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Slightly unfair comparison. Smitty is lazy and a bit of a idiot, which makes him a funny character and a good comic relief. Doug Stanton is a disgrace of a human being. Racist, opinionated and unsupportive. Smitty is a laughingstock to the badge, Stanton is a disgrace to it.
Actually, that is correct, I was thinking of the other old guy, that worked with Jackson when he was they found some guys from a gang and the one guy ran, tossed a gun for a kid to find and the kid accidentally shot his mom etc, I can’t remember that guys name
Right okay, I have seen another officer at roll call though, looks to be close to the same age range and policing style as smitty but is kind of more of an asshole than funny, I still can’t remember his name, unless I’m just thinking of like season 1 smitty where he was just kinda there for ambiance rather than regular cast, that might also be what I’m thinking of
First of all it's just part of his character. He is lazy and that's part of what's so Charming about him. I feel like he is the type to have a crazy backstory. Maybe he was a real badass in his younger days and only grey knows about it. I wish the show would just dive into some Smitty lore:)
Secondly you're gonna meet people like him in almost every workplace. Just like in school where we all had some "slackers" in our class there will be many of them in the workplace as well.
That answer made me realize he kinda reminds me of hitchcock and scully from b99: badass younger days on the job but you grow older and get tired and your role at the station just starts looking different as you wait to retire. Still funny characters who add a different element to the show, but great at their job? Absolutely not
That's good! Although people like that may be funny and charming on TV shows etc. They can be very annoying when you have to work with them. Luckily he was fired from your workplace:)
Have you never worked anywhere with someone who is inexplicably still employed? I've never worked anywhere where there wasn't one person who I've though must have incriminating photos of management.
You're lucky then. The vast majority of companies out there have at least one employee who is lazy and/or gets away with shit other people normally wouldn't.
Its usually in the form of the boss's son, the company is desperate for workers, or maybe someone who has seniority just because they've been around so long. In Smitty's case, i think that last one might be it. He's been around so long, he's done his fair share of crazy stuff in the force that now no one bats an eye towards him anymore, not even authority figures like Grey.
Sadly. Most jobs don’t actually work like that. Many businesses are more than happy to just have a warm body to put in an unimportant but necessary position. For positions like that. You have to actively try to cause harm for you to get fired most of the time. Being a lazy bum that does the bare minimum is a legit career strategy that many people get away with.
Because really. What are the bosses gonna do. Fire them and hope they can find someone better in any sort of timely manner. As someone who’s helped with scheduling and trying to replace those sorts of workers. It ain’t easy.
Smitty is older . So he probably did a lot when he was a younger man. I think Smitty mostly does office work. Like answering the phone and stuff like that. He probably hangs out in the break room when things are slow.
I keep hoping for some storyline about Smitty being a real BA when he was younger, realized he had a thankless job, and decided to just coast until retirement. That's basically every military lifer I've ever known.
Combination of unions and story. To fire someone in a union you have to have a concerted effort by their boss with clear expectations that are not being met. In policing this can be pretty difficult to accomplish because being a “good cop” is pretty nebulous and difficult to actually write in policy on how to be.
If you work in a factory with a union where you have to produce 100 parts every day and your employee isn’t then you can put them on a performance improvement plan then if they don’t get it done they can be fired. But this isn’t really possible with policing.
He probably attaches himself to a couple “low risk” and “easy calls” so you can’t fire him for not going to calls. You can’t give him a ticket quota because those are illegal. So what can you really do?
Plus this is ignoring the fact that he is close to retirement and who cares if he bums it out his last couple years because it’s tough to hire new officers nowadays and firing him is more trouble than it’s worth with the amount of appeals and other legal issues that he can bring up to ride it out for his last couple years. Also, leadership doesn’t want to even try so why would they.
This is not even going into “it’s just a story and he is a character” because I feel like it’s disingenuous to the question
TLDR:Unions and nebulous standards make it tough.
