago P.D., Internal Affairs frequently clashes with total Cowboy Cop Voight. Given that he has to report to them, it makes for an interesting situation. While Voight is implied to have been dirty in the past, and may still be slightly dirty, both of the ones he deals with are total dicks, and slightly corrupt themselves. The second is a straight-up murderer.
• The Closer has the Force Investigation Division, headed by Captain Sharon Raydor. Although she and heroine Brenda Leigh Johnson absolutely loathe one another, Raydor is portrayed unusually in that she is not only given redeeming qualities, but is shown to be a skilled and honorable investigator who knows precisely how disliked she and her department are and passionately wishes there was a different way to do things, and Brenda respects her and considers her job a necessary evil. (Raydor and Johnson also work quite well together when they team up for cases.)^note When Brenda leaves the LAPD for the District Attorney's office, it's Sharon Raydor who steps in as the new head of her department — and as the lead of the After Show Major Crimes.
  Brenda: When police officers get shot, they're investigated by me. When they shoot back, they're investigated by you. That means they will think twice before defending themselves. That hesitation means more good cops will die. I have to ask — have you ever considered what your principles cost?
  Raydor: Seventy million. That was the settlement in the Rampart case. One hundred. That's how many convictions were overturned due to renegade policing and lack of oversight in one division alone, not to mention the loss of trust the LAPD needs to remain effective.
  Brenda: There has to be a better way.
  Raydor: Well, until then, you've got me.
• There's been plenty of run-ins between the detectives of Cold Case and IA, but the most blatant has to be in season 5, where an ongoing arc has one of the detectives feeling major heat from them over whether or not his shooting a suspect during a hostage situation the previous season was by the book. IA was using it to screw him over for a previous mistake.
• Criminal Minds uses elements of this trope when FBI higher-ups investigate Hotchner's conduct when his ex-wife and son were pursued by an elusive serial killer. However, while the head investigator (and Hotchner's boss, Erin Strauss) is dogged in her questioning and rubs all of Hotch's teammates the wrong way, she turns sympathetic when Hotchner himself relates how his ex-wife had been killed and he'd beaten her murderer to death to save their little boy.
• CSI: Miami: The leads have issues with Internal Affairs practically every frickin' episode. Including the undercover mole plotline. The show also features the CSI-verse's most Jerkass Internal Affair officer (with a side of Inspector Javert), Sergeant Rick Stetler, who may have been beating up his girlfriend and is finally Put on a Bus to Hell when he's discovered to have been stealing impounded vehicles to sell off.
• CSI: NY:
  • Both Mac and Danny have had problems with Internal Affairs — Mac in particular seems to have something of a problem with people trying to tell him how to do his job. Danny, though, has had more run-ins than Mac:
    • In season one, Danny kills an undercover officer who shoots at him, insisting that the guy never ID'd himself as a cop. The problem: there's a cell phone recording of the guy identifying himself, which Danny insists that he never heard. Danny is only exonerated because his other bullet is never found, so there isn't any evidence to move forward.
    • In season 8, Danny is out with his rookies during his time as a sergeant when two guys hold them up. At first, it appears that the young female cop fires because she was shot at, but it turns out that she shot the guy without the gun. Danny doesn't know what had happened because one of the perps hit him over the head with a bottle. She then lies to IA and says that Danny told her to lie because they were having an affair. There is a video showing her cuddling up to him, but that was all her; Danny is adamant that he's faithful to Lindsay. Eventually, Lindsay pressures the rookie to admit that she was scared and lied about telling Danny to lie.
  • Stella's had four run-ins as well, getting called out twice for excessive force. Three of the incidents occurred prior to the series premiere.
• Daredevil (2015): Wilson Fisk secures the loyalty of corrupt law enforcement on his payroll by buying off members of their agency's internal affairs unit to stifle internal investigations into the dirty work they do for him.
  • Season 1: In "World on Fire", Detectives Christian Blake and Carl Hoffman murder an associate of Vladimir Ranskahov's in the 15th Precinct for daring to snitch on Fisk (whose name must not be said ever). Fisk and James Wesley put in a call to their contacts in the Internal Affairs Bureau to sweep the whole thing under the rug and bury it. This allows Blake and Hoffman to go back on the street and assist their fellow corrupt cops that night in eliminating any Russians who survive Fisk's bombings of their stashhouses. Unfortunately, Matt happens to overhear the murder, so he goes after Blake, breaks his right arm and gets him to reveal the locations of said stashhouses, allowing him to locate Vladimir. For that transgression, Fisk has Blake shot. That Blake and Hoffman are so quickly back on the streets is lampshaded by Ben Urich when he turns up as they're establishing a perimeter around an abandoned warehouse where a rookie cop has stumbled upon Matt and Vladimir and subsequently been knocked out.
    Ben Urich: Detectives! I'd thought IAB would have you riding a desk after that thing with the Russians at the station.
    Christian Blake: You see what's going on here? No one's riding a desk tonight.
