Front Burner - 'Cops' gets cancelled

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

After more than 1000 episodes, the reality television show COPS has officially been cancelled. For thirty years, COPS has broadcast police officers chasing down suspects and arresting them as entertainment. But according to Henry Molofsky, producer of the hit investigative podcast Running From Cops, the vision of crime and policing portrayed by COPS was often distorted. Today, Henry Molofsky discusses the legacy of the show.

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there's a good chance you know all the words of this song. I actually know every word of it in another language, sort of. I tried to translate the lyric to the Cops theme song for my grade 9 French class. But now, after more than 30 years on the air, Cops has been cancelled. Today we're looking back on the troubling legacy of America's longest-running reality TV show, with Henry Malofsky. He was a producer on the podcast Running From Cops, which investigated the show and its cultural impact. I'm Josh Bloch, and this is Frumper. Henry, hello.

Hey, Josh. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. I want to ask you, you know, first of all, I bet almost everyone listening has seen at least a couple minutes of this show. And that's no accident because this thing was on all the time. Can you just give me a sense of just how ubiquitous Cops was? Come here. Put your hands behind your back now. Megan, put your hands on your back now. I didn't do anything. Come out. Come out. Come out.

Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Put your hands on your back. Put your hands on your back. Yeah, I mean, since Cops came on the air in 1989, it's become just one of the biggest shows. Everyone knows Cops, like you said.

There's been over a thousand episodes. There's been over 30 seasons. There's times we counted when it would be on TV 70 times in a given week. You know, you would turn on your TV. We did the odds. And at any given point of day, you turn it on, there's a 50% chance Cops is going to be on TV. Wow. And with that many episodes, is there a formula to what a Cops episode looks like? Totally. And definitely the formula kind of solidified over those 30 years, but it became pretty routine. So it's a 30-minute episode,

which is about 21 minutes of content. So there's three segments. Each is about seven minutes, and it pretty much always starts with a cop patrolling the streets in their car. The camera's right next to them. The viewer is sitting right there next to the officer. We got a call that originally came in as an armed robbery when we came on the scene, the kid said he had just left his bike unsecured. That's when the subject walked up, took the bike and rode off. See a car, I check the tags, it's expired. So I stop her and see what's going on,

why the tags are expired and why she's driving. So as I go to stop her, she pulls into a residence. Do you live here? No, he was working on my car. And then usually about 10, 30 seconds in, something happens. Either a call comes in or the officer witnesses something. And then the rest of the segment is the cop dealing with some sort of suspect. 250, I got one running.

Southbound towards 161. Behind the taco shop. And as of recently, about 95% of the time, that segment ends with the officer arresting them. Ma'am, what's going on? Okay, well right now you're being detained, so if you walk away, you're going to be placed under arrest for resisting. Okay, cool. I you're being detained, so if you walk away, you're going to be placed under arrest for resisting. Okay, cool. Talk to me. Get on my f***ing ass.

You're being, this is like a whole lot to put my shoes on. You're supposed to let me know I am being arrested. I said you're being detained. Okay. I was hoping we could actually talk about one specific example of a cop segment that you took a close look at. It showed these two teenagers being arrested in a church parking lot. What happens in that segment as the viewer sees it playing out on TV? Yeah, so that segment you're talking about was from season 26. And these two young people,

a boyfriend and girlfriend are sitting in their car. How you doing? Good. What are you guys doing here? Just hanging out. And we the viewer are sitting with an officer, How you doing? Great, how are you? Good. What are you guys doing here? Just hanging out. Just hanging out. And we, the viewer, are sitting with an officer. We pull up on them in the parking lot, and the teen, who looks very nervous, the boy, he tells the officer that he's out for a misdemeanor bond for possession of cocaine. Felony misdemeanor bond.

