World's Wildest Police Videos

In England, this programme seems to have been the cornerstone of Channel 5's pre sports thread on a Sunday evening since the dawn of time (or at least since Channel 5 were forced to import non-pornographic material in order to avoid another hysterical Daily Mail campaign). In essence, this show is 60 minutes of frantic car chases, inept corner shop robberies and gushing, hagiographical praising of the American police force's abilities to apprehend all these scoundrels and cads. Yet as much as I am in awe (well maybe not so much awe as incredulous disbelief) of all this right winged, jingoistic hokum, the programme's main source of unintentional hilarity stems from its front man, Sheriff John Bunnell - a lithe, silver haired, permatan gnome of a man armed week in week out with bleached teeth, a perpetual sneer and a drooling script of hackneyed clichés. Within about 50 seconds of the programme starting, the viewer is greeted with grainy, poor quality police footage (usually dated from the early 1990s) of a station wagon crashing into a tree sound tracked by squealing sirens, police troopers barking orders and Bunnell's commentary gushing out gems such as: This fleeing cowboy thought that he could outrun his federal pursuers - - - but he hadn't counted on the might of the law.

In Britain, there are a number of more sedate versions of this show... yet none can match the vacant silliness and patriotic bunkum of this enjoyably rubbish American import.

Low adrenaline output? Just got back from work/school? In a bad mood? Check your local listings and see when this is on (on FOX or FX). Never miss a single installment of this show!

The show's not bad but can use some work, yeah a lot of the chases are not edited correctly, I know this cause I watched a few of them on live TV myself (I lived in LA until 4 years ago)John Bunnell may have been a sheriff at one point but I don't think being a interm sheriff for a few months deserves you the title. But he does have the whitest teeth and my 16 month old son can imitate his jutting lower jaw pretty good, so I am thinking of dressing him up as John Bunnell for Halloween. Does Bunnell write his own commentary?

I think it might be best to revive MST3000 and have them watch the chases and put in their own commentary, that would be fun. Send John Bunnell to an oral surgeon to fix that lower jaw (DO NOT TOUCH HIS PERFECT TEETH!!) and C.W Jensen to creative thinking school. Constantly stating the obvious is not interesting!!

This show would be great if it did not have that stupid commentary. Whoever writes the script for the commentary is so one sided that even when the perpetrator does an outstanding job at trying to evade capture, the commentator usually says something stupid like "He is out of control!!!". I know the show is not supposed to encourage others to do what they see, but come on..... I am forced to watch the show on mute now.

I am training officer for police and corrections officers and have a first hand knowledge of actual police and corrections tactics and techniques, so I was hoping that this program would live up to its billing. I was also hoping that I could use some of the clips to help show officer trainees the hazards that exist in the field. Unfortunately I have never been able to sit through an entire episode of this program without changing the channel in disgust. First off, I think John Bunnell is the most arrogant person to ever show his face on TV, and his credibility comes in question with the recent revelation that many of the portions of the show are staged or recreations. (You can tell the re-creations now because they have "Police Training Video" captioned over them) Bunnell's term as Multnomah County Sheriff is also a mystery. The website for Multnomah County does not give any information on him other than a brief clip that a biography is coming soon but hasn't been updated in over 16 months. From information found in court records in cases filed against the Multnomah County Sheriff's office, reveals that Sheriff Bob Skipper retired before his term expired and John Bunnell filled in as interim sheriff for a short period of time until a Sheriff Dan Noelle took office in the summer of 1995. The second thing that really bothers me about this program is that the videos shown are not accurate depictions of what transpires in each event. The clips are edited and spliced together out of chronological order (watch the time stamps on the videos, that is what they are there for). The clips are also narrated with voice over that is intended to make viewers think that the narrator is the actual police observer in a police helicopter. It is amazing however that the voice of the "observer" is the same no matter where in the world the clip occurs. Some of the dialog that the voice over uses is unbelievable and inaccurate (in one case the narrator says that the police started chasing someone for fleeing officers, which can only be charged after a chase starts not, thus could not be the reason for a chase). Bunnell's voice overs are also a joke, most of them are over statements of the obvious or embellishments on the actual facts portrayed on the videos (even after editing to Fox's liking). The only truly accurate and possibly the only credit to this program are the comments from other Law Enforcement experts such as C.W. Jenson who gives accurate commentary on the training and concerns of police involved in pursuits.

All in all, I would say that this is the worst "reality" show on TV today, it is a blatant second-rate rip-off of COPS which has some of the same "reality" problems as this show (radio transmissions are dubbed in to fill in or cover dead air-time, listen for the closing title radio transmission, it can be heard over the radio verbatim in several episodes that are taped in different areas of the country).