Reality Police Series Leave Mark on the Cultural Blotter

Fox, the network that gives fleeing criminal suspects their moment in the sun, will let Lowell Waddy of Michigan City, Ind., have his fling with fame in December when he leads a high-speed chase that ends when he crashes into a tree on an episode of “World’s Wildest Police Videos.”

It seems like only yesterday, but more than a decade has passed since Barbour/Langley Productions rolled out the series “Cops” and its gritty brand of video verite. Far from running out of gas, however, the often-ridiculed and critically scorned police reality shows are flying along like a growing convoy of stolen Corvettes.

Even as “Cops” cruises along in its 11th year, syndicated look-alike “LAPD: Life on the Beat” is going strong in Season 4. Meanwhile, A&E;’s slower-paced but more cerebral “L.A. Detectives” premiered only last July and was quickly renewed for another season. And Fox is packing its schedules with more episodes of the shock-TV “Wildest Videos” franchise.

No doubt these shows have a firm foothold on the cultural landscape.

At Pursuit Productions in Century City, slated to move soon to larger offices to accelerate output of “Wildest Videos” and kindred specials “World’s Scariest Police Chases” and “Surviving the Moment of Impact,” executive producer Paul Stojanovich is confident of the future of the genre.

“ ‘Cops’ will be on longer than ‘Gunsmoke,’ ” he predicts, referring to the famous western that lasted 20 years on CBS.

Maybe. An estimated 10,000 police car camera systems nationwide are spooling out more fresh footage, and more departments are adding them all the time; the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and L.A. Police Department recently moved to add cameras to their cars.

Patrol officers across America are happy to have Hollywood TV crews along for the ride. The shows are racking up ratings--and not only in living rooms, it turns out, but in police academy classes and lawyers’ offices.

“A lot of departments record our shows and use them as training tapes,” said Andrew Jebb, co-executive producer of “LAPD: Life on the Beat.”

Stojanovich said police regularly call to criticize other police they see on his show, such as the rural Louisiana officers shown trying to shoot out the tires of a getaway car fleeing through traffic.

Even some of L.A.’s men and women in blue have been disciplined over blue language captured on “Life on the Beat,” LAPD Deputy Chief David J. Gascon said.

Deputy Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Jim Mendez said he nailed down a conviction earlier this year when “Life on the Beat” tapes taken a few minutes after a home-invasion robbery corroborated a victim’s testimony.

But another segment resulted in a dismissal when it showed police finding evidence at a drug arrest quite differently than they described in their testimony, said deputy Los Angeles County Public Defender Mike Judge.

“We are basically law-abiding citizens, so if it’s subpoenaed, we ship it,” said “Cops” executive producer and creator John Langley, who dispatches up to nine crews at once from coast to coast.

At “Wildest Videos,” producers don’t have to worry about subpoenas, because they mostly use copies of official police evidence tapes. Their biggest problem is culling airworthy footage.

Pursuit Productions has a staff of 12 people who go around the country, knocking on police department doors, not unlike salespeople.

Rosanne Ehrlich, research supervisor, said the best tapes show not only action but also some kind of resolution: a crash or an arrest. Nothing is worse, she said, than a tape that shows only the middle of an exciting chase.

Or, added Robert Ballantyne, executive in charge of production at Pursuit Productions, “We’ve had great chases but the auto focus is on the windshield, so all you see are blurs. Or the good action is just off camera and you hear Bang! Bang! Bang!”

At times, the crews on the ride-along shows encounter too much reality. “Life on the Beat” cameraman Richard Forman lost a dramatic shot when a suspect began overpowering an officer.

“I had to drop the camera and help him out,” Forman said. Meanwhile, sound operator Roberto Chiofalo called for help over the officer’s radio.

Forman and Chiofalo, as is the practice among TV crews on police patrol assignments, don bulletproof vests. Gunfire on camera has been rare, but crews frequently encounter the bloody aftermath of violence or accidents.

Which points to what the defenders of these shows say is their most important lesson: Don’t let this happen to you.

Which is what fleeing motorist Lowell Waddy hopes viewers will take from the fuzzy video showing him rolling in the snow with a broken leg after his crash. “Wildest Videos” segment producer Beth Simanaitis tracked him down and found that he is now holding down three jobs and taking college classes.

“That [arrest] was an early wake-up call and made me change my life,” Waddy said by phone from Indiana. “My lesson is [that] when the police [officer] turns on his red light, you should pull over.”

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* “World’s Wildest Police Videos” appears Thursdays at 8 p.m. on Fox.