Whodunit?

I watch a lot of procedural shows: Law and Order (and all of its permutations: SVU, CI), CSI, etc., and while I certainly don't mind the differences between them, they make me wonder about the actual processes involved in investigating crimes and who actually does the work. On the original Law and Order, the detectives do the initial investigating and then once an arrest is made any further information seems to be gathered by the ADA's working the case. On CSI, the forensic people do all the investigating, and there is hardly a cop in sight. On Shark, there aren't any police characters - the lawyers do all of the investigating themselves. And Bones has the pathologist doing a lot of the investigating, along with an FBI agent partner. I doubt there are a lot of agent/coroner pairings in the FBI. I suspect that SVU and CI are the closest to reality, with detectives handling the tracking down of clues and interrogating suspects, forensic people dealing with crime scene details and pathology, and the lawyers handling the trial. I certainly understand the artistic license taken by these shows, and I don't even really care about the presence or lack of legal reality - I enjoy each show on its own merits. But I do think there might be some mighty confused people out there wondering whose job it actually is to track down criminals.

PS: I'll be interested to see how involved Jack McCoy is in the cases on L&O now since becoming District Attorney. Typically the district attorney is a pretty small role on the show, advising the ADA's but letting them handle the cases mainly on their own. But I can't imagine Sam Waterston wanted to take a salary hit - unless of course he's tired after 18 years on the show.