The portrayal of violence is pervasive in contemporary American television programming. While a number of social scientific and psychology-based studies have been carried out to study how audiences react to fictional portrayals of violence, far fewer studies have addressed what portion of that violence is carried out by officers of the law those acting under the color of authority in television shows. This study employs content analysis to measure and analyze such violence across a range of contemporary television crime drama programs in order to identify the justification of violence...