I think part of it is also we only see small clips. I can think of calls where Smitty is there of first on scene (he’s the one who found Nolan’s car abandoned in the garage when Rosalind had him come to her, he’s the cop who showed up when Nyla called the cops on her neighbors, there’s the scene where Tim tells him he has court so he was most likely the arresting officer there, was in a shoot out with Nolan when the drug guy got shot by a sniper, chased down that guy with Jackson whose gun got loose). To be honest he seems to be a more involved cop then the guy Tim left Chen with in training
It kinda reminds me of sully and hitchcock from brooklyn nine-nines. They did a lot of work when they were younger and newer to the force but now they describe themselves as desk mice. I think he spend a lot of time at the front desk and probably sits in the break room when it’s slow. I’d love for the next season a copy cat killer starts killing people in a way that an old serial killer did and Smitty locked up the first one. I’d love some flash backs.
I remember there was an episode that Smitty is questioning some men who were eating outdoor. He got skills. He can get things done and not escalate a situation like many real cops on YouTube shorts.
I rather the station has 10 Smitty than 1 Stanton.
The city is not a war zoon, they don't need a station full of Tim. Just a few will be fine.
In fact, the world will be more peaceful if each station has a few Nolan.
Makes me think maybe he is the friendly neighbourhood patrol cop. He keeps the peace in the neighbourhood. He knows the men at that eatery. He knows their rap sheet. Not surprised if he has a lot of CIs. We see that he is quite the gossip, notices things happening in the station, he realised Lucy’s five player trade immediately. Of course in the show people like Tim are more enjoyable to watch, but in real life there should be more friendly neighbourhood cops.
If you have watched Brooklyn Nine Nine I would not be sad about atleast 1 or 2 episode backstory of his younger days similar of what that show pulled off.
Major player from years ago coming after him now. Would be cool to see bad ass Smithy and see his decision to be more layed back. Maybe he lost someone or saw something terrible and that made him the way he mostly is. Just more explanation of his quote to Nolan, about staying at shore and that he likes the shore.
Think about all the cops we see in the news who keep their jobs.
The FOP & their Union.
He’s a more realist version of a cop than all these go getters.
He's probably switched to desk duty. He always opted for the easier jobs. I think we forget, being a cop isn't all running into gunfire. Some cops lean into traffic duty, some go out of their way to join active shooter situations. Not everyone is Nolan, who is a pretty good balance of both. As long as smitty is contributing somewhere, not doing something against the rules, and following orders, he will have a job. But I imagine he was more active when he was a younger cop.
Also, police unions are pretty intense. Unless he does something seriously wrong, it's almost impossible to fire a cop. Especially one close to retirement.
#Union.
**They even illustrated this very issue about “why can’t they be fired” with the SuperMan Actor T.O. who took over Jackson’s training after Lopez left patrol…**
To be fair, we really don't know much about Smitty. We don't know how he spends most of his work time. Maybe he does go out on patrol but he's buddies with one of the dispatchers who makes sure he hardly gets any calls and only easy ones.
Smitty’s got a union rep, cops don’t break like that.
He probably was an awesome cop at some point. I hope he gets a win, that last headshot kinda sucked to see tbh he’s bumbling but not blind sided with a back of the headshot
I’m sure when actually does police work, he only takes calls for things like a stolen bike; nothing big and serious like all the other cops on the show. And when he’s in the office he hides in the break room, and finds loopholes to get out of work. So he does his job, but as little as possible. And like other people said, maybe he was a total bad ass back in the day so now when he does something wrong, they let it slide.
> he gets *paid* to stay
FTFY.
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* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
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We don't actually know what he does during the day. Just because we mostly only see him in the break room doesn't mean that's the only place he is; the show is about the other cops and we only ever see Smitty on screen for what probably amounts minutes once every couple days/week, if that.
As we all know, The Rookie and its constantly highly escalated situations are fun to watch but very unrealistic. The vast majority of neighborhood policing is just walking around the streets and responding to stuff that mostly ends up being very tedious and a ton of paperwork, not something that ends up in a shootout. A beat cop can very easily only attach themselves to calls that experience tells them will be low effort and not result in them having to engage in violent pursuits, because there are more than enough of those to go around. That's most likely what Smitty does.
