For 20 Years, a Pleasure So Guilty It's Criminal

Fulwood is ambivalent about "Cops." He believes that the show gives the public an appreciation of the dangers and difficulties of policework but he also thinks the cops on "Cops" sometimes look like they're acting. "I'm not sure when I watch it if the police officers are not doing some things for the cameras," he says. "They're playing up the excitement."

He has a suggestion for the producers: "At the end of the show, I would like them to explain what happened," he says. "If they show a shooting, I would like them to say, 'The officers involved in this shooting had to go to a post-trauma program.' Because you don't walk away from it like it's nothing. That stuff has a impact on you."

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A cop knocks on the door of a rundown house in Indianapolis. A guy with a scraggly beard answers, holding a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He takes a swig and invites the cop inside. The cop says he heard there was a fight in progress. The guy sits in a chair and takes another swig.

"Put the bottle down," the cop says.

The guy makes a peace sign and takes another swig. He denies that he's been in a fight. "I didn't bust him in the eye," he says. "He busted himself in the eye."

The cop gets up and looks around. In the bathroom he finds a guy washing blood off his face. His nose and his gums are bleeding, one eye is swollen and he's missing a tooth or two.

"Are your teeth messed up?" the cop asks.

"Well, my teeth are messed up anyhow," the guy says.

"Well, more than normal?" the cop asks.

On and on it goes. The cop ends up busting the guy with the bottle in the bag, who offers one final attempt at an excuse as he's hauled away. "I didn't hit him," he says, "and if I did, he deserved it."

It's another funny, sad, pathetic "Cops" moment -- the kind that makes you feel vaguely guilty for watching or, worse, for laughing. But one of the unspoken pleasures of watching "Cops" is seeing people who are uglier and dumber than you are. For decades, until "Cops" ushered in the era of reality TV, the people you saw on television were better-looking than you (because they were professional actors) and better-spoken than you (because they were uttering lines scripted by professional writers). But "Cops," along with Jerry Springer, introduced the pleasure of watching people who are so pathetic that the average TV viewer could feel smug.

"What reality TV did was give us something we could feel superior to," says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University. "You enjoy it in the mode of mockery. You feel superior to it."

"There's some truth to that," says Langley. "A lot of people like it for the wrong reasons. They like it because they see people behaving stupidly, stupid human tricks. You see people at their worst. It might be schadenfreude or it might just be entertainment."

Whatever it is, "Cops" provides plenty of it. In fact, the producers are promoting their greatest-hits DVD with a sheet that provides statistics on the human folly captured on the show in 20 seasons:

Arrests made on "Cops" -- 2,044

Shootings -- 102

Hookers arrested -- 98

Couples caught having sex -- 9

Transvestites featured -- 28 in 12 different cities.

Over the last 20 years, "Cops" has become so familiar a part of American pop culture that it spawned a parody TV show, Comedy Central's "Reno 911!," which in turn spawned a movie, "Reno 911!:Miami."

" 'Cops' is what it is and it keeps on delivering," says Thompson. "It's been going on for 20 years and theoretically it could go on forever."

Meanwhile, Langley reports, more and more perps are eager to sign the releases that permit their images to be shown on "Cops."

"Twenty years ago, it was harder to get releases," he says. "Now, it's way over 90 percent of people who sign. We live in a celebrity culture and people are almost always willing to be on TV -- even if it's committing a crime."