Felony misdemeanor bond, so... Yeah, my felony charge is possession of cocaine. Possession of cocaine. Okay. Right right which raises the cop's suspicion and the cop's like all right i want to check your car um would you mind if i check to make sure there's nothing illegal in the car okay i'm gonna search it and so after about a few seconds of searching the car he finds a powder on the floor this right here crack cocaine has a almost like a cake consistency to it. So we're going to nick test a portion of that and see, test a small amount. He runs a quick roadside drug test, which you see all the time on cops, called a nick test.

The test comes back positive for cocaine, and boom, they're in handcuffs and off to jail they go. I do not believe this is happening. I'm really blowing my mind. The fact that this is going on. You're being placed under arrest for possession of cocaine. Just go ahead and place your hands behind your back, okay? So you actually get access to the raw footage of that arrest and it told a really different story, right?

What actually happened in that whole interaction? So for people like us looking into reality TV, finding the raw footage is kind of the holy Grail. It's the Rosetta Stone. It translates what actually happens to what they're showing you on TV. So when we saw this, we got it because the defense attorney for that young woman in the car, he found it through court filings when he was defending her. And what looks like a clear cut case in the show turns out to be a lot more complicated. What actually happens is the officer doesn't find the drugs in about 10 seconds. It takes him 15 minutes. He then tests it with these roadside

drug tests, not once, not twice, but three times because the first two times it came back negative. And the third time it finally comes back positive. And that's when the arrest happens. Subsequent testing after the show was filmed showed that it wasn't actually even drugs, the test was wrong. So just that contrast between these really different set of facts that the raw footage showed and what cops put on air, it just showed us that this is a show that seems really real and seems to be portraying police in a really realistic manner, but it's not. And that third test wasn't in the camera turned off and then turned back on and his the officer's back was to the camera when that third test right being administered. Yeah. And so I mean, the officer denies doing doing anything illegal,

like planting drugs or anything like that. But it was just suspicious and telling or interesting to us that the only time there was a cut in this long footage we watched was right before he opens his trunk to get the third test. The camera just goes black for a minute. Right. So what do you think explains this discrepancy between what was filmed that night and then what goes to air? between what was filmed that night and then what goes to air? I think it speaks to a much bigger issue, which is what happens when the incentives of entertainment television mix with the reality of policing. You know, TV is incentivized by finding action and drama and things that aren't necessarily

best for a fair justice system or even like a working justice system. So, you know, the show was on TV for 30 years. And the effects of this kind of warped reality are that people had a real, I think, a real wrong perception of what policing was actually like. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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just search for Money for Couples. watched hundreds of episodes of cops and did data analysis on what you observed, which I want to ask you about. But I guess first, I want to ask you, what was it like to watch hours and hours of cops? Honestly, that's a small team of us watched 846 episodes. And I think all of us after a few weeks of this, you can picture what's the movie where they hold their eyes open, Clockwork Orange. We were waking up with like nightmares. It's really, we weren't actually experiencing these violent arrests. And even that was pretty intense for us. So it was 846 episodes of Cops that you guys collectively watched. I'm curious to know what you found in terms of how this world, how the world as it's portrayed in cops stacks up against the real world. Yeah, so I can tell you some of the takeaways. I

mean, we analyzed, you know, as you said, over 846 episodes and got something like 68,000 data points, which included everything on the race and gender of suspects and victims and officers, but also the types of crime, whether it was drug crime or sex work or violent crime or, you know, chase scenes, which cops is really known for. And what we found is that the world in cops is much more violent than the real world. You're likely to see four times more violent crime than is statistically in the real world, according to the FBI. I think three times more drug crime, 10 times more sex work. I think that, again, speaks to the incentives of television versus reality. And also, a kind of complicated but

interesting takeaway we had was that the producers front load the episodes. The first things you see are often black people committing violent crimes. And they deny this was intentional. And we have no way of knowing if it was intentional, if it was subconscious. But either way, as producers, you know, you kind of lead with your most interesting and gripping things and things that you think will grab the audience. And so we found it pretty disturbing that the things that they chose to lead with were often violent crimes committed by black people.

