Wonderfully tasteless - yet clearly fake as their doors open properly!
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The cops were actually portrayed as the corrupt ones in that series. But I suppose related to your point, everyone still got along in the end.
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Can I judge it based on all the commercials I’ve seen and everything I’ve ever heard Tom Selleck say?
I can. Though maybe I shouldn’t 
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I mean, do what you will? The point I was trying to make is that shows like COPS and LivePD are bigger problems because they both present a false idea of what “real world” policing is like and affect actual real-world cases in the quest to get the best possible shots for TV.
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Did it get de-funded?
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COPS was a particularly evil form of copaganda, but pretty much all modern American cop shows are highly problematic.
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In the sense that its sponsors were pulling out… perhaps. Anyway… this from rationalwiki. (I guess I was right in being able to 100% avoid this show.)
You made your point well, and I agree.
The point I should have made is that I reserve some hate for scripted cop shows, too. They set up extreme (or even absurd) situations showing how society is out of control (thanks to social justice warriors and soft on crime liberal judges) and only the old-fashioned, no-nonsense, tough as nails cops can tame the wild west (especially when they don’t go by the book). The shows often invoke some old cop (like Tom Selleck) pontificating his gospel either unopposed or opposed by some poorly argued “liberal” point. And Tom wins.
That’s the point I should have made, but instead just took a jab at Tom Selleck, in case he’s reading the thread. You know what you did, Tom.
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There’s another, subtle thing that happens too.
Look what characters give the correct response when the cops show up, i.e. “I would like to speak to a lawyer.” Rich people who are either guilty of something or portrayed as arrogant and obstructive, or poor but “seasoned criminals” who are guilty of something. Never just your average “good” person.
I disagree with @orenwolf, in that all the stories we tell ourselves, fiction and non-fiction have an affect. Sometimes the fiction even has a greater impact (disclosure, former Media and Communications student, here) than “reality”. ¹ And those stories tell us that only bad people with something to hide, or rich people who are not like us and like to wield their power call lawyers. Good, normal, innocent people cooperate with the police.
What that means is that if you go into any community where the cops aren’t on every corner stopping and frisking people, the majority of people will think you should be helpful to the police. Because they are not bad people. They don’t think they have something to hide, and the stories have taught them to do so. Until they find out the hard way whose side the police are on.
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COPS was crude and simplistic copaganda. Things like Brooklyn 99 are subtle, sophisticated copaganda. COPS is targeted at conservatives, Brooklyn 99 is targeted at liberals.
The latter is arguably the more dangerous of the two.
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Well of course they do, but your statement above could be applied to any fiction, no? Highschool shows create an unachievable standard compared to actual highschool, Hospital shows show hily fictionalized levels of care, CSI-style shows show levels of forensics so out of touch that lawyers have to counter the “CSI effect”, sitcoms tend to show unrealistic, idealized or extreme caricatures of real people, etc. etc. etc.
The point I was trying (unsuccessfully, sadly) to make was this: while fictional shows can portray fictional events, in both a positive and negative light (most cop fiction at one point or another deals with corruption, racism, etc), LivePD/COPS have effects on real people, right now:
- The shows don’t show the “bad side” of policing because showing cops in a bad light = no more ridealongs, effectively killing the show (fiction does not have this limitation)
- They have to cherry-pick “good for tv” police activity, which tends to be chases, violent crime, and other such activities, making it seem that such events are more common than reality (fictional cop shows instead deal with white-collar and nonviolent crimes to a much higher degree since they can show things the “reality” shows never could, such as actions of the criminals when cops aren’t around, etc).
- There are real, genuine privacy concerns around camera crews bursting into homes with cops and filming real people as police action is taken on them, often in ways to make them seem intentionally guilty or suspect (fictional shows almost always involve fictional persons rather than recreations of real events, but not always)
- Police stations have talked about working with shows like LivePD and COPS as actual, real-life drivers for recruiting cops themselves, meaning the real cities involved see real results from these shows in bringing in officers who, presumably, are into the kind of high speed chances, violent crime and stop-and-frisk events featured on the shows depict.
IMHO, Shows like COPS and LivePD are orders of magnitude worse than fictional shows, and they need to stop now. Period.
I mean, just now in the news today, LivePD, who recorded and watched as an officer here in the Austin area told a black suspect “I’m gonna choke you out” then proceeded to kill him while he begged to be saved, are now telling prosecutors that they can’t turn the video over because they destroyed it - very likely because if they had turned it over, it would have ended their partnership with the Williamson County PD:
There is no comparison between the level of shit these shows cause and fiction. This is real shit, today, and it has to stop.
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I should note take I left a hanging footnote in that last post.
It should say that “reality TV” is as much a fiction as any scripted show. Nothing real about it.
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Basic rule to determine if a cop show is problematic:
- Do the cops hate it, and are they trying to have it banned?
All of these shows are produced with cop script advisors, cop assistance with equipment and location shooting, etc.
A very similar dynamic applies to military film making.
This applies to all of them. The “realistic” ones, the “lighthearted” ones, and most of the “critical” ones. If the portrayal actually challenges the institution, they don’t get cooperation; they get fierce hostility.
This is a useful concept when thinking about this:
As is this:
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Bad boys?
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I don’t think you were unsuccessful. I agree with this, completely. I even agree that the live, “reality” cop shows can have a much greater impact than fictional ones.
But-- I also agree with @MalevolentPixy, when she says the stories we tell ourselves and each other matter. It’s how we transmit our culture and knowledge. In older times, Aesop’s fables and fairy tales explained how the world worked and the best ways to navigate it; now we use movies, television and the internet to do the same thing, even when it’s “just entertainment.” (Disclaimer: I’m also a former Media Studies/Communications grad, so I’m biased.) “Reality” cop shows may be the more obvious and dangerous weapon The Powers That Be use to shape the perception of reality (and they need to end now!), but we can’t discount how fictional narratives accomplish the same goal, in a much sneakier, subliminal fashion. One is an axe, the other is a scalpel, but they both cut in their own ways.
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And often with cop funds too. Sheriff departments have paid the show COPS to film in their towns as advertising in the past, especially so if a local sheriff is running for reelection.
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Rather than make an eloquent point I’ll just say “That’s fucking twisted.”
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In the very small handful of times I actually watched the very stupid show COPS, I always found myself yelling at the TV: BE QUIET! DON’T SAY ANYTHING! STOP TALKING! And that was always targeted at the people interacting with the police.
Good that this show will no longer be produced (I’d like to say, gone away, but I’m sure it will live on in syndication). I’m sure there were all kinds of Wrong Things happening behind the scenes. Plus, I’d like to reiterate my offer to reality tv producers to FU!
I worked on that show for a brief period of time.
The whole crew carried tear off pads of appearance releases in English and Spanish for the ‘perps’ to sign so they could use the footage in the show. Many times producers would trick someone into signing because they really wanted the footage.
“Sign this…”
“What is it?”
“It’s for your release…”
“Oh, OK”
“I’ll give you a smoke if you sign this…”
“Want a bottle of water? Sure, just sign this…”
Etc.
The other thing I noticed was that cops who would normally just be patrolling around, would look for anyone or any incident they could get involved with out of fear of being the guy that that days’ ride-along didn’t get anything useful from.
Happy to have moved on to other things.
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