  • In season 3, Fisk manipulates the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility as part of a bigger gambit to turn Dex into his top assassin. Fisk gets OPR to open an investigation into Dex's killing of the Albanian hit squad, knowing they will find evidence that Dex broke protocol. He lies to the investigators when they come to interview him, something he ensures Dex will watch it on tape later and notice that Fisk is protecting him. Later in the season, when Nadeem and Matt find evidence of Dex's treachery, Nadeem takes his suspicions to OPR Agent Winn, and they sit down for an interview with Nadeem's boss Tammy Hattley at her house. The meeting is a setup, as Hattley is also on Fisk's payroll. She has Nadeem hand over his gun, then proceeds to kill Winn with said gun. Ray barely has time to process the betrayal when Felix Manning shows up, pockets the gun and audio recording, and he and Hattley blackmail him into working for Fisk as well under the threat of being framed for Winn's death.
• Day Break (2006): Chad Shelton is an obstructive internal affairs agent who dislikes Hopper because Hopper's girlfriend Rita is Shelton's ex-wife, pretty much accusing Hopper of "stealing" her. He also has some leverage over Hopper's partner and proves to be at least a bit corrupt as well, having previously covered up a crime committed by Rita to protect her brother, and turns out to have forged the evidence used to convict Hopper of the Garza murder for his own reasons.
• Dexter:
  • The first season has Angel torn over reporting to Internal Affairs over an incident regarding Doakes apparently opening fire on a man unprovoked, fearing that the rest of the department will regard him as a rat, as well as being Doakes' friend (and initially trying to get the truth of the matter from him). He does end up providing an incriminating report, but the case is thrown out due to intercession on the basis of national security (Doakes' victim was a former death squad member who he knew from his black ops days). Doakes doesn't end up holding it against him, and threatens a cop who insults Angel.
  • The third season has a wildly inept internal affairs officer who is investigating a very mildly corrupt cop, but goes about it in a terrible way. She approaches his partner and asks for her help, gives no reasoning, and assumes she has the partner's assistance and continues harassing the partner. It also turns out she may have an ulterior motive for pursuing the cop (they used to be partners, with another cop who got killed due to a drug addiction which may have been preventable).
• Dragnet:
  • In the 1968 episode "The Shooting Board", Friday walks in on an attempted robbery at a self-service laundromat and exchanges gunfire with the thief, wounding him. Things turn bad, though, when the thief turns up dead, the slug from his gun isn't found, there are no independent witnesses, and his accomplice lies that Friday fired the only shot. Throughout, Friday is tense and worried, but isn't hostile towards the IAB officers or the review board, both of whom are sympathetic but professional. In the end, the IAB detectives find the missing slug, leading to a memorable epilogue: Friday, himself, on camera as the narrator reveals the result ("Sgt. Joe Friday: Returned to Duty").
  • In another 1960s episode, Friday and Gannon are the Internal Affairs: they're investigating the shooting of a liquor store clerk where the chief suspect is a rookie undercover narcotics officer (Kent Mccord, pre-Adam-12), who had been picked out of a line-up by an eyewitness. He turns out to be innocent (mistaken identity), and spends most of the episode understandably stressed out and angry at being a suspect at all, but Friday and Gannon never move from their professional yet sympathetic stance.
  • In another episode, Friday is picked as a defender by a cop accused of taking a bribe from a bookie. He said it was because he knew Friday would pull out the stops to defend him if he really was innocent. Friday agreed, but contended he made a lousy lawyer because he'd want the guy convicted if he was guilty. Ultimately, the guy is found guilty of a couple of the charges, but not all of them.
  • In the 1970 episode "I.A.D.: The Receipt", two officers are accused of stealing $800 from the victim of a homicide by the victim's associate. Neither side can produce a receipt for the personal effects the officers took into evidence, including the money. Friday and Gannon, again, are sympathetic but professional. In the end, Friday finds the officers' missing copy of the receipt (it had been misplaced in their car), plus traces of the associate's copy, proving that she, herself, stole the money and tried to frame the officers.
  • In a crossover episode with Adam-12, Friday and Gannon are investigating a claim that a patrolman struck someone who was drunk and verbally abusive. Reed and Malloy are the other unit that responds, and are interviewed. Everyone involved is given a chance to explain, and in the end the patrolman is suspended for overreacting.
  • One episode of the short-lived revival harkening back to "The Shooting Board" above has Joe Friday the subject of an Internal Affairs hearing, with the events told in flashback. In this case, though, IAD has a legitimate concern, and Sgt. Friday is honest and non-confrontational. Furthermore, the IAD's investigation is as thorough and professional as Friday's always are, and they find the evidence that his actions were completely justified under the circumstances — but then, Joe Friday is the polar opposite of the Cowboy Cop.
