The New York Times on COPS
[Guest post by DRJ]
The Fox TV show Cops presents its 700th episode this evening. I like Cops even though I only see it 3-4 times a year, but I may try to watch it more often now that I’ve read today’s article in the New York Times’ Television section:
“The Saturday night viewers who remain often answer the siren call of “Cops,” watching arrest after arrest in a series that reinforces the notion that order can always be restored. This Fox series — now rerun elsewhere — brings the police blotter to life, as if video had been added to the squawking radio channel on which police dispatchers deliver their lingo in staccato bursts.
***
It’s a pretty shopworn device after 18 years, as catchily monotonous as the reggae echo of “Bad Boys,” the show’s theme song. And yet “Cops” consistently improves on the scripted norms of police procedurals: It displays all the ugliness and ingenuity that even classic first-responder shows like “CHiPs” and “Emergency!” lacked. Dipping into a dozen episodes can teach viewers various ways to spot a suspect, subdue the inebriated and quell mayhem before someone gets hurt.”
I did weekly police ride-alongs for a year in law school and the show seems realistic to me. As the article notes, even the mundane is fascinating:
“The officers have seen almost every permutation of sin. So it’s kind of a thrill when they say, “That’s a new one.” The focus on mundane details can be fascinating: One patrolman explains that a car cutting through rain with an open window is a sign of trouble — it may be stolen, the window smashed in. An officer in San Bernardino, Calif., says of his territory, “It’s a good place to work — a lot of activity.” He means good as in there’s a lot of bad.”
The bulk of the article is positive but the author gets in a couple of digs at the series and the police, including this particularly nasty one [emphasis mine]:
“But in spite of the palpable danger and the blood spilled on both sides of the law, the series seems more like a sanitized catalog of arrests, an infomercial for various police fraternal orders, than a collection of true-crime stories. Epithets? Racial tensions? Excessive force? The videotape either omits or never captures such presumably common extremes.”
Even in its Television section, the NY Times never fails to disappoint.
— DRJ
COPS – More popular and more informative than the NYT can ever hope to be.
dave (c44c9b) — 11/10/2007 @ 2:53 pmEpithets? Racial tensions? Excessive force? The videotape either omits or never captures such presumably common extremes.
Maybe because such extremes aren’t as common as presumed.
The fantasies of a NYT staffer. Feh.
Paul (ec9716) — 11/10/2007 @ 3:13 pm“Presumably common” only to those with your screwed up mentality, NYT.
Patricia (f56a97) — 11/10/2007 @ 3:40 pmInteresting question for all the lawyers here:
The last time I watched Cops was about 15 years or so ago. They showed a roadblock of a residential street. It was a dead end, and there was a suspected drug house on this block. The roadblock was set up at night, and it was way down the block from the closest side street. In other words, you had to turn down the street and drive a ways before the roadblock could be seen.
They stopped every car coming down the street. The cops were rude, aggressive, and insulting to every single car they stopped. Well, every car they stopped and filmed that made it into the episode. I shuddered to think about the film that didn’t make to air.
Since when is simply driving down a street a crime? And is that kind of thing still legal?
nt250 (180411) — 11/10/2007 @ 5:10 pmnt250 #4…
Another Drew (8018ee) — 11/10/2007 @ 5:53 pmOther than your perception of their rudeness, was there any other commonality between the vehicles/occupants that made it onto the show?
Not having seen that particular segment, I would just throw out that the civilians that made it into the segment were all potential buyers on their way to the drug/crack house.
Anyone that the cops stopped that actually lived on that street, or were visiting other addresses, probably ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Maybe?
Just asking.
If you back to the earliest seasons, you’ll find a large number featured the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. The local view was that then Sheriff Nick Navarro–never one to avoid publicity if he could get it for free–was using it as PR for his department. I’ve never actually watched it, but I’m pretty sure the show’s Broward connection became significantly smaller once Navarro retired.
kishnevi (3bf40c) — 11/10/2007 @ 7:46 pmEpithets? Racial tensions? Excessive force? The videotape either omits or never captures such presumably common extremes.”
What? The NYT left off “poor and minorities hardest hit” ?
Actual (80df21) — 11/10/2007 @ 7:52 pmRacial tension is a daily way of life policing the ghetto. Excessive force? Epithets? In 30 years as a street cop I saw very little of either. It’s not as common as you think.
Most cops know it’s a career ender & with the abundance of electronic recording devices, chances are you will get caught if you talk that kind of smack or in the habit of using unnecessary force.
Sure there are instances of cops flipping out on camera but those kind of incidents are really rare. Chances are that if you have a TV crew with you, you’re not going to be dropping the “N-bomb.” All the cops I worked around removed that from their vocabulary in the 70’s. All it did was get you in trouble.
Retired Cop (7cfd24) — 11/10/2007 @ 8:29 pmThe one show they did that I had to sort of think was someone said this as a gag at a production meeting and then it took on a life of it’s own , was the single episode where they crossed Cops with the Xfiles.
Even Scully through the whole thing was noticeable in that as hard as she tried, she was thinking to herself all along , geeze are we really trying to do this and who was the whiz kid that bought into doing this.
daytrader (ea6549) — 11/11/2007 @ 1:10 amWhat is this guy talking about? I watch COPS re-runs with my girlfriend all the time, and there’s plenty “racial tension.” About every third black guy they arrest claim it’s all because they were black and for no other reason.
chaos (9c54c6) — 11/11/2007 @ 8:55 amI frequently get very angry at the way some cops handle citizens, so to me the show cannot possibly be sanitized. My only other observation is this: the “leftist” slant in all media is basically Marxist (communist) and in the catechism of the “movement” all media is to be an instrument in the class war. It was the duty of all party members to do everything they could to slant media if even in a small way. As a point, John Howard Lawson, the biggest communist in Hollywood and a holy terror, once lectured actors at an acting seminar to always play the victim of the upper classes even if the actor was only an extra playing a waiter. Play it so that the waiter appears subjugated by his employer; use walk, posture, or anything else to get the victimization of the working class across. The Hollywood commie writers used to try to slip in a sentence if they could. The New York Times practices this deception of “slipping in” lines at every opportunity. All journalism schools now teach their students how to do it and how to maintain a fiction (Duke faculty in the “rape” case). I think any reading of any reviews in any media will show that this “slanting” is common place.
Howard Veit (4ba8d4) — 11/11/2007 @ 9:02 amBAD BOYS BAD BOYS WHATS YOU GOING TO DO WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU? BAD BOYS BAD BOYS Thats becuase more persons depends on COPS to have real crinimal profiles and no interview from those same crinimals like the New York Slimes dose
krazy kagu (e778bf) — 11/11/2007 @ 1:49 pm