A couple of weeks ago on The Closer (a television show I do not watch), the police chief tod Kyra Sedgwick that an LA Times reporter would be following her around for the season premier case, involving massive arson in Griffith Park (episode 44: "Controlled Burn"). Immediately Kyra protests with her sassy southern firmness; a reporter will just get in the way, muck up the case, keep the police from doing their jobs, free every rapist in jail, make all the cops look bad when they’re really hardworking, plucky, sharp and competent, et cetera.

This whole "everything would be fine if the reporter wasn’t around, but as soon as he started nosing around it thrashed our whole investigation" meme on cop shows got trite a long time ago. Fact is, we need more of this.

(1) Cops are public employees; everything they do should be accountable to the public, because the public is sort of their boss.

(2) Have you read the LA Times lately? Me either. It’s kind of awful. It doesn’t even have a metro desk. Some local something on a regular basis — not just murder and mayhem or celebrity vaginas, but something — would really do some wonders for this rag. Los Angeles has 88 municipalities (Glendale, Burbank, Santa Monica, Redondo Beach, and so on), each with city halls and courthouses and police stations, but unless something obvious happens — like a natural effing disaster — the Times lets local TV stations scoop them all over the place.

(3) Why would a reporter want to hang out with cops all day when he could stay at his desk, sipping bourbon from the "inhalers" he keeps in the top drawer on the left, just like all the real reporters around him are doing?

It’s just there’s that myth is that a single reporter has — what, days on end? — to dig into the guts of a police unit and bring down the entire system just so he can have his byline over something sensational.

The likely fact is that this overworked alcoholic will lurch in there, read some reports, see what’s happened lately that’s grisly or sexy, write it up, and call it a day.

Everyone’s happy! Except the victim, who is decidedly un-happy until she is avenged by Kyra Sedgwick the Vampire Slayer.