Rule Number 9: Never Go Anywhere Without A Knife (NCIS)

“Rule number 9: Never go anywhere without a knife” (Gibbs, NCIS). Just like this rule is not a real rule in the Navy, many things seen on crime television dramas are not real either. NCIS is a popular crime drama on television that follows 3 main investigators who work for NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, that conduct criminal investigations involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. In season 1, episode 20 “Missing”, a Marine, Bill Atlas, is kidnaped by Vanessa, one of four girls who Atlas and his fellow Marines tried to bring back to the United States. Their plan failed and Vanessa was the only one to make it back alive. To get revenge on the men, she set out to kill each one of them by putting them through the same death as her
She later is not able to find a record of Mark Cohen after he got a bad conduct discharge, and later finds out that he is dead. The next day, she is able to process fingerprints and find out that there is a match but with no name in the system, only that they were on Carol Power’s credit card receipt from the bar. In reality, it takes much longer to get all of this information, not just two days. It can take on average two days to two years to process DNA evidence (Connecticut General Assembly). Crime shows like to speed up the process of DNA collection, or any evidence collection, and analysis because it would not be good television if the characters had to wait a year or two to get their evidence back and make an identification on a person. The third problem is the speed at which the detectives are able to get confessions and information out of the suspects. In the episode, Gibbs interviewed Carol Powers, a suspect in the disappearance of Atlas because of her current affair with him. Within a minute, she revels all that she knows about Atlas and what he told her because he hinted at her possible attack because of her association with Atlas.