• Explored in Elementary when Marcus Bell secretly starts dating another detective. Watson and Holmes both approve of her... until the former finds out that she is Internal Affairs, and the latter finds out that she is dating Bell. Watson is naturally worried that Bell doesn't know, and that he may unintentionally get other cops in trouble. Holmes is actually quite supportive of the role of IAB, citing them the only way to check police corruption and that their previous cases with corrupt cops had required their help. Despite this, Bell is upset when he finds out about her IA connections. The series generally comes down on the side of IAB, and doesn't demonize cops who inform on other cops if those accusations are justified. Captain Gregson is disgusted when he learns that a former partner planted evidence when a suspect couldn't be positively connected to a crime they were sure he'd committed. Bell himself previously reported a superior for being a Dirty Cop, which led to the cop's protegee try to get revenge because her association with a corrupt cop had tanked her career prospects.
• In Flashpoint, every time an officer takes a lethal shot, they have to talk to the Special Investigations Unit. While the officers tend to view it as a nuisance, the investigators are said to be generally fair and just there to make sure everything's above board. The one exception occurs in "Acceptable Risk" because the IA officer has a preexisting grudge against Parker, and even she eventually admits she was wrong.
• Forever (2014): This is who Lieutenant Reese calls in to handle things when Jo has to arrest a small-town sheriff for murder in "The Night in Question".
• Gang Related: In "Sangre Por Sangre", IA agent Paul Carter interviews Ryan during an investigation into the death of his partner, James Tanner. He becomes a recurring character, appearing often once it's discovered there's a mole in the LAPD (Ryan himself).
• In an episode of Hill Street Blues, an IA officer is sent undercover as a secretary to investigate the Hill Street station. The cops uncover her identity and are severely annoyed. Detective Larue also has a few run-ins with them whenever his drinking problem or his Cowboy Cop tendencies get the better of him; one story arc involves him getting dropped in the ordure with IA by a supposedly undercover Narcotics officer who'd offered him a bundle of twenties to go away and not blow his cover. Not surprisingly, the drug squad cop turns out to be dirty.
• At the end of Season 5 of Homicide: Life on the Street, Stuart Gharty (introduced as a patrolman during Season 4) has made Detective and moved over to the Internal Investigations Division. Beau Felton, who drew a long suspension after Season 3, is also now in IID to help them and the Auto Squad find out whether someone is leaking information to a ring of car thieves. After Felton is murdered, Gharty draws a lot of flack from the homicide unit for sending him into the ring undercover — a situation far more risky than what he was willing to face as a patrolman.
• Inspector Lynley gets suspended and hauled up in front of IA after being accused of using excessive force on a suspect at the end of the episode "Word of God". He is eventually cleared after his partner Barbara Havers steps up and speaks out in his defense.
• Ironside (1967):
  • In one episode, an Internal Affairs investigator firmly, yet fairly, investigates Sergeant Ed Brown when a composite sketch of a man who fatally beat a known criminal bears a resemblance to Ed. Ultimately, it turns out that the culprit merely resembled Ed, and there are no hard feelings on either side.
  • In one episode, Internal Affairs investigate Ironside after he's framed for corruption. Ed works alongside them to make sure that they either vindicate or convict Ironside based on the facts.
• JAG: In the season five episode "Contemptuous Words", Harm is suspected of having written an unsigned op-ed piece in newspaper denigrating the then-president Bill Clinton, and internal affairs are brought in.
  Admiral Chegwidden: Hell, I tried to keep this thing in-house, but to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, pursuit of the matter’s been turned over to the Office of Inspector General.
  Commander Rabb: OIG? Admiral, they land a crooked JAG, their budget goes up.
  Admiral Chegwidden: Oh, hell yes.
• Every time that Internal Affairs appears in a Law & Order series, they're unhelpful at best. On the other hand, the main characters will occasionally take it upon themselves to play this role if their case leads to a police officer as a suspect — they have no love for or loyalty to dirty cops.
  • Law & Order:
    • "Poison Ivy" begins with a police shooting, which (in a subversion) is initially cleared by Internal Affairs. Greevy and a reluctant Logan aren't so sure, and do their own investigating.
    • In "The Blue Wall", Captain Cragen becomes a target of an IA investigation, under suspicion of aiding in a serious case of tampering with evidence. The rivalry between the line cops and IA is a major subplot of the episode.
      Logan: You know why cops hate IAD? Because you couldn't convict a five-year-old of selling watered-down lemonade.
    • Jesse Martin's last episode has a somewhat sympathetic IA detective played by Anthony Anderson. At one point, he refers to his two-year assignment to IA being almost up, and the following week, what do you know, he's transferred to Homicide and replaces Martin's character.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
    • There's actually an entire episode wherein The Faceless IA bureaucrats got the story of how main characters "allegedly" beat up a kidnapper to get the location of a missing girl. Perplexingly, Cragen's indignation at Internal Affairs' position that beating up the guy poses a clear violation of even the kidnapper's human rights is presented as being the unquestionably morally righteous position. The episode even ended on a "those two dead people's rights"-style quote.