Hmm. that the things that they chose to lead with were often violent crimes committed by black people. And almost every encounter between a cop and a civilian ends up in an arrest. How does that compare with what actually transpires in reality? Yeah, I mean, just statistically speaking, the cops on cops are really good at their jobs. Right. You know, I think when the show started in 1989, we were seeing something like 60% of segments end with arrests, which is still extremely high. But over the 30 years, as the formula kind of solidified, that grew until the most recent season,

it was something like 95% of segments ended in arrests. Stop resisting! Stop resisting! Stop resisting! What's up? I'm sweet. arrests. If you're seeing this ultra violent world full of drugs and criminals, which cop shows, and then you're seeing that these cops are extremely effective at protecting us from them. It sends this message, you know, that the only thing kind of keeping us safe is this the thin blue line of law enforcement. Right, it gives you a very specific impression of what a police officer does, what their job actually looks like. Yeah, and I think if, you know, we're having these conversations now, and people have been having them for a long time, but they're becoming more widespread about what the police departments mean in our cities and what defunding them would mean.

And I think having this type of picture on TV for 30 years, people might not realize it, but it really provides at least emotional fuel for people who are scared of losing the police officers. emotional fuel for people who are scared of losing the police officers. But when you realize that this is not actual reality, this is a very choreographed and selective version of reality. I think, hopefully, people might might look at that differently. What did you learn about the relationship between the producers of Cops and the police departments that they were covering? Like what kind of editorial control did the police have over the content of that show? What we found, and we actually got our hands on a couple of these contracts, is that every department that invites cops to film with them, and as the creators of Cops will tell you, it's an invitational show. They are invited to film.

Those departments have editorial control. They can tell the producers of Cops, you know, don't air that, which on the one hand is disturbing in and of itself, because that sounds a lot like propaganda. On the other hand, the fact that a lot of these really disturbing and often violent and illegal forms of policing are out there, and then you realize that they're out there with the consent of the department's leadership, it becomes even more disturbing. Right. Like on your podcast, you talk about one officer shoving a flashlight into a suspect's mouth in

order to try and get him to spit out drugs. Yeah. That was one of the most disturbing ones just because this, this man, he's an older man and the cops pull him over and suspect him of having drugs hidden under his tongue. And he's not even detained yet. Stick out your tongue for me one more time.

All right. Open your mouth. Stick it out. Stick out your tongue. We actually watched this episode with a constitutional law professor who used to be a law enforcement officer himself. And he was just walking us through all of the illegal and kind of egregious things that this officer was doing. One more time. Open your mouth.

Okay, spit it out. Spit it out. Spit it out. And even without knowing that, you just watch it and you're kind of grimacing and tensing up just seeing how this man is being treated. Spit it out. I'm telling you right now, you're going to spit it out, okay? Okay? Stick out your tongue. Stick out your tongue. If you bite me, we're going to have some serious problems. You understand me? Do you understand me? And then you think, wow, why would the police departments want this out there? And I mean,

one of the conclusions we came to is that it's a form of control and it's a form of humiliation to have people see this on TV and expect this from their law enforcement officers. The teenagers that you were talking about earlier, those drug charges were actually dismissed since the drug test eventually came back negative. But those two teenagers still had to live with the consequences of that episode airing, not just that one time, but then many times in syndication. What kind of effect does that have on people to have this moment in their life broadcast for anyone to see it? Yeah, I mean, their case is extra significant because, you know, a month before it even aired, the law enforcement officers knew that that test was wrong. The test came back far before it aired, and then it continued not just to air, but to rerun. I mean, it was just devastating

for them. Not only were they wrongly accused, but they were wrongly accused for the entire country to see. And every few months, they're reminded of it when people who hadn't seen it the first time say, hey, man, I just saw you on TV. I think you can just think about what that would be like if that was your reputation on a nationally aired television show. But we talked to countless people all over the country who had been on these shows, both cops and live PD, who would tell us these stories. And sometimes we would talk to them, sometimes we would talk to their family. And these people are not even consenting to do it. I mean, cops claims that they get written consent from every single suspect who appears on the show. But we talked to almost a dozen people who that wasn't the case for.

