So what you're saying is that we could've avoided this whole abomination called "reality TV" if only someone would've paid the writers what they wanted. Ohh the irony 😭

After finding myself locked up on the 6th floor of the 'ACDC' (Atlanta Correction & Detention Center) in downtown Atlanta, I was watching TV with all the 'brothers' in the bullpen. Just so happened a "Cops: Atlanta" episode came on! Those brothers knew all of the cops by street given nicknames and commentated on the whole episode as if it were a play-by-play MMA event. It was like "Cops: In 4D". Best TV ever thanks to those cats. Absolutely surreal.

A good friend of mine is a Sergeant for the Metro Nashville Police Department and COPS came to Nashville to film a few episodes and she told me that it takes over a month to film a 30 minute episode. They also pick officers that tend to get into a lot of incidents.

I'll never forget the guy who huffed spray paint and while clearly high as a kite and with his face covered in silver paint told the cops that it was just silver lipstick (an early season). I nearly died laughing.

I'd like to see a realistic detective show where they investigate the burglary of a hairdresser's salon, and then make a court appearance over a stolen mobility scooter and then spend the afternoon doing paperwork.

A good friend of mine is a police officer, and she said that more than anything, it's paperwork and driving.

Who in their right mind didn’t assume/know that only the entertaining parts made it on the show..

I reported on a "reality show" in the early days, and learned how unreal they often are. Good report.

My Saturday night routine when my son was a toddler: COPS, then America's Most Wanted.

They should have made a 40 min show where the cops stand outside an active school shooting and do nothing but arrest panicked parents that try to help their children

My husbands step-mother was arrested on an episode of Cops. We get a kick out of watching that episode,lol. While there were issues with the TV show it helped get myhusbands youngest sibling away from a crack addicted mother and into a stable home with an Aunt that raised him with love and got him the help he needed from being born addicted. So our family is thankful for the show COPS.

I had a friend whose favorite line about COPS was: _"It's always the guy with no shirt on"._

Hold up, sold for only 2,500?! That in itself, is criminal. Inner Circle should've made him pay with three extra zeroes, they were played into accepting that amount. The narrator's voice is especially fitting for this one since it sounds just like the Cops narrator.

No one is gonna watch a TV show about cops sitting at desks filling out paperwork.

I was always more of a fan of Rescue 911 than Cops. Cops often showed the worst humanity had to offer whereas Rescue 911 often showed some of the best.

I was actually told by a Greensboro police officer that the City Of Greensboro refused cops to come film in our city because of the bad reputation they actually were given the cops.

Pimp My Ride, Cribs, Cops... Weird History has been waging war against "reality" TV lately and I am LOVING IT! ...especially when it comes to Cops and Pimp My Ride. Reality TV is bad enough but if it's just a bunch of attention-whores acting like brats or some skill/talent competition, it's not harming anyone. But if the show starts screwing people over like Pimp My Ride or affecting the lives of involuntary participants like with Cops, that's a problem. And the only show called COPS that matters to me was that old cartoon with Longarm and B.P. Vest.

I’m more a Live PD fan because the police seemed more about maintaining the peace than catching criminals. During several episodes, I honestly felt bad for the police officers because of the people they had to deal with.

I knew a guy who once worked as a homicide detective. According to him the most accurate portrayal of a detective squad he ever saw on TV: Barney Miller.

‘What ya gonna do when the cops come for you’, addictive… 👮🏻‍♂️

Y’all got anything on Live PD? It’s like the modern day Cops on A&E.

I was riding my bike late one night on front beach road in Panama city beach one night, coming from a friends, alot of the businesses will leave their outdoor audio systems on during the season, and i had a huge bag of weed and other paraphernalia in my pocket, i passed a closed bar with a cop sitting in the park lot, now i was fine, nothing to really worry about, but i swear the cops theme song was on that sound system and i could barely keep a straight face.

You are under arrest for being too cool, Weird History! ❤💙❤💙❤💙👮‍♂️🚔🚓👮‍♀️

NOT going to lie, I was a single parent in the 90's, and let my Jr. High school aged children watch COPS. I'd use that to showcase how being dumb or a criminal gets you arrested. It worked.

Wow I caught this video early!!! I just love the upload schedule recently!!! Great Job!!!

