Cops
Denver, Colorado, 1988. Philip Hutchinson robs a local credit union at gunpoint and flees with a hostage. Mike Silva and Jim Stair, crewing a KCNC-TV news-copter, hear of the ensuing police chase and go out to cover it. By the time Silva and Stair are overhead, Hutchinson has already switched vehicles and hostages several times. He seems poised to make a getaway. Silva chooses to land his helicopter on the road in front of Hutchinson, blocking his movement and allowing police to catch up. Police, when they do arrive, end up shooting and killing Hutchinson. Stair has caught the entire chase and its aftermath on camera. It is one of the first such chases to be recorded and broadcast on television.
The following year, Fox debuted what would become one of the longest-running television programs in the United States: Cops. Cops is an observational documentary series, one of the first of its kind. The now wildly popular program follows law enforcement personnel in their daily and nightly duties. Later seasons and re-runs on Spike (now Paramount Network) would only bolster its popularity. Cops, somewhat uniquely, features no narration or voice-overs, but relies only on the commentary of the law enforcement officers appearing on the program.
Cops has received ample criticism from both film critics and academics for its degradation of a medium already in its death-throes, as well as its portrayal of minorities and constant reinforcement of myths and stereotypes surrounding violent crime. A 2004 study conducted by researchers from Old Dominion University reports that Cops exhibits a significant racial bias against Black and Hispanic men, with nearly all of the non-white subjects appearing on the program (93% of Black subjects, 83% of Hispanic subjects) portrayed as criminal offenders. By contrast, nearly all of the police officers portrayed on Cops are white (92%). Further, the ODU study indicates that Cops heavily misrepresents actual crime statistics maintained by the FBI. Not only does Cops present Black and Hispanic men as more likely to commit crimes (and violent crimes) than they are, but Cops also presents White men as less likely to commit crimes than they actually are. In addition, Cops almost entirely ignore women, showing only one female officer per fifty officers, and no minority women whatsoever; these too are distortions of statistical realities.
Live PD
Fast-forward to 2016. A&E debuts its own documentary series, Live PD. Live PD differs from Cops in a few significant ways. First, and perhaps most significantly, Live PD airs, as the name would suggest, live. The program embeds camera crews with individual officers within certain police departments and Sheriff's offices around the country. Then, their feeds are streamed back to Live PD's New York studio over 4G connections (satellite connections are technologically impractical, and prohibitively expensive) where they can be sorted through by producers and cut between by engineers. Thus, a two hour program is created. Live PD employs a broadcast delay to avoid broadcasting what the network considers graphic content, and the network blurs the faces of subjects in re-runs and playback, but it is not clear if subjects are given the opportunity to consent to being shown on live television..
Live PD also eschews the vérité style of Cops. The program features ABC's Chief Legal Affairs anchor Dan Abrams as host and narrator, as well as commentary from Tom Morris Jr., a law enforcement veteran, and Sergeant Sean Larkin, from the Gang Unit of the Tulsa Police Department. The show is hosted from a Master Control-esque studio, with handheld shots of Abrams amid dozens of broadcast engineers and producers, all with phones and screens in contact with multiple cameras and field crews. Abrams guides the audience, announcing which police departments and officers are on deck for that episode, telling them what is coming up next, and giving context when the program cuts to a department in media res. Abrams also appears in a more conventional studio with his co-hosts, looking to Morris and Larkin for comments during and after incidents.
Live PD has spawned a hydra of short-form episodic spin-offs such as PD Cam, in which Sgt. Larkin offers commentary on public-record body camera footage and interviews the officer/s involved in the given incident, and Live Rescue, which follows Fire and EMS personnel in a similar fashion to Live PD.
Michael Brown
Since the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, and the advent of high-quality cellphone cameras and live streaming, many incidents involving police and minorities have brought to the forefront of the national consciousness the need for significant reform and oversight of police departments in the United States. This has included calls for increased distribution and use of body cameras, which are intended to provide a factual account of every encounter a police officer has. Live PD's producers and A&E executives claim that their program is a response to precisely that public demand for police accountability and transparency.
This claim seems, at best, misleading. Entertainment-oriented documentary programs and deal with direct interactions between law enforcement personnel and members of the public necessarily impinge on the privacy and dignity of their civilian subjects. Shows such as Live PD exploit the actions of public officials and the enforcement of laws for private profit. Further, because the methods and common practices of law enforcement in the United States exist mostly to enforce class divisions and maintain the private property of the capitalist class at the expense of the socially and economically disadvantaged, these programs can be credibly accused of showcasing and profiting off of those inequities. Indeed, given the demonstrable effect of such copaganda shows on the public perception, these programs could be accused of themselves acting in the interest of these unequal systems.
