In the year 1968 a flood of cop-movies really began in earnest, marking the first two films directed by Don Siegel - Madigan which was later adapted as a televisual series starring Richard Widmark and Coogan's Bluff, the second was the first foray for Clint Eastwood cast as a cop. In addition, also in 1968 empathetic lawmen were featured prominently in Jack Smight's No Way To Treat A Lady (played by George Segal) and Richard Fleischer (son of legendary animator Max Fleischer ) The Boston Strangler (portrayed by Henry Fonda)
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Gordon Douglas' The Detective, a Panavison pearl based on Roderick Thorp's eponymous novel was a key moment in the genre, and the first time a law enforcer took a liberal stance on a law and order debate, appositely as the times they were all a'changin. In The Detective, Frank Sinatra plays Hoe Leland a policeman who loves his job to a fault, holding an utmost allegiance to 'The Department' following in the footsteps of his father who was also a loyal member of service, as both an abstract symbol and tradition. Leland is overall humane in his methods but his extraction of a confession to murder from an innocent suspect by psychological pressure ultimately brings about his downfall. The general import is that brutality and illegal methods are not just wrong but also counterproductive. Two aspects of The Detective were to be echoed in later examples of the cop cycle. One was the theme of the dedicated remorselessly honest lone wolf, street level cop pitted against bureaucratic superiors who are infinitely more concerned with protecting their own promotion prospects by playing it safe than they are with any such law-enforcement. The Detective also foreshadows the rest of the cycle in its unrelenting brutal depiction of urban violence, seediness and decay.