    • Then there's the case wherein IA attempts to "disappear" several girls to cover up an anthrax threat. They're only returned after the timely intervention of Olivia and a plucky reporter who expose their acts to the public.
    • Pretty much one particular IA agent will jump at any accusation to Elliot Stabler no matter how obvious that said accusation is fake (such as a boy claiming he was molested by him to get the charges dropped to a husband having his wife beat him up so they can claim that Elliot was the one that did it) and no matter what he will fully believe the other side until solid evidences is shown they are lying.
    • Later episodes in the series play with this a little bit more, giving IA officer Tucker (who comes to largely represent IA as a whole) chances to show that he's not inhuman. In one episode, he is said to have actually apologized for jumping the gun, though this doesn't keep him from making the same mistake later on. Subsequent episodes show him being tough but also fair, making sure the detectives are on the level but not trying to railroad them in the same way. He eventually forms a friendship with Olivia despite their past differences, and for a brief time, they become more than friends.
    • The episode "Internal Affairs" takes this to another level. Much to Cragen's shock, Tucker requests help from both Cassidy and SVU in investigating a corrupt precinct where some of the officers were alleged to be raping women while on patrol. Tucker's dedication to the case is sincere, but he also puts Cassidy at risk without adequate warning, which doesn't endear him to the unit.
  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent has an episode in which Logan and Wheeler have to go to an IA meeting after a fight that involved some firefighters. Wheeler is nervous, while Logan (who is a Cowboy Cop with one very thick discipline file) tells her not to worry.
  • Law & Order: Organized Crime slices this both ways. The fact Stabler left under a cloud and has a number of shootings is mentioned throughout the first season. In the second season, the mastermind behind the first season's plots manages to successfully publicly paint Elliot as a dirty cop in multiple instances. However, a more heroic side to IA is shown in the second half of the second season, where Elliot goes undercover to investigate corruption by a cop he had a personal history with. The initial assumption for Elliot is that Donnelly is simply The Dragon under the Marcy Killers, the gang his squad is targeting, but he quickly realizes he's in fact running his own gang known as The Brotherhood made up of cops and the Big Bad for that half of the season.
• Life on Mars (2006): It is revealed that Sam Tyler is an undercover cop assigned to Gene Hunt's unit to expose his corruption and rule-breaking so that he could be replaced with a more progressive superior — except he lost his memory and ended up going native. Of course, it's probably All Just a Dream anyway.
• In Line of Duty, the Anti-Corruption Unit AC-12 are the protagonists and are depicted as decent people who are performing a necessary role. The problem is that, as with most decent people, they all have their own significant faults, and the Crapsack World full of Black-and-Grey Morality they're situated in means that their investigations rarely result in happy endings.
• Luke Cage (2016): Detective Misty Knight's partner Rafael Scarfe is on the Stokes crime family's payroll. While he's mostly able to squeak by without arousing suspicions, things begin falling apart for him after he murders Wilfredo "Chico" Diaz, a petty criminal who was part of a botched robbery to steal money from Cottonmouth. Internal Affairs begins cracking down on him, and after removing a van full of Cottonmouth's guns from an evidence locker, he decides to blackmail Cottonmouth for $100,000 as hazard pay. This culminates in him being fatally shot by Cottonmouth, and after his death, a lot of the cases he worked with Misty are found to have been tainted and any convictions resulting from them get overturned on appeal.
• Manifest: Michaela becomes concerned that her former fiancée and partner Jared has apparently joined a hate group and is interfering in her investigations. She reports him, and some IA agents pay a visit to the precinct. But when they start to interview her, it's clear they're far more interested in her than in him, asking some pointed questions about how she has conveniently solved so many cases based on intuition and "anonymous tips" instead of actual police work.
• The Mentalist: Recurring Character LaRoche is a heroic version. He's a Creepy Good internal affairs investigator who barks up several wrong trees, but he's a fair man and the show does quite a bit to show that an internal affairs department is necessary. Various criminals have deeply infiltrated the CBI and the heroes do get up to some shockingly improper Cowboy Cop antics.
• The Straw Character element is subverted in Motive. Sqt. Saunders, an IA detective brought in to do a bullshit hatchet job on Vega, is visibly furious at having his department misused in political games and quickly proves to be a Reasonable Authority Figure who helps out the Homicide Department in several future episodes.
• Murphy's Law: Detective Sergeant Murphy gets seconded to the Professional Standards unit for one episode, after the apparent suicide of a South Asian detective in the drug squad leads to suspicions that he might have been the victim of racist bullying from his teammates. It turns out that his boss and another officer making money on the side by under-reporting seized drugs and selling off the excess, and the dead officer was actually murdered to silence him when he refused to go along with it.
• In Nash Bridges, this is the specialty of detective Caitlin Cross. She's only shown performing these duties in two episodes: her first one, in which she investigates Nash for the killing of three supposedly dirty cops, and another in which she investigates Evan for allegedly stealing evidence.