I remember watching this show almost every night with my dad. We would always sing the theme song every time it came up. Ahhh good memories

Funny how everyone thinks it’s called “keeping up with the kardashians” It’s actually called by the producers “dumbing down with the dipshittians”

I loved it. Heck I remember being a kid so excited to see the episode where one dude showed up on COPS and America's Most Wanted in the same day. It was cool seeing their reenactment transition to the COPS crew film. Miss those days...I'll never know which episodes that were connected however. It was a black suspect who had taken a blue car. He was finally captured after so long. I wish i knew so i could see for side by side comparisons again.

You forgot Emergency! It was about Squad 51. It got people interested in CPR, rescues, and paramedics.

I live in a small town which is referred to as a “speed trap” and when I see someone from out of town get pulled over I think of the cops theme song.

Cops and live PD was some of the best stuff on TV.

When it comes to police, we are known for our world-famous traffic ladies. Not every intersection has lights in our city, so we recruit women instead of stand in the middle of intersections to control traffic and stop cars when they're breaking the law.

As somebody who visit Portland regularly and it's definitely a place that you lock your doors right after getting off I-205

Is it wrong that back in the day, we used to get messed up and watch Cops? It was fun and funny.

Bad boys, bad boys... I remember when we used to listen to it at class parties as teens.

I thank X-Files for the crossover

i was very young, probably 3/4 years old, i would dance around the living room with my stuffed bunny singing along and jammin' (HARD) to the theme song every time i heard it come on the tv! lol.

I grew up in Portland where the show started, and lived on the street called out in the call, on Cully and Killingsworth. Absolutely terrifying, so much crack and crime. Edit apparently local lore is the it started in Portland but it was actually Florida. My whole life… , I am pretty gullible.

"All suspects are guilty until proven innocent in the court of law" Cops.

As a cop I can 100% assure our jobs are not as crazy as the show depicts. Yes I have been in a few pursuits, I have fought violent suspects, I've performed felony stops, etc. But it is not a daily basis. What the show doesn't show is the hours of paperwork you have to do. Or going to court, sitting there for hours, just to find out the person took a plea deal and you didn't actually have to come. But the absolute first rule I teach rookie cops. IF YOU THINK YOU NEED TO USE THE RESTROOM, TELL ME NOW INSTEAD OF WHEN YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO GO. Because at that point its too late.

Dion's death is tragic, I thought you were going to say a car accident not a shooting.

There was a joke about the "Cops" theme song "Bad Boys" by "Inner Circle": You heard it once on the radio in the late 80s, and countless thousands of time on TV every time a "Cops" episode came on throughout the 90s, 00s, and 10s for the past 30 years!

Thank you for this post! I really enjoyed this episode.

Actually what was considered the first reality show was the 1973 PBS series “an American family.”

Fact: if you were to air a version of cops with an opposite perspective, one that showed what American policing is really about, its inner subculture, the good ol boy system, and the things they get away with, it would be a hundred times more popular than COPS ever was.

Cops was my little brothers FAVORITE show 😅 oddly enough he’s in jail right now I’m not really sure what for our dad just sent me a message telling me and asking if I’d call him 😅

Me personally I love the show and it’s very entertaining 🤣Pluto tv has a channel with 24/7 cops

In spite of how COPS portrayed "policing" and criminals etc it was, with a heap of irony, actually really popular amongst the folks who found themselves on the non-police side of the system. Now, most of the time they would be rooting for the folks to get away from the police, but back in the days when it was more popular and came on more often (mid to late 90's) I rarely ran into someone who wouldn't stop and watch an episode if they were flipping through the channels and came across one - plus they were half-hour shows with 5-10 min segments and so it wasn't a huge time investment. I can remember plenty of evenings with whole rooms of people "Ooooooh-ing" when someone got tackled or a car wrecked etc. It was exploitative an unrealistic to the max and everyone knew it, but there was still a certain thrill to it - like rubber-necking past an accident or even worse (?) shows like Jerry Springer that were also on tv around the same time. And *everyone* recognized and could sing the song. That really stinks though about the royalty situation. When they mentioned about it being licensed I was thinking those guys should be set for life with as many times as that show used to air on some channels - until the video mentioned they sold off the rights for $2,500... which is horrendous. They'd be millionaires many times over had they held onto the rights and just continued licensing the song. But they probably were in a difficult financial situation and the lawyers from cops must have sweet-talked them into it to get the band to think that the show wouldn't be around long enough and that they'd be better off to just cash it on the rights while they could. But that's just about criminal how low-balled they were on the actual amount the band received - the guy that bought the rights knew damn well what he was doing when he offered them only $2,500. Honestly, if the show hadn't been able to get the rights they probably would have had to have dropped the song and paid someone else to write them a new theme for a flat fee because even having to pay just a tiny amount per airing would have run up a fortune in licensing fees over all these years. All the same, those guys should have come out better...

