TV cop shows cop-out on race.

It's happening everywhere. In Baltimore, Lt. Al Giardello, the black shift commander on "Homicide," bellows paternally at his mostly white troops. Up in New York City, another black lieutenant, Anita Van Buren of "Law and Order," dresses down an errant white subordinate, while across town Lt. Arthur Fancy (of "NYPD Blue") comforts a wounded white detective.

Viewers seeking escape from the racial tribulations of our times could do a lot worse than tune in to a current cop show. In TV's station houses, racism is practically extinct, black officers are well represented in the upper ranks, and a multiracial camaraderie prevails. Conceived as entertainment, police dramas tend to subordinate realism, whether visual or sociological, to proven formulas of the crime melodrama.

But turn to the actual police departments where these shows are set and reality bites immediately. Sgt. Grace Ridley, former president of the Guardians, New York's black fraternal police order, complains that while African-Americans constitute 13.8 percent of the force, they occupy only 3.8 percent of the NYPD's command-level jobs (from captain on up). Chief Michael Markman, the NYPD's head of personnel, insists that the promotional process is fair and impartial but says that the tests are "very competitive" and, inevitably, "everybody doesn't make it." In Baltimore, where he Guardians' sister organization, the Vanguard Society, is headed by another black woman, Sgt. Teresa Cunningham, blacks make up 33 percent of the force but occupy just 18 percent of the command-level positions - a "blatant disparity," she says, though she is encouraged by the recent creation of a racially mixed municipal panel to study the problem. Sam Ringgold, director of public affairs for the Baltimore Department, who is also black, says that the discrepancies "are being looked into."

But other more intangible, unquantifiable grievances of black cops don't receive much attention on police dramas either. Reflecting wistfully on the inter-racial esprit de corps on cop shows, Sgt. Ridley contrasts the shows to what she sees as the harsh reality, a "lack of respect" for African-American officers "shown by our leaders, from the commissioner on down."

Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly feels that most police shows "just don't recognize that there are any racial tensions" on the force, though he had mild praise for the occasional "NYPD Blue" episode that touches on the issue.

James McDaniel, who plays Lt. Fancy, gives the show higher marks. He cites several subplots, including one in which his character administers an instant sensitivity session to Dennis Franz's Det. Sipowicz in a Harlem rib joint, and another in which he recovers the detective's stolen revolver and saves his job.

But the show's most trenchant examination of race relations came last January in a story that had Sipowicz subjecting a black suspect to poisonous ethnic slurs. The ensuing clash with Lt. Fancy was complex and compelling, and McDaniel's work helped earn him an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor (though only Franz, honored as best actor, took home an award).

"Homicide" has made a pass or two at the subject as well. In an episode whose main focus was the lurid murders of two young white women, Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), a black detective, tangles with a race-baiting white officer from another department and easily bests him.

Both "Homicide" and "NYPD Blue" flirt with serious racial themes, but, with rare exceptions, prejudice is so easily vanquished that the audience would never guess that "racial tensions" in big-city police departments are the troubling issue that Kelly and others - both black and white - believe them to be. Moreover, police shows have seldom, if ever, addressed black complaints about the promotion process. Among newer cop shows, Dreamworks' lackluster "High Incidence," obviously designed to be L.A.'s answer to "NYPD Blue," has thus far ignored interracial problems on the force, as has the ultra-glitzy Don Johnson vehicle, "Nash Brides."

"Race is still the single most explosive issue that we as a country have to deal with," observes Dick Wolf, the producer of "Law and Order" and "New York Undercover," and a man known for confronting highly flammable racial topics. But the problems of black police officers don't seem to interest Wolf. Before the arrival of Lt. Van Buren a few seasons back, police work was an all-male, all-white occupation on "Law and Order," and, incredibly, racial factors have apparently never impeded Van Buren's professional advancement. "New York Undercover," a typically youth-oriented, skin-deep Fox Five entry, is set in a precinct in Harlem, where a remarkably p.c. team of two Puerto Ricans and a black, under the direction of a white woman commander, solve gaudy crimes throughout the city. In this fantasy world, problems like ethnic bias on the NYPD would only spoil the fun.

This evasiveness about racial subject matter runs counter to the bare-knuckled, "reality-based" ethos of cop shows where the goal is "captured reality," says Henry Bromell, executive producer of "Homicide." In addition, the shows employ experienced detectives as technical advisers.

Their public declarations notwithstanding, most TV executives and series producers prefer to treat racial topics in neutered form. George Gerbner, dean emeritus of the Annenberg Center for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, has found that on television blacks in noncriminal roles are accorded a "favored position" and are shown as "more professional, more middle-class than whites." Significantly, says Gerbner, the black policeman "enforcing white law" is the minority figure white audiences most readily embrace.

Seeking the widest possible audience of all colors, television creates a parallel universe in which the majority of violent crimes, even at a Harlem precinct, are committed by white people. David Simon, author of Homicide: A Year in the Killing Streets, the superb true-crime account on which the TV series is based, and a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, points out that at least 90 percent of the homicide victims in Baltimore are black, as are their killers. But, says producer Bromell, the "literal truth" must be sacrificed because otherwise "zillions of people" across the country will be watching images that "completely reinforce...a stereotype."

Thus, "reality" becomes a highly mutable concept on police dramas. Crime statistics are manipulated like Play-Doh, and, in what Gerbner describes as "compensating values" (for each evil minority character, a virtuous one), the black policeman is elevated to the rank of Super-Cop, like the fiery, infallible Det. Pembleton on "Homicide." McDaniel, who once studied with Gerbner, fully supports the "favored position" concept for minorities. He argues that historically black actors "have been displayed in such an undesirable fashion" that they couldn't play a "drunken, carousing" (though ultimately heroic) figure like Sipowicz without evoking ugly stereotypes.

Maybe it's unfair to expect cop shows to confess the truth about race relations on the force or any other serious issue, driven as they are by the need to capture viewers, ratings, and advertisers. If they attempted to dramatize police work accurately, says Simon, "the only people watching would be a bunch of middle-aged homicide detectives drinking beer in some bar at 2 A.M." And the show would probably be off the air faster than Det. Pembleton solves a murder.

Robert F. Moss, the author of three books on film, has written for New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and the New Republic.