• In addition to investigating crimes committed against members of the Navy and Marines, NCIS is frequently those military branches' internal affairs bureau... which doesn't always endear them to the servicemen and -women.
• NCIS: Los Angeles has Detective Ellen Whiting investigating Deeks. She's introduced determined to see Deeks go down but after he saves her life and tells her the truth, she backs off accepting that he's a good cop, though she's still willing to pressure him into helping her investigations.
• Parodied in NTSF:SD:SUV::: the Internal Affairs agent is Ellie Kemper, who's as friendly as possible, but everyone loathes her anyway. Even the robot spits on her.
• One episode of NUMB3RS has the FBI working with an internal affairs officer from LAPD to investigate a cop who's been abusing his position to rape women. She's initially reluctant to believe that an LAPD officer could be responsible and is somewhat insensitive to the victims, at one point sending a uniformed officer to transport a victim and completely missing the point when Megan calls her on it. Ultimately, she redeems herself and helps them catch the rapist.
• Sgt. Martens of NYPD Blue was a rare three-dimensional example. He was zealous, but not to the point of being a caricature. He once investigated an officer who had fired his gun and decided the shooting was reasonable given the situation. He later confessed that this was the kind of situation he hated — he knew that the cop, while honest, wasn't really suited for police work, and that, by making him "right" on the shooting, Martens was virtually guaranteeing that there would be more trouble somewhere down the road.
• The IA officers in Person of Interest come across as well-meaning but incompetent. Despite the fact that a ring of Dirty Cops known as HR is one of the major villains in the series, they have never caught any of them without outside help, and over the course of the second season get used as patsies by corrupt cops to strike at honest cops on three separate occasions.
• Phoenix (1992) has the Major Crimes Squad constantly butting heads with the Victorian Police internal affairs unit, nicknamed the 'toecutters' (after a notorious Melbourne gang which tortured people by cutting their toes off) — unsurprising, as this series was Ripped from the Headlines at a time when the Victorian police were catching a lot of flack for their methods, especially police shootings (explored particularly in the Law Procedural spin-off Janus). Ironically, Jock Brennan, who led the Major Crimes investigation in the first season, returns as an internal affairs investigator later on, showing not the least bit of sympathy for his former colleagues.
• Rizzoli & Isles: In "What Doesn't Kill You", Internal Affairs investigates Jane in the aftermath of her shooting of Paddy Doyle. Her bending of the rules to protect Maura makes it look like she might have been in Doyle's pocket. Ultimately, Doyle's chief mole inside the police is revealed to be the head of Internal Affairs.
• Done in Saving Grace when Grace ends up with a temporary new partner, Abby. Even though Abby doesn't find anything wrong with the squad, Da Chief is still pissed off, and Ham lets rats out at Abby.
• Internal Affairs frequently appears in The Shield, and the entire arc of Season 5 revolves around a particularly persistent IA officer hounding the Strike Team. Lt. Jon Kavanaugh begins as a straight, if extremely unconventional, IAD officer before metamorphosing into a Cowboy Cop himself, with a stop at Large Ham along the way.
• In the Silent Witness episode "In Plain Sight", Internal Affairs member Rachel Sharpe is investigating the Police Firearms division (based off SCO19) over the supposedly justified shooting of a teenage girl. She's disliked immensely by the officers but is shown to be trying to do a necessary role despite her flaws. She's also proven to be absolutely correct when it's revealed that the shooting was bad and one of the officers is a murderer.
• In Sledge Hammer!, the routine IA check goes pretty well, much to Captain Trunk's relief, until Sledge shows up. After witnessing the usual Sledge method of processing a suspect, the IA officer demands to see Lieutenant Hammer's service record, which has been carefully hidden from him. Rather than the usual slim file, it is brought to him... in a wheelbarrow. Sledge's file doesn't just have a filing cabinet of its own, it has a room of its own.
• In Southland, when the rookie cop has to shoot a perp in the line of duty, he's actually told by his veteran partner to get everything out in the open with IA, who will make sure everything goes okay.
• Space Precinct has a Bottle Episode in which Officers Brogan and Haldane are both on desk duty after an officer-involved shooting. The actual IA officer only gets a limited amount of screentime, as the focus rapidly shifts to figuring out who is coercing witnesses and dumping evidence to make Brogan look like a trigger-happy Cowboy Cop.
• Stargate-verse: In the later seasons of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, this function is performed by the IOA. They're sometimes right, but most of the time the IOA as a whole is treated as a bunch of Obstructive Bureaucrats. The most important (plot-wise) of them is Woolsey, who starts as one of SG-1's detractors, while raising quite a few valid objections (like "Shouldn't we consider stopping the project that nearly caused the destruction of our planet on various occasions?"), becomes more a Reasonable Authority Figure, and finally gets at the head of Atlantis in the last seasons.