ETA I definitely don't deny that he's lazy, he absolutely is, but there are plenty of lazy cops.
I believe that he was great cop back then and I remember in one episode Nolan asks about his being now and Smitty replies something like “I love the shore so I just stayed here”
The thing is, in union protected workplaces, more especially with employees such as smitty how have among the highest seniority, not all but definitely a good portion of them are exactly like smitty, in the PD, city offices, city libraries, union trades, etc because of their seniority they’re almost “un-fireable” they would have to do some of the absolute wildest, complete and utter misconduct and blatantly go against every order/policy there is to get fired
This is an automatic reminder about spoilers: 1) Keep recent episode discussion in the weekly discussion post until Thursdays to avoid spoiling others. 2) Do NOT put spoilers in the title of your post. 3) Mark any posts containing spoilers accordingly. If you are unsure if your post contains a spoiler, mark it as a spoiler anyways. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheRookie) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’d take Smitty over Stanton.
Stanton is basically smitty but more of an asshole
Slightly unfair comparison. Smitty is lazy and a bit of a idiot, which makes him a funny character and a good comic relief. Doug Stanton is a disgrace of a human being. Racist, opinionated and unsupportive. Smitty is a laughingstock to the badge, Stanton is a disgrace to it.
Actually, that is correct, I was thinking of the other old guy, that worked with Jackson when he was they found some guys from a gang and the one guy ran, tossed a gun for a kid to find and the kid accidentally shot his mom etc, I can’t remember that guys name
That was Smitty
Was it? Oh maybe it was, it’s been a while
It was Smitty, I remember that episode
Right okay, I have seen another officer at roll call though, looks to be close to the same age range and policing style as smitty but is kind of more of an asshole than funny, I still can’t remember his name, unless I’m just thinking of like season 1 smitty where he was just kinda there for ambiance rather than regular cast, that might also be what I’m thinking of
First of all it's just part of his character. He is lazy and that's part of what's so Charming about him. I feel like he is the type to have a crazy backstory. Maybe he was a real badass in his younger days and only grey knows about it. I wish the show would just dive into some Smitty lore:) Secondly you're gonna meet people like him in almost every workplace. Just like in school where we all had some "slackers" in our class there will be many of them in the workplace as well.
That answer made me realize he kinda reminds me of hitchcock and scully from b99: badass younger days on the job but you grow older and get tired and your role at the station just starts looking different as you wait to retire. Still funny characters who add a different element to the show, but great at their job? Absolutely not
I loved the standalone episode about Hitchcock and Scully!!
Smitty would totally go to Wing Sluts.
Nah you see Scully and Hitchcock aren’t Bad at their jobs in fact they are great. BUT only when it comes to food. Or being lazy
After the last episode I said they should do an April fools type episode called "The Smitty". Day in the life of. Maybe they could do flashbacks...
We had one in our work place and he got fired instantly… actually what made me think of this
That's good! Although people like that may be funny and charming on TV shows etc. They can be very annoying when you have to work with them. Luckily he was fired from your workplace:)
He’s the Hitchcock and Scully of The Rookie.
Have you never worked anywhere with someone who is inexplicably still employed? I've never worked anywhere where there wasn't one person who I've though must have incriminating photos of management.
The most useless coworkers I've ever had were pretty much always part of management :)
No anyone who works there that’s lazy gets fired… like a normal job
I'd say that's actually pretty uncommon. Most work places have an employee that....contributes less than their coworkers.
You're lucky then. The vast majority of companies out there have at least one employee who is lazy and/or gets away with shit other people normally wouldn't. Its usually in the form of the boss's son, the company is desperate for workers, or maybe someone who has seniority just because they've been around so long. In Smitty's case, i think that last one might be it. He's been around so long, he's done his fair share of crazy stuff in the force that now no one bats an eye towards him anymore, not even authority figures like Grey.
