MWNiese Yes, in my estimate, the majority of people arrested on this program deserve to be arrested: Drunk drivers, robbers/ thieves, domestic abusers, wreck less drivers, child abusers.... But what bothers me is that way too many non violent suspects are arrested for minor possessions of marijuana, cocaine, crack.... These people don't need to be locked up with violent offenders. The problem is that many of the officers on this program display behavior that's reprehensible, ignorant, and nasty. These bastard cops are ruining poor people's lives even more than they are already ruined; and many times over non-violent offenses. I shouldn't even watch this program, because I mostly just get upset at the ridiculousness and nastiness displayed by these so called great citizen cops. The problem IS, these cops are making decent people into criminals. The problem IS the War on Drugs is a terrible sham that's morphed into one of the biggest money making businesses in the country. Do you know how many GOP law enforcement flakes would be out of work if marijuana would be legalized? Tens of thousands. Do you think they want that? Clearly most creeps in law enforcement are more concerned with their fat cat pensions than truly helping people and society.

fireblazer666 old Cops used to be great once upon a time. Unfortunetely all they seem to cover is prostituted and minor drug offences. There's hardly ever a chase, or any real action, things which happen quite often in the real world. Watching Cops angers me because they spend so much time, money, and labor on prostitution... yet they neglect other critical areas of crime. I've been robbed and all the cops would say is to go to small claims court if I knew who it was. They refused to do anything. Had a bike stolen mid-day... did nothing. Had a spiteful neighbor accuse me of being loud, cops came, fined me, with no proof I had made noise and no one willing to go to court but the super, who hadn't heard a thing... That brings me to another thing. Cops have more important things to do than respond to noise complaints... anyway, I digress... Cops used to be really interesting, but all you get now is lame prostitution stings... I refuse to watch it on TV. I just pirate it, and skip around and see if there's anything interesting... and the last year... might get maybe 5 minutes a month worth watching.

anonreviewer I used to be able to watch this show for entertainment value. Not any more. As I grow older I get wiser. I learned too much about life. Now this show just disgusts me.Most of what I see on this show is just the cops picking on people who are not hurting anyone. People who are for the most part just dysfunctional biological machines.This episode I am watching right now, they just arrested some guy for sleeping in the cab of his truck for a couple of hours while his kids were playing in the park nearby. Apparently he had a couple of drinks and dozed off. Oh, the horror! And they bust some poor guy who was soliciting a prostitute who was actually a cop. Haven't they got anything better to do? Here in Houston, they won't do a %$#& thing about the thieves who break into our cars for years. But they devote teams of people to bust some poor guy napping in his car or trying to have sex with someone else for money. Why can't the cops and the puritans and baptists just leave people the &%$#@ alone? I am in law school right now, and ya know what? I am going into criminal defense when I graduate. And it is not just this episode. Most of the episodes I see of this show &^%$# me off. Freaking puritans are in charge of this nation because of our low rate of voting. And why do our poor people not vote? BEcause this nation was set up from the start to discourage voting among the poor. THat is how the constitution was designed by James Madison.

MisterWhiplash Cops has been on TV almost all my life. In fact, it's on right now, on TV in the background, as a police officer busts a guy driving with drugs in his car. For years watching dozens of the shows in syndication, episodes much like these, I was struck by how every episode, in essence, is the same. An officer may stop someone on the road, come up to their house, chase after them, and they always get their man or woman. Race isn't even as much an issue as it is the essential point of the show, almost to the point of redundancy- the cops, according to this show, don't lose. But the irony is, someone like myself who becomes occasionally disgusted by the antagonistic (to a point) and superiority-driven nature that underlies those who serve and protect, is constantly re-watchable. But a fact that I didn't know for quite a while was put to me about the show, an important point- the people who appear on the show getting arrested *agree* to allow their faces and likenesses put on TV. Somehow the relish is almost at times interchangeable.If anything, Cops over a decade and a half is almost like a kind of quasi-anthropology turned to ratings. It's not too surprising that if you happen to walk into a police station at a given moment they may be playing this their TV's. And despite the disclaimer at the start of the show, "those arrested are innocent until proved guilty in a court of law", if one were to incorporate the media-is-the-message idea, these people are practically all guilty in their own way by being subjected to not only the rule of the law (90% of the time in just cause) and by their own flaws under the gun (no pun intended). The fact is, Cops was and remains one of the pioneers of reality television, capturing a kind of base level of how life really is when under the lens of a professional hand-held cameraman. There is no contest or money at stake for the participants, it's capturing the suspects/arrestees at their most ashamed (or dazed, crazed, what have you) moments, and the law as the unfettered, collected, and "professional" beings on the planet. The premise of the show, and a good deal of the time its execution, is brilliant in its own way, as a real documentary-style show that is entertaining in its own willful manipulation of the reality. More often than not, even as I feel the some episodes have me cringing in my seat, it is a genuinely interesting piece of the crude side of humanity we either can't look away from or would rather not see at all. And the show becomes very subjective- how you may or may not think the law really helps you or others will effect how you see its worth in the TV landscape.