• Starsky & Hutch unsurprisingly plays this one dead straight, with the Internal Affairs officers being presented as unreasonable and unlikable bastards for wanting one of our heroes arrested after his ex-wife is shot dead in his apartment with his gun and stolen property is found in his car. More unusually, in another episode, the head of Internal Affairs is actually leading a ring of vigilante cops (although he had been viewed as a good guy who the heroes respected before his vigilante actions were revealed).
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  • In "Trials and Tribble-ations", a Time Police department of sorts known as "Temporal Investigations" scrutinizes Captain Sisko over having traveled through time. These guys soften up at the end and are generally just doing their job — as even well-intentioned changes to the timeline can be catastrophic, they need to be hard on everyone. They also lament when Captain Kirk is brought up, as he's traveled through time way too often for their tastes.
  • In "Inquisition", Bashir goes through a very harsh investigation from I.A. Deputy Director Sloan, who believes that Bashir is The Mole for the Dominion. It turns out that Sloan is actually an agent for Section 31, and once he determines that Bashir is innocent of wrongdoing, he decides to recruit Bashir, and he doesn't take "No" for an answer.
• A Third Watch storyline had Fair Cop patrol officer Sasha Monroe revealed as an Internal Affairs detective working undercover to investigate the death (actually a murder) of a suspect responsible for the shooting of another cop. When her deception is discovered, the other cops are so disgusted by her that she is actually left on her own while pursuing a dangerous suspect and nearly killed by him.
• One episode of Unforgettable has the team investigating a murdered cop and finding that the deceased was being investigated by IA because he was suddenly able to pay off his wife's extensive medical bills in full despite having maxed out credit cards. At the end of the episode, the IA guy closes the corruption investigation, having found that the deceased acquired the money legally by selling his boat.
• FBI-focused White Collar has a recurring villain in the first two seasons in OPR Agent Fowler, who turns out to be a case of Lawman Gone Bad: his wife was killed and then he killed her assassin, leaving himself open to blackmail by the Big Bad.
• The Wire:
  • The show featured one of the more cynical takes on the role of IID, particularly in the first season. Major Reed, the head of IID, is Deputy Commissioner Ervin Burrell's pitbull, preventing the Barksdale detail of Cedric Daniels from pursuing leads that Burrell doesn't want them pursuing. It's got nothing to do with making sure Daniels and his team were following the law; it was purely about making sure they are following Burrell's orders.
  • IID gets used cynically again later in the show. Herc (who is white) causes problems for Tommy Carcetti (newly elected white mayor in a largely black city) when Herc use excessive force and humiliates a black preacher he arrested on false information Bubbles gave him. If Carcetti caves to the deacons who want Herc gone over this, he looks weak, and like someone who can be pushed around. If he doesn't, then he's a white man who doesn't care when a white cop pushes a pillar of the black community around. Burrell proves he's just as capable of playing political games by having IID come down on Herc for other reasons unconnected to the preacher incident, allowing the black community to be satisfied that Herc got canned without making Carcetti look weak.
• Without a Trace has shown that not even the FBI is safe from Internal Affairs, as they have to deal with the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility). One storyline has them coming very close to polygraphing two agents because they're suspicious (correctly) of their account of the shooting of a suspect.

Roleplays

• In The Gamer's Alliance, when a bunch of thieves from the Union manage to sneak the captive elven necromancer Razravkar Dominus out of the cells in the Anti Mage Police Headquarters, Captain Schtolteheim Reinbach III orders Lieutenant Irinthiel Maurath to assemble a small group of trustworthy and cunning operatives from within the Anti Mage Police to not only locate the renegade necromancer but also to investigate the possibility of the Anti Mage Police having corrupt cops within it. This group becomes known as Shadowstrike and remains literally unknown to the rest of the AMP as Irinthiel reports only to Captain Reinbach and has full authority to arrest and investigate any AMP officer to discover whether they're moles or genuine servants of the Magicracy of Alent.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: This is the job of the Quaesitors, the members of the Order who police the actions of other mages. House Guernicus is notable for all its members automatically being Quaesitors (to the point the house is nicknamed "House Quaesitoris"); members of other houses may become Quaesitors, but they tend to get sidelong looks from members of House Guernicus for it.
• In Nomine:
  • The forces of Heaven are policed by the servants of Dominic, Archangel of Judgment. Although efficient at their job and sworn to be just, they are perpetually seen as cold-hearted pokerspines by most angels, particularly those who serve Archangel Michael. (Their opposite numbers in Hell, by the way, couldn't be more different.)
  • Seraphim tend to be used as this within the Archangels' personal organizations, due to their supernatural ability to suss out lies and deceit. They're often tasked with keeping an eye of their fellow angels in general, and, if an Archangel suspects that some of their followers are hiding dissonance or plotting something, they will usually send Seraphim to investigate.