The police chief at the time in my hometown of Columbus,Ohio never liked the show that's why they never came to my city.

I've had a few run ins with reality TV. I was on an episode of cops and almost appeared on the hungry investors ( I was employed at not one but BOTH of the restaurants in one particular episode) crazy how small the world is

Yay, another vid, I love these. I never watched Cops but always saw it on, wonder if I missed anything?

I live in Spokane and I was looking up something in our local legislation that had rules regarding police reality tv because so much of the show is filmed in Spokane lol

LOL I had no idea 1:25 we were at the point where this needed to be explained 😂🤣

I would love to know more about the 90's show Sightings with host Tim White.

World's Wildest Police Videos was another "reality" show that had a ton of bells and whistles added to it. I always wondered why the news anchor reporting from the chopper that followed suspects sounded the same no matter what city or town it was all going down in. Then it hit me that it was all edited in later with corny sound effects.

Even as a 9 yr old I understood that COPS was basically only showing the highlights of everything they filmed. From memory, most of the calls they responded to on the show were disturbing the peace or domestic disputes and homes or businesses.

I will recommend a podcast titled “Headlong: Running from Cops” that came out in 2019. It was seven or more episodes that focused on this TV show. It was an eye opener for me. Examined the behind the scenes practices of the producers and cops involved with the series, exposing what occurred in their quest for a hit show with big ratings. Well researched and produced podcast.

Cops inspired a rip off show in my city ( Montgomery, Alabama), called Cops in Montgomery , later shortened to MPD. They used " Life in the Fastlane " by the Eagles as its theme, and most of the episodes were traffic violations, weed possession, disturbing the peace and police picnics LOL

I seen a guy I grew up with on the show and thought, naahhhh.... that's not Andre. Then the cop said, "Andre, why you run from us?" Andre said, "why you chasing me?" I was like, yeah... that's him.

Cops taught me a few lessons. Never smoke or drink in or before driving, and make sure your vehicle has everything working properly and keep up with insurance and registration. I swear 90% of the show is "I smell alcohol/weed" or your licence/registration/insurance is invalid" or your license plate light is out

I remember this strike well! I went to a Star Trek script writing seminar in SF to learn about expanding my writing. ( I'm such a Trekkie!) I still have a very good script, though dated, I may send to Ron Moore just for a kick, and to keep my promise to showcase what lead to the reasons why Counsellor Troi is so dysfunctional. 😆 They were desperate, I guess. Interesting times.

I worked with a local access TV station as an eager 18 year old. They wanted to do a community-based “Cops”-type show. The cops absolutely loved the idea, with certain ones angling for screen time (and to bang the female camera ops) and others getting upset if their arrest didn’t make the edit. I thought it was great, went out to shoot for a couple of nights, nothing major. Then I sat down to edit the show and there was footage I hadn’t shot, or seen, of a domestic dispute, with people I knew. It was in that moment I realized that the idea of this show was nothing more than bootlicking cops and making normal folks with everyday problems look like felons and wild-eyed addicts. Thankfully, we produced 3 episodes that never aired. The theme song was “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” by Judas Priest. I am mortified to admit this, but I’m hoping it’ll be cathartic for me. 😪

Funny Cops story. I worked at a Burger King in Dallas. These 2 police officers said they were in a hurry to get home to watch Cops. I asked didn't you get enough of that on he job. One of them told me it was like getting on the job training. It made sense to me.

Thx for sharing!!!

Whatchu gon whatchu go whatchu gonna do.

The earlier seasons of Cops were the best. Great program. I remember the episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Ray's watching "Cops" with his brother Robert the NY police officer. Ray criticizes "Cops" so Robert asks him to go on a ride along. Ray finds out how it's like to be a cop and that his brother is braver than he thought. One of the funniest progams ever.

You have THE voice man. Seriously, million dollar voice. Love your videos!

