After early test audiences responded most positively to Hightower out of all the characters, Bubba Smith was moved to second billing, just behind Steve Guttenberg.
Director Hugh Wilson stated that when it came time to film the driving scene with Hightower at 2:30 a.m., the actor originally cast as the angry driver was found passed out drunk in the trailer, so Hugh himself ended up playing the role of the angry driver, who Hightower crashes into.
Producer Paul Maslansky got the idea for this movie during the production of Os Eleitos: Onde o Futuro Começa (1983). A group of police cadets arrived to help with crowd control for the filming of a street scene. When the cadets piled out of the buses to take their posts, they were diverse; men, women, tall, short, black, Asian. However, the cadets proved "fumblingly inept" at their assigned task of keeping members of the public away from the set. Maslansky witnessed an exasperated superior officer with a very red face chewing out two sputtering recruits; a lady weighing over two hundred pounds and a flabby man of well over fifty. Both were busily trying to rationalize their incompetence. Maslansky found it humorous, asking the sergeant, "Are these all going to be future San Francisco's finest?" The sergeant told him they had an equal opportunity hiring policy: "We have to take anyone who applies into the academy for training--but we can flunk them out in two weeks." It started Maslansky thinking, "What if they don't want to be flunked out? What if some guy or girl wants to stay in?" That night, he wrote a two-page treatment and gave it to executive producer Alan Ladd Jr., who loved the idea and agreed to develop the movie.
The location used as the academy campus was known as the Mimico Lunatic Asylum--or variations thereof until 1911--and Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital from 1964-79. It was acquired by Humber College in 1991 after being mainly used as a site for filmmaking between 1979-91. It is now a renovated and active educational institution.
In the DVD "Making of" documentary, Marion Ramsey says she came up with Hooks' voice by reading the description of her character in the script, and recalling the time she met Michael Jackson who attended a stage production of "Little Shop of Horrors" that Marion was performing in. The voice is a parody of Jackson. She also recalls that in the moment where Hooks exclaims, "Don't move, dirtbag!" the sound techs were used to recording the "meek" voice and were surprised when she said the line so loud.
Hugh Wilson: The motorist who suffers a fender-bender during Hightower's late-night driving session with Mahoney.