  • Alaemon, the Demon Prince of Secrets, directs a tremendous numbers of secret societies, cults, and spy networks with which to study and control other Princes and humanity. These all spy constantly on one another, but one specific group, the Black Crescent, is utilized specifically to keep tabs on the rest. They perform external espionage insofar as their covers within other groups require, but their true purpose is to observe the other rings and feed information on them up their own chain and to the Prince. Of course, Secrets being Secrets, Alaemon can never be quite sure that they aren't really on some other payroll, and that all the information is reported accurately...
• Paranoia: IntSec is this to the Troubleshooters (and citizens in general)... and they have their own Internal Affairs, which is even more universally hated and feared than IntSec in general.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Inquisition serve as Internal Affairs for the rest of the Imperium — and for themselves, as each Inquisitor has unlimited operational authority and the power to judge when another Inquisitor has lost it. They also have the authority to burn whole planets on the suspicion of corruption.
  • The Minotaurs are the High Lords of Terra's personal Space Marine chapter. Their main purpose seems to be fighting other loyalist chapters that have done something to piss off the High Lords.
  • According to the Horus Heresy books, the Emperor also intended for the Space Wolves to be this, specializing them to hunt down other Space Marines that went rogue, but apart from the usual battles against Chaos Space Marines they don't seem to do this much anymore; Leman Russ realized, after the sheer brutality of the attack against Prospero, that if the Wolves kept insisting on behaving like executioners, they would find no support or allies.
  • The Ordo Malleus serves as IA for the Inquisition. Although specifically consorting with daemons, after all, what other reason could there be for an Inquisitor to go bad?

Video Games

• Battlefield Hardline: IA play a peripheral role in the plot, as a couple of early story missions see Detectives Mendoza and Dao doing some off-the-books surveillance of fellow narcotics officer Detective Stoddard, who they and Captain Dawes suspect but cannot yet prove is on the take. Unfortunately, it turns out that all three of Mendoza's colleagues are in on the racket, and the whole exercise has been one long con to set him up as their fall-guy.
• BlazBlue: The special Zero Squadron a.k.a. Wings of Justice of NOL Army is part this, part Secret Police. They aren't officially part of the Army and more of a "mobile judge" that monitors the activities of other squadrons and will not tolerate any kind of rebellion from them. They act under direct orders of the Imperator.
• In Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past, the Concordian Flying Squad was created for the purpose of weeding out corruption among the ranks of the city's actual police force.
• The Seekers of the Chantry fill this role in regard to the Templars in Dragon Age.
  • In Dragon Age II, one of them interrogates a dwarf in trying to find the Champion of Kirkwall, who may or may not be responsible for the war that caused the Chantry to fall to pieces. The Seekers are, actually, a study of what happens when IA does nothing, or acts far too late. All hell breaks loose as the mages (innocent or not) fight back against an extermination order that Meredith delivers under false pretenses. In the Exiled Prince DLC, it's shown that Leliana had arrived in Kirkwall during Act III to determine the situation and whether an Exalted March should be performed against the Free Marches. Elthina, Prince Sebastian Vael and (possibly) Hawke argue that the situation isn't that far gone and peace could still be achieved. It seems more that Internal Affairs was keeping an eye on the situation and watching all the key players closely, but they were blindsided when Anders disrupted the game by tipping over the chessboard.
  • Discussed further in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The Seekers had investigated Meredith earlier, but they found so many maleficar in Kirkwall that they declared Meredith's harsh methods justified. Cassandra muses that if they had kept looking and examined the root causes, things might have gone very differently. Scattered conversations in other parts of the game strongly imply that Kirkwall was not the only place that the Seekers dropped the ball.
  • After open revolt broke out, the Seekers did act in at least one instance... when they instigated the Annulment (read: massacre) of the Dairsmuid Circle because it was too lenient.
  • The flavor text for a unique shield tells of an incident centuries ago where the Seekers actively helped the Templars cover up the fact that an Annulment was carried out under false pretenses to prevent anyone from learning that a high-ranking Templar was a mage-hating serial killer.
• In the DLCs for Fallout: New Vegas, particularly Dead Money (also mentioned in Old World Blues, and would have featured in the canceled Fallout: Van Buren), it's revealed that the Brotherhood of Steel possesses its own equivalent of Internal Affairs, referred to as the Circle of Steel. According to Chris Avellone, it was originally formed by "hardliners" in the Brotherhood who felt the organization was straying from its root values and needed to be corrected. They doubled as a "secret black ops (more stealthy/tech ninja/assassins) branch... becoming unhinged through extreme use of Stealth Boy technology, and causing fractures within the political structure of the BoS." The group is represented in Fallout canon by member Christine Royce, sent to hunt down the rogue elder Elijah.
• The typical dynamic is completely inverted in Heavy Rain: FBI Agent Norman Jayden, sent in to solve the Origami Killer case, is constantly abused by Knight Templar Rabid Cop Carter Blake, and Da Chief is a plain old Jerkass.
• Maxim Rukov, the protagonist of KGB (a.k.a. Conspiracy), is a special KGB investigator who is determined to reveal huge corruption in his own organization.
