12 (3:40 PM Street Patrol) East Precinct. People call because they think have a rattlesnake in their yard. Officer Lon Sweeney says it is a bull snake and uses a stick to toss it over their fence. (5:35 PM Racial Harassment Call) Cops go to a skinhead's house to arrest guys who attacked some blacks with baseball bats. A white girl comes home and freaks out that they won't let her in since she lives there. A bunch of skins are brought to jail. (9:41 PM Traffic Stop) Lon pulls over a motorcycle. Bobby stops and then does a U turn and takes off. He gets caught in the dirt and Lon jumps out and pushes him over and arrests him. He knows who Bobby is, but not why he ran. (911 Call Auto Theft) A couple of teenage guys try to hot wire a 280-Z and get caught by the owner. The owner punches the 17 year old thief wearing a Judas Priest in the nose making it a bloody mess. The second thief is Justin Swackhammer who is 15 and is wearing an Ozzy shirt. He stands down the road giving them the finger and egging them on. They catch him and the bloody guy spits on the victim and almost gets punched again. The 15 year old is drunk, spitting, cursing and frothing. (2:40 PM Domestic Call) Ed is a 20 year old man who sniffs paint. He is hiding in his moms' shed with a knife. His sister just died from paint sniffing because she drove over a cliff. They try to help him, but he doesn't want any help. Mom wants him to hurt her so they will arrest him. There is nothing they can do, so they leave. Three weeks later hehugs himself.
Called the original reality show, Cops is a gritty and unfiltered look at the seamier parts of our society as seen through the eyes of the men and women who struggle to keep the peace.
Since 1989, camera crews have traveled across the nation and into other countries providing an intimate look at police officers and the nuts and bolts of their day-to-day work.
Cops uses a modern adaptation of cin... ma v... rit?, a French documentary style of film making from the early 1920s, where life is shot as it happens, without script, narration or interference. Here, the police officer is narrator, guiding you through the shift and what happens within it, using his or her own words.