Public Perception
Public perception is the primary concern with such ride-along programs as Cops and Live PD. These programs contribute to, inform, and in some cases create perception of groups and localities which are, at best, gross simplifications and, at worst, work to actively harm said communities. Where Cops was statistically skewed to show violent crimes and further the perception of minorities as criminals, Live PD furthers the incessant American perception that poverty is akin to criminality. In hundreds of clips of Live PD uploaded to YouTube by A&E, nearly all of the non-officer subjects are minorities, economically disadvantaged, or both.
As has been discussed in countless other essays by American Oneironautics, entertainment matters. The things that people see on the boob-tube inform how they perceive the world. These effects might not be massive, nor are they immediate, but they do exist. After a long enough period of time, and with enough cop shows having been blasted into one's brain, it stands to reason that the perception of law enforcement and criminality will become skewed. Thus, the ideologies reflected in these programs matters immensely not only as a theoretical good but as a pressing matter of public health and safety.
The Networks
If all this wasn't bad enough, we can't forget that television networks like A&E make fat stacks from these programs. Police departments, by and large, love these programs because they contribute to a skewed public perception of their mission and methods, but, as ostensibly public services, the fact remains that A&E and others are parasitically attaching themselves to publicly-funded projects in order to drum up nonsense to film. The police departments, financed as they are by taxpayers, must be obliged to tailor their every in-uniform action to serving those taxpayers. Neither their current methods of policing, nor allowing the television networks to gobble up a free lunch on the taxpayer's dime serve to fulfill that obligation.
The real losers, as always, are the poor. Law enforcement is notoriously skewed against the working class. Police presence is greater in areas of urban or rural poverty. The crews on Live PD stalk these grounds, arresting offenders for minor drug crimes or other petty crimes. Live PD not only gets its content, but enables its network to sell ad space between said content. Then, the owners of the private prisons get to fill their cells and, thus, their pockets. The grinder grinds on.
Privacy
Shows like Live PD and Cops also have a significant problem when it comes to privacy. Any television program that broadcasts live interactions between law enforcement and the public runs a high risk of exposing the personal lives of the people with whom the law enforcement interacts. Even when faces are blurred, localities, vehicles, clothing, mannerisms, and voices can be recognized. It is unclear if releases are secured for subjects. It is also unclear if informed consent is given. One could argue that informed consent is difficult if not impossible to secure when the subject is being arrested. The power imbalance in this situation is too huge. And, of course, it is difficult to discern in a heated moment if the subject really understands the implications of their likeness being broadcast to a national audience.
Safety
In addition to everything else, these shows are not safe to film. While filming any type of documentary carries a certain amount of risk, these ride-along shows place their documentary crews in situations of unusually heightened tensions and increase the possibilities for harm. In 2014, an audio technician working on Cops was killed by police from the Omaha Police Department during the armed robbery of a Wendy's. The technician, Bryce Dion, was shot after police opened fire at the robbery suspect, who had first fired on the police with an airsoft pistol. As police maneuvered in the restaurant, the suspect attempted to exit via the entrance vestibule where Dion had taken cover. When the police fired at the fleeing suspect, they hit Dion. Video released after the incident by Dion's partner showed that police continued to fire at the suspect after his weapon was revealed to be a toy, and with no regard for what lay beyond their target.
The State of Things
It actually seems like these shows might be going the way of the ghost. While only a few years ago the cancellation of these highly popular shows seemed unlikely, both Cops and Live PD have been taken off the air. A&E's viewership, in the wake of Live PD's cancellation, plummeted. The significant protests that sprung up after the slaying of George Floyd have been cited by both activists and the networks themselves as the primary reason these shows were cancelled. The police, once invincible in their blue-barred towers, are now finding that their positions are not as tenable as they previously assumed. While the cancellation of these copaganda shows is hardly the only measure necessary to end the scourge of American police brutality and over-action, the removal of these programs will hopefully serve to somewhat detox the American's badge-addled brain. There is an immense amount of work to be done, but progress has clearly been made, at least in this small area. The dream of the dream might yet prevail.
Note: This essay was originally written when both Cops and Live PD were still on the air. The essay has been updated to reflect the new state of affairs. A&E has not confirmed or denied whether this essay was a contributing factor in the decision to cancel Live PD.