Makes me want to go back and watch to see how many times the thin blue line violated our rights.

Outstanding content as usual. I would love to see a video on To Catch a Predator/Chris Hansen.

You sound very congested I hope you are okay

I was on an episode in Kansas City in the late 80's. I also know from some Kansas City cops that Cops producers at least in KC encouraged the person being detained/arrested to not cooperate.

I was in my 20's when COPS first came out and watched that decade and the next decade and part of the next. I liked knowing my shows were coming up Saturday night because I really loved, America's Most Wanted!

I used to watch cops on Saturday night if I wasn't going out to concerts or hitting the town

I'd enjoy a episode about how Merry Melodies/Looney Toons came to be.

Love the video!

Great video! Now do one on "World's Wildest Police Videos" with Sheriff John Bunnell. I'll bet there's some juicy behind-the-scenes stuff there...

Imagine being one of the mindless herd that actually believes what they are being shown is "reality". Another reason things are how they are.

I remember my grandmother watching this show 😁 and I viewed myself a few times as well.

As a kid I grew up watching the show! I always made the joke "COPS is filmed infont of a live studio audience" which all the TV shows used to say

I suggest an episode on Circumcision, that has some really weird history!

This is so funny because I watch sometimes just to see if people wouldn't get in trouble. And I think it happened every now and again but very rarely.

I seen a guy I grew up with on the show and thought, naahhhh.... that's not Andre. Then the cop said, "Andre, why you run from us?" Andre said, "why you chasing me?" I was like, yeah... that's him. This show also regularly featured Civil Rights violations, that we thought were normal and now through 1st amendment auditors, know are absolutely not ok.

Thanks for this! 🚔

Very well done program. I had no idea about this stuff.

My brother was on Cops in 1989 when they were filming in So. Calif. I know a lot of the cops that were shown during the week of filming and there was no fake or staged calls for service.

A great episode would have been the cops responding to that last school shooting. The show could have revealed how the cops formed a perimeter and did nothing for over 40 minutes until finally a border patrol agent had enough and went in to do their job.

I loved watching cops with my grandma back in the day

As a former cop this show was a comedy as far as I was concerned. The paperwork was such a joke I spent most of my time giving warnings. Confiscate and be on your way or arrest and do hours of brain damaging amounts of reports.

Don't forget that many police departments wouldn't let cops broadcast anything that made the department look bad.

I'm in New Zealand and would watch this show daily! Love USA!

The only thing I remember about Cops is its ending. I would always catch the last few minutes when I would turn on Fox to watch America's Most Wanted. Ahhh, the 90's.

I worked for my Brother in his law office, he is very adamant about reading everything before you sign. Yea, it's common sense, but most people don't do it, and then they get mad when, fill in the blank.

I know high speed chases went through the roof as a result of this show- they weren't THAT MUCH of a thing, prior. Young dopes/the easily influenced seen this & thought it was actually a viable course of action when dealing with police in a car..... Thanks, COPS !!.... 🚬😎

Inner circle was also behind the song "sweat". (All you gen-x and millennials out there): "A la-la-la-long A la-la-la-long A la-la-la-long-long-lee-long long..." That song!

The next thing we know, this channel decided to do a video about how Dragon Ball influenced many modern anime in nowadays.

While they were in Spokane I had a friend who was a cop that they were doing a follow-up interview after a call when on the radio there was a pursuit in progress. You could hear the sirens in the distance getting closer. He was calmly talking about it then he said they are coming this way. Yes, they did because they sped past them during the interview still filming the whole thing with cop cars right behind them. They lost control and were captured. It was a stolen car. He walks over to them in the car and calmly talks to them just saying to them it wasn't a good decision for them to do the crime and they filmed it all. They stayed in Spokane if I remember right, for four days and they got their fill.

Do a video on "To Catch A Predator" 😉👍

My dad made me watch Cops when I was a little kid to show what happens when I am a bad person later on in life and one that I vividly remember was a guy being chased in his underwear then getting tazed halfway through after they caught him trying to break into his ex girlfriend's house.

I'm surprised Weird History didn't talk about the crossover episode with COPS and X-Files when it was on TV at the time.

As ridiculous (and infuriating) as it can get at time, the show is a definite nostalgic guilty pleasure. Nothing like ordering a pizza or Chinese food and watching COPS reruns on a Saturday night (or any other day of the week now tbh).