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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 115 lines

                                                                                TELEVISION, Page 62

The Cops and the Cameras


The explosion of reality-based TV shows and news coverage creates
problems for police in the spotlight

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by Cathy Booth/Miami and Sally B.
Donnelly/Los Angeles, with other bureaus


    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."