I mean, honestly, I told them on camera that they did not have permission to put me on TV. They never had me sign anything. They never talked to me afterwards. And yeah, that pisses me off. Like, hey, we're going to take your face, your picture, and your shitty situation you were in, and we're just going to sit back here in our corporate place and collect all that cash and, you know, give you the middle finger. How can they really get away with that? They said they never gave consent or they were too inebriated on drugs or alcohol to legally do so. Wow. So 10 out of 11 people that you spoke to that were on the show said they did not give consent to appear on it. Yeah. I mean, 10 people, it's really hard to talk

to these, to talk to people who've appeared on the show, because for one thing, a lot of them are currently incarcerated, but also a lot of people don't want to talk about these stories, which makes sense. And then also kind of adds to the problem, which is why are they being broadcast on TV for entertainment? I mean, this isn't news. Cops isn't news. Cops is an entertainment show based on real people's lives man who overdosed on the show. Can you tell me a bit about him? Sure. So I think that happened in season 31. It was a more recent episode and that was in Spokane, Washington. The segment starts again, like all the other segments, you're patrolling around with an officer and they see a man on his bike. I grew up here in

the Pacific Northwest. I love Spokane. It's real close to a bunch of lakes, hunting areas, fishing. Who speeds away from them. And when they catch up to him, he's falling over, and he says his name is Randy. We find out later that's a fake name. Hi, how's it going? Why don't you have a seat on the ground there for me? Hey, you got your ID on you? No, I don't.

No? Well, how about your name? Randy. I'm running the name he gave me right now, and it looks like he actually provided me the false name, and his true identity, David, has an active warrant for a DOC violation. But he quickly starts overdosing, and you see that he's passing out, and he's no longer responding to the officers. Are you injured at all, David? Are you injured at all?

David? David, we know what know what she takes we know how to help you and they administer narcan on him 43 for caddis give a dose of narcan um but then we we followed up and we talked to this guy whose name actually isn't randy but it's david and he didn't even know he was on the show until his lawyer told him. And so this was someone who was overdosing. He later told us it was intentionally overdosing. It was an attempted suicide. So I had a lot of issues with mental health and drug addiction. And I was really depressed at the time.

And my brilliant plan was I actually ingested two grams of heroin and almost two grams of methamphetamine before I even had an interaction with the police. I just decided I'm just going to eat all my drugs and just ride my bike until I collapse, and hopefully I don't wake up. How could you possibly consent to being on a TV show while you're in the middle of overdosing? That was a pretty disturbing example for us. Yeah, I mean, in going back as well, you know, in researching for this and looking through old episodes of cops, I mean, just how many kind of heartbreaking moments there are of people

really struggling with addiction, or domestic violence. I mean, I imagine that must have been one of the really tough things when you guys sat down and watched hundreds of hours of the show. It was, and that was one of the things we were hoping to show in the podcast, which is, you know, we have all this data and all this quantitative sort of proof that this show is distorting reality, but I think it really helps to hear the stories of people who have been caricatured on the show and who you only get a very thin slice of their life when you see them getting arrested.

