Cops

At its best, `Cops' either shows officers in action, or officers working and living with members of their communities. On a weekly basis, "Cops" illustrates the courage, integrity, and resilience these officers must possess. To date, there has been no other television show willing to show Americans what happens behind the scenes, and to offer honest portraits of those brave men and women who protect us on a daily basis.

When `Cops' started in 1989, it was pure sensationalism, and still charges of prurience are leveled at this show. It has matured over the years to have an almost uplifting theme of good vs. evil. Television would be poorer if it were removed from the airwaves.

Personal Note: This one is a staple in our house. My wife and I have watched since SHOW #1, and will catch the first run shows on FOX on Saturday night, as well as the ones running on CourtTV and FX.

No hidden agenda. No arranged marriages. No tribes that form alliances. No forced drama between room mates. No fake mega-rich farm boy to pass off as a billionaire. No crap. That's Cops.

I watched on and off since the show began, and recently discovered reruns on BOTH (!) Court-TV, and the FX network in the U.S.

At times it's funny watching some pathetic moron try and get out of being arrested when we have him doing the crime on video. Some times it's sad, seeing folks, who will never be much more than what they are, get into trouble. I hate seeing shows where small children see their stupid parents get hauled away.

I try to be open to all views, and have a family with many LEOs, but I agree there are some bad apples that are police. I'm all for bodycams, and Cops served to be a super bodycam or nannycam. Police do a job that many won't do, get paid marginally considering the risks they take, and not really sure how this show supposedly glorified them. It just showed what they do/did. There are certainly times where I think they maybe overstepped, but the camera perhaps forced them to stay "cleaner" than maybe they otherwise might. We only know about Floyd and many other cases that are turning this country on its head because of videos being taken, so why to cancel a show that served to take more video seems ridiculous.

This is a series that I and my family truly enjoyed and I still watch re-runs.

Cops has been on TV almost all my life. In fact, it's on right now, on TV in the background, as a police officer busts a guy driving with drugs in his car. For years watching dozens of the shows in syndication, episodes much like these, I was struck by how every episode, in essence, is the same. An officer may stop someone on the road, come up to their house, chase after them, and they always get their man or woman. Race isn't even as much an issue as it is the essential point of the show, almost to the point of redundancy- the cops, according to this show, don't lose. But the irony is, someone like myself who becomes occasionally disgusted by the antagonistic (to a point) and superiority-driven nature that underlies those who serve and protect, is constantly re-watchable. But a fact that I didn't know for quite a while was put to me about the show, an important point- the people who appear on the show getting arrested *agree* to allow their faces and likenesses put on TV. Somehow the relish is almost at times interchangeable.

If anything, Cops over a decade and a half is almost like a kind of quasi-anthropology turned to ratings. It's not too surprising that if you happen to walk into a police station at a given moment they may be playing this their TV's. And despite the disclaimer at the start of the show, "those arrested are innocent until proved guilty in a court of law", if one were to incorporate the media-is-the-message idea, these people are practically all guilty in their own way by being subjected to not only the rule of the law (90% of the time in just cause) and by their own flaws under the gun (no pun intended). The fact is, Cops was and remains one of the pioneers of reality television, capturing a kind of base level of how life really is when under the lens of a professional hand-held cameraman. There is no contest or money at stake for the participants, it's capturing the suspects/arrestees at their most ashamed (or dazed, crazed, what have you) moments, and the law as the unfettered, collected, and "professional" beings on the planet.

The premise of the show, and a good deal of the time its execution, is brilliant in its own way, as a real documentary-style show that is entertaining in its own willful manipulation of the reality. More often than not, even as I feel the some episodes have me cringing in my seat, it is a genuinely interesting piece of the crude side of humanity we either can't look away from or would rather not see at all. And the show becomes very subjective- how you may or may not think the law really helps you or others will effect how you see its worth in the TV landscape.

(Interesting how relatively few reviews there are for such a successful show!)

I used to be a COPS junkie - watched it faithfully, and still enjoy it, but that has been waning considerably over the past few years.

Interviews years ago with the show's producers revealed that they were under constant pressure from some special interest groups concerned that too much of the show featured certain demographic groups - unfairly, in their opinion, but the reasonable response was the most exciting and serious events were picked for each episode regardless of race, colour, or city/town location.

Watching COPS now obviously indicates that they've caved in to that pressure.

Now, it's mostly boring domestic disputes and impaired driving, of a different demographic, events seemingly now picked for appeasement to those aforementioned special interest groups?

I'll still watch, but only maybe once a month, or two now. Very "pc", for the most part.