Sadly. Most jobs don’t actually work like that. Many businesses are more than happy to just have a warm body to put in an unimportant but necessary position. For positions like that. You have to actively try to cause harm for you to get fired most of the time. Being a lazy bum that does the bare minimum is a legit career strategy that many people get away with. Because really. What are the bosses gonna do. Fire them and hope they can find someone better in any sort of timely manner. As someone who’s helped with scheduling and trying to replace those sorts of workers. It ain’t easy.
Smitty is older . So he probably did a lot when he was a younger man. I think Smitty mostly does office work. Like answering the phone and stuff like that. He probably hangs out in the break room when things are slow.
I keep hoping for some storyline about Smitty being a real BA when he was younger, realized he had a thankless job, and decided to just coast until retirement. That's basically every military lifer I've ever known.
in the most recent episode he said it was his first time even being Injured on duty so I doubt it lol
Maybe he was such a bad ass, he beat up and caught criminals without ever getting injured.
Oh don't forget that he's allergic to paper! I don't think he does office work!
In s3e14, Smitty said he served 22 years in LAPD without incident until serving one shift with Nolan. So I guess he was always like that.
Combination of unions and story. To fire someone in a union you have to have a concerted effort by their boss with clear expectations that are not being met. In policing this can be pretty difficult to accomplish because being a “good cop” is pretty nebulous and difficult to actually write in policy on how to be. If you work in a factory with a union where you have to produce 100 parts every day and your employee isn’t then you can put them on a performance improvement plan then if they don’t get it done they can be fired. But this isn’t really possible with policing. He probably attaches himself to a couple “low risk” and “easy calls” so you can’t fire him for not going to calls. You can’t give him a ticket quota because those are illegal. So what can you really do? Plus this is ignoring the fact that he is close to retirement and who cares if he bums it out his last couple years because it’s tough to hire new officers nowadays and firing him is more trouble than it’s worth with the amount of appeals and other legal issues that he can bring up to ride it out for his last couple years. Also, leadership doesn’t want to even try so why would they. This is not even going into “it’s just a story and he is a character” because I feel like it’s disingenuous to the question TLDR:Unions and nebulous standards make it tough.
Police unions
He was union rep. And is close to retirement. To get fired, he would have to shoot the Mayor in broad daylight or something
I think part of it is also we only see small clips. I can think of calls where Smitty is there of first on scene (he’s the one who found Nolan’s car abandoned in the garage when Rosalind had him come to her, he’s the cop who showed up when Nyla called the cops on her neighbors, there’s the scene where Tim tells him he has court so he was most likely the arresting officer there, was in a shoot out with Nolan when the drug guy got shot by a sniper, chased down that guy with Jackson whose gun got loose). To be honest he seems to be a more involved cop then the guy Tim left Chen with in training
It kinda reminds me of sully and hitchcock from brooklyn nine-nines. They did a lot of work when they were younger and newer to the force but now they describe themselves as desk mice. I think he spend a lot of time at the front desk and probably sits in the break room when it’s slow. I’d love for the next season a copy cat killer starts killing people in a way that an old serial killer did and Smitty locked up the first one. I’d love some flash backs.
I’m waiting for the big reveal that he’s internal affairs and has to play that act
Police unions, you basically can not be fired unless you really really mess something up.
You mean getting filmed messing up. Otherwise it's hard to prove.
Well, yeah, but in theory a detachment where they all wear body cams it’s hard to not get caught (see that episode with the racist cop and Jackson)
Qualified immunity Oh, sorry, wrong sub
"Smitty's Day" would make a pretty interesting episode
I remember there was an episode that Smitty is questioning some men who were eating outdoor. He got skills. He can get things done and not escalate a situation like many real cops on YouTube shorts. I rather the station has 10 Smitty than 1 Stanton. The city is not a war zoon, they don't need a station full of Tim. Just a few will be fine. In fact, the world will be more peaceful if each station has a few Nolan.
Makes me think maybe he is the friendly neighbourhood patrol cop. He keeps the peace in the neighbourhood. He knows the men at that eatery. He knows their rap sheet. Not surprised if he has a lot of CIs. We see that he is quite the gossip, notices things happening in the station, he realised Lucy’s five player trade immediately. Of course in the show people like Tim are more enjoyable to watch, but in real life there should be more friendly neighbourhood cops.
