Monday, Apr. 06, 1992
The Cops and the Cameras
By Richard Zoglin
One afternoon in early January, Captain Robert Woods, head of the Los Angeles police department's air-support squad, was monitoring a high-speed car chase from his downtown office. A taxi was speeding south from Bakersfield along Interstate 5, pursued by several highway-patrol cars. Suddenly, after following the chase for more than an hour, Woods looked out his window and could see where it had ended. Nearly a dozen helicopters were circling the area -- six of them from local TV stations, which had been broadcasting the chase live. "Enough is enough," Woods said to himself. "Next we'll be covering helicopter crashes after the car pursuits."
Not so loud. Somebody might pitch it as a series.
TV has long had a special fondness for police action, from Starsky and Hutch to Rodney King and the L.A. cops. But as fictional cop shows have become an endangered species in prime time, real-life law enforcers are multiplying. Cops, Fox's cinema verite look at police on their day-to-day rounds, is going strong in its fourth season; a week ago, it scored its highest ratings ever. ABC's American Detective provides a somewhat slicker (punched up with narration and dramatic music) glimpse of real cops in action. CBS's Top Cops and ABC's FBI: The Untold Stories use re-creations to celebrate the exploits of law enforcers, while CBS's Rescue 911 recounts heroic deeds by police, paramedics and other emergency personnel.
Cops and TV are intertwined in more ways than ever. The FBI and other law- enforcement agencies enlist TV's help in tracking down fugitives through shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. They let reporters from local stations, as well as network news shows like 48 Hours, follow them around on everything from routine patrols to big-time drug busts. And when they crack a major case, they sell their stories to Hollywood producers for the inevitable "fact-based" TV movie.
Many police departments have welcomed this deluge of attention. TV exposure, they reason, helps get out the message that cops are human too. "People used to think law enforcement was like Dirty Harry or Miami Vice," says Nick Navarro, sheriff of Florida's Broward County, north of Miami. "Shows like Cops let the American people see what the police are really like." John Cosgrove, a Kansas City, Kans., patrolman who was accompanied by a Cops crew on his midnight shift for two weeks last summer, enjoyed the experience. "Most officers would be apprehensive to have the media ride with them," he says. "But these guys proved themselves to us. They said they wouldn't do anything to undermine us, and that we'd have final discretion about what ran." (Each episode of Cops is reviewed by the police before airing, in part to make sure no investigations are compromised.)
The presence of a TV camera -- one in plain sight, that is -- can help keep police on their best behavior. And it inhibits suspects from getting violent, some officers contend. TV cameras can also help prosecutors later on. David Magnusson, a former street cop for Greater Miami's Metro-Dade police who now works in the department's press office, recalls a man arrested for dope possession who stuffed his stash in his mouth and swallowed it. Knowing his actions had been taped by a Cops crew, however, he pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence.
But there is considerable resistance to the TV onslaught in some big-city police departments. The Chicago police department does not allow camera crews - in squad cars, and San Diego's police have refused cooperation with most of the TV cop shows. A reporter in the patrol car is not only an inconvenience, says San Diego captain Dave Warden, but can "prevent supervisors from doing their work -- whether counseling an officer or reprimanding him." The Los Angeles police department does permit ride-alongs -- an average of 10 a week, ranging from journalists to screenwriters and community activists -- but only with reluctance. Says Lieut. John Duncan: "It has a negative impact on our ability to do police work."
It seems to have a positive impact on police egos, however. Navarro, the Broward County sheriff, has become something of a celebrity from his appearances on Cops; he has been criticized in the local media for taking too many trips to promote the show. The lure of Hollywood money is also hard for cops to resist. In Florida's "Damsel of Death" case, in which Aileen Wuornos was accused of killing seven men who picked her up on the highway, three police investigators reportedly made an arrangement with Wuornos' lesbian lover to share in a TV-movie deal even before the case came to trial. When news of the arrangement leaked out, a state attorney investigated; he found no legal wrongdoing, but the deal eventually fizzled.
Though hardly as romanticized as Kojak or Miami Vice, TV's current reality- based picture of cops is a highly favorable one. To be sure, real cops are a grittier bunch; their jobs are less glamorous, and their human frailties more apparent. All the more reason, these shows say, to admire the tough work they do -- and their openness to scrutiny. "As long as police allow us to film them," says Cops executive producer John Langley, "I feel good about this country."
With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami and Sally B. Donnelly/Los Angeles, with other bureaus