Police True Crime Podcasts Aren’t Transparency. They’re Propaganda.

You love true crime. We all do. The genre has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar industry, and for good reason—there’s something deeply human about wanting to understand the darkest corners of human behavior. But what happens when the people telling the story are the ones with handcuffs, guns, and a vested interest in how the story ends?

In the United States, police departments are now producing their own true crime podcasts. They frame it as transparency, as public education, as a way to pull back the curtain on how investigations really work. And on the surface, that sounds like a win. Who wouldn’t want more openness from law enforcement?

But here’s the problem: When the state controls the narrative, it doesn’t just inform you—it conditions you.

Take the case covered by the BBC. A police podcast described a man named Chadwick as a “murderer.” Not an alleged murderer. Not a suspect. A murderer. The problem? Chadwick had been charged, yes. He had pleaded not guilty. But he had not been tried. Not convicted. Not given his day in court. Yet a police department—with all the authority of the state behind it—broadcast that label to thousands, maybe millions of listeners.

That’s not transparency. That’s a press release dressed up as entertainment.

True crime podcasts work because they build trust. The host becomes your guide, your confidant, the person who walks you through the darkness. You let your guard down. You believe what you hear. Now imagine that host is a police officer with a badge, a salary, and a case they need to win. Every episode becomes a closing argument delivered before the trial even starts.

The format is seductive. You get the dramatic reenactments, the behind-the-scenes footage, the emotional interviews with detectives who “knew something was wrong from the start.” It’s compelling content. But it’s also content that has bypassed every safeguard designed to protect the accused. No defense attorney gets to cross-examine the podcast. No judge rules on what’s admissible. No jury instruction reminds listeners that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution.

The audience becomes the jury—except they’ve already been told the verdict.

And here’s what makes this genuinely dangerous: jury pools are drawn from the public. If you’ve spent six hours listening to a police-produced podcast that tells you someone is a murderer, are you really walking into that courtroom with an open mind? You might tell yourself you are. You might even believe it. But the psychological scaffolding has already been built. The narrative is in your head before the defense says a single word.

The most effective propaganda doesn’t feel like propaganda—it feels like a good story.

Supporters will argue this is no different from press conferences or police blotter updates. It is different. Press conferences are dry, clipped, and forgettable. They don’t have background music. They don’t have narrative arcs. They don’t make you feel. A podcast does all of those things, and that’s precisely why it’s so dangerous as a tool of institutional power.

When a journalist makes a true crime podcast, there’s at least a pretense of independence. They can be sued, fact-checked, criticized. When a police department makes one, they are simultaneously the subject, the source, and the narrator. There is no adversarial voice. No one is pushing back. The power imbalance is total.

And let’s be honest about incentives. Police departments don’t make podcasts because they’re committed to civic education. They make them because they want to control the story. Because they want to be seen as heroes. Because when a case goes sideways—when evidence is mishandled, when charges are dropped, when an officer’s conduct comes under scrutiny—they want the public to already be on their side.

Trust earned through storytelling isn’t accountability. It’s just a better class of manipulation.

You should be uneasy about this. That knot in your stomach when you hear a detective narrating a case that hasn’t been tried? That’s your intuition working correctly. Something is off. The administrators of state power are capitalizing on their execution of it for fame, for sympathy, for control. And they’re using your love of a good story to do it.

This doesn’t mean every police podcast is malicious. Some officers genuinely believe they’re educating the public. But good intentions don’t neutralize structural problems. A well-meaning propaganda tool is still a propaganda tool.

The next time you see a police department promoting its true crime podcast, ask yourself one question: Who fact-checks the people with guns? The answer, right now, is nobody. And that should terrify you more than any episode ever could.