Do Cops Learn to Police by Watching TV? Actually, Maybe So.
What the “Running from COPS” podcast can teach us about over-policed people and ourselves
“I can’t breathe.”
Another American is dead at the hands of American police. He was not charged under the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. He was never tried by a jury of his peers. His name was George Floyd, and he is dead.
It is 2020, and if we didn’t know it was the news, we might believe we were watching COPS.
Those who are able to watch the video are horrified by what they see. They are indignant and outraged in response to the police officer’s use of force, and to the indifference of officers who could intervene but do not.
They also know the extent to which the excess eventually leads. Before they begin watching, they already know how this will end. We all do. We know how this ends because it is 2020, because it is news, and because news travels fast.
George Floyd will die.
It is a terrible tragedy. It is an inexcusable tragedy. It is also a visual that, short of its tragic ending, is a familiar spectacle. We are watching an American Black Male on his stomach, hands restrained behind his back, a police officer’s knee forced onto his neck.
It is 2020, and if we didn’t know it was the news, we might believe we were watching COPS.
The podcast Running from COPS presents listeners with a detailed review on America’s relationship with the multimillion dollar entertainment industry of televised policing.
To be clear, this podcast will not help us make meaning of George Floyd’s senseless death, nor the countless other victims of police violence. But in its 6 episodes (plus a bonus mini-episode), this show may help us make more meaning of our own experience with the video of the events that caused George Floyd’s death.
The pod is hosted by Dan Taberski, who you may also know from the popular Missing Richard Simmons podcast. His approach to the subject matter is through investigative journalism, which is to say that he is not solely packing entertainment in the medium of an investigation, but rather adhering to journalistic norms in sharing his investigation. I trust him as a narrator.
That said, this is entertainment. And, in an intriguing twist, we learn early on that Taberski is a former reality show creator himself. While he attempts to be reliable, he’s far from objective. It is a caveat worth mentioning.
Another caveat: neither the podcast nor Podparlour assert generalizations about all police officers. It is an honorable career and a difficult, essential service to society. Those who do it well deserve our respect and appreciation.
The pod explores the 30 year history of COPS and its newer competitor, LivePD. It introduces us to characters from the shows, who are of course real humans, and shows us the impact on these humans that even a simple rerun episode can still have many years later. It takes us inside infamous scenes and betrays the shift in narrative caused by selective editing of hands whose manipulations are motivated by ad revenue, not justice.
And at its heart, it seeks to ask and answer the question: Is COPS real?
You will draw your own conclusions. I believe the series ultimately shows that it’s both real, and not real. It is entertainment-influencing-life-influencing-entertainment.
And that is how things that are not real, become real. And it is, at least in part, how we shape our collective acceptance of what is normal.
Because of the editing, the depictions of policing on these shows is often deceptive and misleading. Producers show real-life people and events, but the storytelling is not faithful reporting on reality so much as it is a collage of real sights and sounds pieced together to tell a story that is not concerned with trying to relate the real story. These stories are entertainment stories, not documentary stories.
Further, many scenes serve to promote tactics that fly in the face of Best Practices for officers by serving up quickly escalating dialogue and aggressive uses of force.
Because televised policing has been with us for three decades, we now have generations of cops who grew up going to school as police on Career Day, then coming home to watch COPS for career training.
Bad policing has been glorified. Officers have been rewarded for protecting and serving ratings rather than their communities.
And that is how things that are not real, become real. And it is, at least in part, how we shape our collective acceptance of what is normal. It is how we have been deceived into believing that this is what law enforcement is supposed to look like.
It is how we can see the images of George Floyd dying in Minnesota and find them familiar.
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