The Modern Knight in Literature and Pop Culture

The Modern Knight in today's literature and pop culture are policemen and women.  Indeed the notion that these men and women are honorable and trustworthy, that act and put their lives on the line for the sake of justice, is an idea that reaches across the boundaries of novels and television and is planted in our subconscious.  Policemen and women have to be these paragons of moral uprightness and bravery in our society because without them, our society would be run rampant with those who are lawless (vigilante justice, no matter how cool the idea seems, will never work-- regular people take it too far); police work for the sake of justice and seek to rid the streets of people who make it unsafe for us.  They act as the knights did for King Arthur's court and provide towns and communities with a stable system for delivering justice.