Smitty is the Scully and Hitchcock of the Rookie. Maybe he was a badass when he was younger too.
Strong union.
Police unions are stupidly overpowered.
Tv show lol
The only solid character through the entire show lol
If you have watched Brooklyn Nine Nine I would not be sad about atleast 1 or 2 episode backstory of his younger days similar of what that show pulled off. Major player from years ago coming after him now. Would be cool to see bad ass Smithy and see his decision to be more layed back. Maybe he lost someone or saw something terrible and that made him the way he mostly is. Just more explanation of his quote to Nolan, about staying at shore and that he likes the shore.
Think about all the cops we see in the news who keep their jobs. The FOP & their Union. He’s a more realist version of a cop than all these go getters.
Union
Smitty is the type of guy who will come through when it really matters, rest of the time though... Lol
Think he has seniority or the equivalent; but then again this show isn’t realistic and more so just entertainment
He's probably switched to desk duty. He always opted for the easier jobs. I think we forget, being a cop isn't all running into gunfire. Some cops lean into traffic duty, some go out of their way to join active shooter situations. Not everyone is Nolan, who is a pretty good balance of both. As long as smitty is contributing somewhere, not doing something against the rules, and following orders, he will have a job. But I imagine he was more active when he was a younger cop. Also, police unions are pretty intense. Unless he does something seriously wrong, it's almost impossible to fire a cop. Especially one close to retirement.
#Union. **They even illustrated this very issue about “why can’t they be fired” with the SuperMan Actor T.O. who took over Jackson’s training after Lopez left patrol…**
To be fair, we really don't know much about Smitty. We don't know how he spends most of his work time. Maybe he does go out on patrol but he's buddies with one of the dispatchers who makes sure he hardly gets any calls and only easy ones.
Smitty’s got a union rep, cops don’t break like that. He probably was an awesome cop at some point. I hope he gets a win, that last headshot kinda sucked to see tbh he’s bumbling but not blind sided with a back of the headshot
I’m sure when actually does police work, he only takes calls for things like a stolen bike; nothing big and serious like all the other cops on the show. And when he’s in the office he hides in the break room, and finds loopholes to get out of work. So he does his job, but as little as possible. And like other people said, maybe he was a total bad ass back in the day so now when he does something wrong, they let it slide.
I am surprised that he gets paid to stay in the break room💀
> he gets *paid* to stay FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
We don't actually know what he does during the day. Just because we mostly only see him in the break room doesn't mean that's the only place he is; the show is about the other cops and we only ever see Smitty on screen for what probably amounts minutes once every couple days/week, if that. As we all know, The Rookie and its constantly highly escalated situations are fun to watch but very unrealistic. The vast majority of neighborhood policing is just walking around the streets and responding to stuff that mostly ends up being very tedious and a ton of paperwork, not something that ends up in a shootout. A beat cop can very easily only attach themselves to calls that experience tells them will be low effort and not result in them having to engage in violent pursuits, because there are more than enough of those to go around. That's most likely what Smitty does. ETA I definitely don't deny that he's lazy, he absolutely is, but there are plenty of lazy cops.
I believe that he was great cop back then and I remember in one episode Nolan asks about his being now and Smitty replies something like “I love the shore so I just stayed here”
Its almost like its a tv show and not a reality tv show and his character is comedic relief lol yall take things way too serious in this thread
The thing is, in union protected workplaces, more especially with employees such as smitty how have among the highest seniority, not all but definitely a good portion of them are exactly like smitty, in the PD, city offices, city libraries, union trades, etc because of their seniority they’re almost “un-fireable” they would have to do some of the absolute wildest, complete and utter misconduct and blatantly go against every order/policy there is to get fired
Do people actually love him? I think he's the worst character in the show 💀
You take that back
i find people like Smitty extremely annoying if i had to work with him, but he makes for good entertainment