Crime series are so popular on television that sometimes it is impossible to find anything else on TV. They all try to be different in some ways, perhaps to make up with this oversaturation of police dramas on the market.

Some of them are even cold cases — though of course, on television, they over dramatize that and the cases are super cold.

While it is perhaps nothing like what you would see on television, the Franklin Police Department officers and investigators are living out such cases right under our noses.

While we root on the television police officer, it is often easy to get impatient with the local officer whose life and investigation isn’t a neatly written dramatic script. For example, if everyone knew that guy did it months ago, what took so long?

Through continued investigations, investigators were able to connect a suspect with a sexual assault that occurred early on Jan. 1.

While perhaps months ago they could have charged someone on hearsay, like you might see on some TV cop dramas, instead they kept their ears to the ground and continued investigating and were able to make an arrest the right way.

Certainly, not everyone thinks this way, but often it is easy to blur the lines between fiction and reality.

So, we at The Tidewater News salute the Franklin Police Department for their continued efforts to make this community a safer place in which to raise our families.