Lieutenant Dawson
Lieutenant Dawson is a police officer who appears in the Season Seven episode, "Lil' Crime Stoppers" as the lead detective of the Park County Police Force.
Background
Lieutenant Dawson was a South Park police lieutenant who made Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman junior detectives after they got Sarah Peterson's doll back from Bill and Fosse. He is a parody of the typical television police lieutenant or detective character, with a thick mustache and smoking often, complaining about the mayor being "on his ass" and yelling about the kids' maverick ways and the massive property damage they unintentionally caused. He was unaware that two of his detectives, Murphy and Jenkins, were on the take from Gino the crime boss. He also had an antagonistic relationship with FBI Agent Fields.
Dawson made a cameo appearance with no lines in "Britney's New Look" in the town where Britney Spears was being executed.
Appearance
Lieutenant Dawson wears black pants, a green shirt with white stripes, a blue tie and black suspenders. He wears his badge on his right suspender strap and he has his gun and gun holster on his left suspender strap. He has black hair with graying sideburns. He also has a black mustache.
Personality
He appears to be foolish and unintelligent, sending the boys on adult police missions without realizing that the boys are not qualified police officers, but are simply children playing games. Doing this was also unprofessional and irreponsible, as he endangered the boys' lives by placing them in dangeous sitations. He also incorrectly blamed the boys for their failures during their missions, when in reality the failures were his responsibility, as he should have never tasked the boys with such work in the first place.
Trivia
- Dawson is a clear prototype for the character of Harrison Yates who had previously appeared but not taken a formal role as the head police detective until "The Jeffersons".
- They both share the same 'detective' body shape first used by an unamed character in "Butters' Very Own Episode" and "Child Abduction is Not Funny" that has been used for various background detectives since then.
- After his first few lines, delivered in a sweeter voice for the kids, Dawson's speaking voice is almost identical to that used for Yates in his previous and future appearances in the series.
- Though their head shapes are quite different from the front, from the sideview their heads and hair hold pretty much the same shape.
- They are, of course, both depicted as lead detectives commanding police officers from the same police station and using an identical office until it was re-designed several years later.
Prominence
- "Lil' Crime Stoppers"
- "Britney's New Look" - Seen taking photos of Britney Spears along with many other people.
References