6.15.2006
COPS nothing but a BIG FRAUD
Recently, one of our reporters had unknowingly good luck following him one day. He was talking to a friend of his that works as an Orange County Sheriff in California when the subject of the show COPS came up. With agreement that we would NOT revile the Deputy’s name, he told us the following about his current ride-along week with a crew from the FOX series, COPS.
“We started the night like any other night,” he said “We had our briefings, our assignments, and notifications of the crew going to be tagging along with some of us.” The crew the Deputy was referring to was a film crew from the FOX Television series, COPS. “We were told to act like they weren’t there, and that we were to go about our shift like it was a normal shift. It turns out; we were more or less portraying actors and actresses on one of those (stupid) reality shows.”
As popular as reality shows have been, COPS has been given the title of “FIRST” series to depict real-life police officers. The show was created to show what law enforcement officials go through on a day-to-day basis. What you see portrayed on screen, turns out is over acted by regular citizens randomly picked by the film crew’s producer.
The Deputy continued, “We stopped for dinner and the producer pulled out a piece of paper from his bag he was carrying. The next thing my partner and I knew is that he started TELLING us what he needed for an up-coming show.” He then went on to say that list included crimes like carrying drugs, domestic abuses, shootings, and robberies to name just a few.
“My partner asked this guy if he was serious and how he expected to get all these requirements for this future show,” our reporter’s friend said “ The producer then pulled out this manila envelope and out of that he pulls what he said were releases and also like 30-or-so business sized envelopes.” What the envelopes contained shocked the Deputy and his partner. Inside each envelope was a one hundred dollar bill. The producer told the Deputies that he knew that getting all of these needed segments was, of course, impossible. He stated that when they weren’t on a call, they would then drive to low-income and minority laden neighborhoods and look for people that would fit the description of “drunk-hick” or “dumb-nigger” and pay them to be shown being arrested.
“After our dinner break, the producer told me to drive to a “bad area” of town. There, we would drive around, look for people who fit these descriptions and pay them to portray being arrested. We would then have them sign a confidentiality release and film the arrest as if it was really happen, in real-time with no re-takes.” The Sheriff Deputy said. Why, you ask, hasn’t anyone said anything about it already? It’s very simple, the reason they go to the low-income and minority laden neighborhoods is because they threaten to sue the “actors or actresses” if they blab. “If those idiots were smart enough to actually READ the release, they would see in there that BY LAW if they tell anyone about what they did on the show and how they received payment for “faking it”, the production company can legally sue them for breach of contract.” stated the Deputy.
After about an hour of explaining what the officers had to do and who got paid for what, the Deputy had to return to his shift. He finished by saying, “I hope by telling you this, people understand that not all calls are like that. A majority of them ARE real, but in some cases they are just paid to let us beat them up, plant incriminating evidence on them, throw cuffs on them, spray them with pepper spray or even slam them to the ground and then shove them in the back of our patrol car. The concept of the show is good, but how they go about exploiting people and minorities just isn’t right.”
Darrehn Larhsen
Cactus Beach Radio News
“The OC”