• Mass Effect:
  • Gianna Parasini is an Internal Affairs agent for the Noveria Development Corporation, assigned to eliminate corruption. In possibly one of the rarest examples of this trope ever, helping her out with her investigation is the right thing to do. She reappears in the second game and you can help her out again as a sidequest. Though despite the name, the NDC's Internal Affairs is not a "police police", but rather a company police^note Noveria being a corporate world. The company's directors aren't that fussed about corruption in general, but come down like a ton of bricks when it starts losing them money.
  • The Spectres are cool enough that they are their own internal affairs department. One goes rogue, the Council sends another to off him.
• Space Station 13 has two takes on this:
  • Certain servers/codebases have an entire game mode literally called "Internal Affairs Agents". The inner lore varies between servers, but the general gist is that the internal affairs agents are all hired assassins out to compete with each other in a not-so-friendly bout of "is that an e-bow in your pocket or are you just happy to see me". Some servers reward their succesful murdering by allowing them to do more murder.
  • Others (typically roleplay-heavy servers) have repurposed the older "Lawyer" job into "Internal Affairs" which functions much as the job title implies. Internal Affairs Agents are usually only seen because someone has been arrested and feels that they're being mistreated by Security (e.g. excessively long jail time, etc.) and so they've called for a third party to investigate. In practice the actual clout of a given "IAA" depends on how much the admins back them up, and how seriously everyone takes things to begin with.
  • Nanotrasen Representatives can also serve as this when an Admin spawns in as one/allows a veteran player to do so in order to roleplay an inspection or other corporate visit. They are theoretically allowed to override the captain's orders in the event of major emergencies, but they mostly fax command over the crew's conduct.

Web Animation

• The UNSC Oversight Subcommittee is initially presented as this in Red vs. Blue, with the Chairman exchanging letters with the Director of Project Freelancer at the beginning of each episode in season 6, ultimately resulting in the Chairman sending law enforcement personnel to arrest the Director and shut down the project. However, it is inverted come season 12 when the Reds and Blues learn that the Space Pirates they had been battling, and further the so-called Insurrectionists who Wash and Carolina fought during their time with Freelancer, were really the private security force hired by the Chairman to do his dirty work.

Webcomics

• Officer McGillicutty, a Guest Character of the Week in Mac Hall, is told by IA to hand in his badge for being too dangerous and does the Cowboy Cop bit fairly straight, even visiting a Hooker with a Heart of Gold. However, he ends up getting to the protagonist's house long after Animal Control has solved their monkey problem, so he really is that incompetent. The insults they leave him with, combined with his face, kind of make you feel bad for the guy, though.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Para Ventura and Captain Gasca (codenamed "Usar" and "Manis", respectively) turn out to be agents for UNS Internal Affairs Intelligence (or Int-Aff-Int for short). Para is considered disposable enough for them to try and remote-trigger the neurotoxin capsule in her teeth, and later the bomb in her neck, after her cover is blown. When Admiral Emm offers Gasca a promotion after Colonel Krum is killed, he wisely refuses in order to keep a low profile.
  • Captain Landon is in charge of internal affairs for the Dom Atlantis police, which leads him to investigate their sabotaged weapons and ends up with him killing several nanite-suborned officers single-clawed.

Websites

• SCP Foundation: The Foundation has multiple departments taking care of internal affairs. MTF Epsilon-11 "Nine-tailed Fox" handles internal security, sometimes with support from the O5 Council's personal task force, Alpha-1 "Red Right Hand." There is also an Internal Security department, and an Internal Tribunal department that handles crimes of abnormal nature that normal justice systems are unable to tackle. Finally, there is the Ethics Committee, which oversees everything in the Foundation, up to and including the O5 Council. The general stereotype of the Ethics Committee is that they're powerless weaklings who just rubberstamp all the cruel procedures, but they are in fact very powerful and deliberately downplay their own influence.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: The episode "P.O.V." revolves around an Internal Affairs investigation into a failed sting where the intended target, a Gotham drug lord, managed to escape and take the two million dollars in seed money that the police had laid in as bait.

Real Life

• Truth in Television: In David Simon's book Homicide, one of the precinct detectives is investigating a police shooting (which is done by the Homicide department in Baltimore), and ends up completely disgusted almost to the point of retirement to discover the fact that his brother officers peddle the same lies and bullshit as the murder suspects he brings in.
• The hostility is something every inspection agency has to deal with, the FDA vs. drug companies, union inspectors vs. the management. This is serious enough that the United States Department of Agriculture actually has a memorial wall commemorating inspectors killed in line of duty.
• The London Metropolitan Police's internal affairs unit actually resorted to wiretapping and covert surveillance operations against corrupt officers at one point in The '70s. They needed to.
• France has the IGPN (General Inspection of the National Police). They're nicknamed "The Police of polices" and "beef-carrots"^note after beef and carrot stew, for letting suspects "stew in their own juices".

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