It's only one-sided. They see one side. They see this dude who's a junkie, the cops rescue him. So all they see is that their taxpayer's money is going to pay to rescue some junkie that they probably think in their head isn't worth a shit. I'm the addict, do criminal stuff to feed my habits, so I'm the bad guy. And they're the good guys who's never been involved in a life or don't even understand it. So maybe that's a form of entertainment where they see the bad guy get caught. I don't know. I don't really see the point in it. I think hopefully it will humanize

these people who are interacting with law enforcement and give people kind of a fuller picture of what's going on when these interactions happen. So I think it's fair to say that cops' heyday had already come and gone by the time this announcement was made this week. But the appetite for this kind of entertainment hasn't disappeared. And just before we close out our conversation today, can you tell me a little bit about Live PD, a sort of descendant of cops? So if you've seen Cops, you can probably picture Live PD. It's pretty similar. It's filmed alongside an officer who's doing their job. The biggest difference is the title tells you is it's happening live. Um, so

I compare it to, to the NFL, you know, in the football league in America has red zone, um, which is cutting from touchdown to touchdown of various different games, like on Sundays as, as they're happening and live PD does this, but with arrests. So from their headquarters in New York, they're cutting to South Carolina or Florida or New Mexico as there's a new carjacking or burglary or fistfight happening outside a bar. It's kind of like a really amped up version of Cops and it instantly became popular. It started airing in 2016 on A&E, and it quickly became the most popular cable show in its time slot. I think it was the most DVR'd show of the year last year. Cops had already seen its heyday, as you said,

and the ratings had kind of started middling out. But Live PD was rocketing up, and there was something like six spinoffs. It was like one version was following canine officers, and one version was following, you know, live rescue as opposed to police departments. So this was a huge moneymaker for A&E. It would air for hours and hours in a row, just these marathons, it was almost their whole network schedule on the weekends. And as we just heard on Wednesday night, it was canceled, which was absolutely shocking for me. Right. And one of the reasons it appears it was canceled was following these revelations that they had filmed the death of a black man in the custody of Austin police. And then that video was

in fact destroyed. Yeah. And it's a little bit confusing to parse out the details of it because Live PD is saying one thing and law enforcement and the defense attorneys are saying other things. But one thing is clear that it took a really long time for this, even the existence of this footage to come out. And the teams investigating this were looking for this footage for a long time and were kind of stonewalled. Which is interesting because, you know, Live PD claims to be about transparency. interesting because, you know, Live PD claims to be about transparency. If you listen to their host talk or any of the fans of the show, their arguments in favor of it are that this is a show that's all about transparency and law enforcement, when I don't think that is the case. What's the significance, do you think, of these shows being canceled right now?

I think there's a few things. I mean, I think for a really long time, cops and then Live PD were one of the real predominant forms of how we saw how police officers worked in this country. Like if you weren't interacting with them yourselves and you weren't watching fictional representations in movies, you were watching and getting your messaging from these shows, whether you thought about it or not. I think as cell phone footage and YouTube became more popular, people are now seeing actual interactions with law enforcement from a very different perspective. And so I think it's kind of the end of this law enforcement sponsored kind of propaganda arm on TV. I mean, I have no doubts there'll be other things that come up. up. I also think it's really telling that it took this extremely powerful movement for it to happen for the networks to finally cave. I mean, in 1992, the Rodney King riots or the riots after

the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles happened. And that was right between Copp's second and third Emmy nomination. It didn't really affect the network at all. And in 2013, as the Black Lives Matter movement was starting, a civil rights organization named Color of Change successfully got Fox to stop airing Cops, but it immediately got picked up by another network. So I think it speaks to the difference of this current moment in just a tiny way, how this movement is different, that both of these shows were canceled within a couple weeks of the protest starting. Henry, thank you so much. This is fascinating. Thanks so much, Josh.

Back on this side of the border, in Vancouver, more news stemming from protests against police brutality. The city's mayor, Kennedy Stewart, is calling for a comprehensive review of all policing across British Columbia, saying the province's Police Act requires him to, quote, more or less rubber-stamp police budgets. The announcement comes after the Vancouver Police Board rejected city council's request for a 1% cut to the police's $34 million budget,

a request made last month to deal with the fiscal fallout of COVID-19. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Mark Apollonio, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, Ali Janes, and Nahayat

Tzizouche. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design, with help this week from Mac Cameron. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening. Back on Monday.