By Owen Symes
Cop shows have been around since TVs first gained popularity in the 1950s. From the 1970s onwards, they’ve weighed heavily upon the popular imagination, making up around 20% of the scripted output of major US television networks even as recently as 2020. From the beginning, shows like Dragnet, Police Story, Law & Order, or SWAT have often advertised their authenticity, claiming to entertain audiences with at least somewhat plausible or realistic stories. But most of these shows are little more than copaganda. Despite the occasional episode involving police misconduct, only a few procedurals have focused on criticizing the police, most notably The Wire in the early 2000s. But as recent news has amply demonstrated, the most realistic cop show isn’t that prestigious HBO drama, but rather an oft-overlooked mockumentary that began airing around the same time: Reno 911.
Bad Boys, Good Cops
If you’re not aware, Reno 911 began as a parody of the reality TV show Cops, a pioneer of the genre which presented audiences with half-hour episodes filled with vignettes of officers out on patrol. In the world of Cops, the streets are usually dark, the civilians uncooperative and suspicious, the law enforcers competent, knowledgeable, worldly, sometimes even philosophical. The shaky footage and pitch-black vistas of the show are given meaning by the explanatory narration of the police themselves. Their perspective is the truth.
Reno 911 took the same cinematic techniques employed by Cops but used them to skewer, rather than valorize, the police. Instead of presenting the cops with some baseline of professional competence, as even critical dramas like The Wire typically do, Reno 911 deflates its cops, bringing them down from the mythic cultural pedestal they’ve occupied for nearly a century. In so doing, the show highlights aspects of policing that we rarely see on US television: the stupidity, cupidity, timidity so common in real departments. Nothing illustrates this better than the opening scene of the pilot episode.
While on evening patrol, deputy Garcia hears on the radio that there is an officer down and shots fired. He flares his lights and speeds to the address provided. Arriving on scene, Garcia makes for the entrance and, gun drawn but without backup, lunges into the domicile. He shouts into the darkness, “Sheriff’s department!” The lights come on and we see a wall of cops starting to yell Surprise! It’s clearly a birthday party for Garcia. Already keyed up for action, however, Garcia discharges his weapon and hits an officer. The other cops look at their fallen comrade, then back at Garcia, then begin to scan the room awkwardly as they murmur surprise. The camera zooms in on deputy Jones, who sheepishly radios: “We have an officer down…”
The cops of Reno 911 are fundamentally fearful creatures: afraid of losing respect at least as much as they are of losing their lives. Recent news out of Okaloosa County, FL and Washington, DC has made the reality of this fear abundantly, maddeningly, clear.
Acorn Comes Into Frame
As detailed by a recently-released police report on the incident, early on the morning of November 12, 2023, police arrived at a woman’s house in the Florida suburbs responding to a call about a missing car and a threatening boyfriend. Soon after the police arrived at the woman’s house, the boyfriend appeared. He offered no resistance while he was searched. He was then handcuffed and placed inside the vehicle of one deputy Hernandez, a non-combat military veteran who had recently become a cop.
When news arrived that the girlfriend’s car had been found, Hernandez began moving back to his SUV in order to search the boyfriend again. As he later recounted, Hernandez approached his vehicle and heard:
…what I believe would be a suppressed weapon off to the side. Definitely heard this noise. At the same time, I felt an impact on my right side, like upper torso area…Um, so I feel the impact. My legs just give out. Um, I don't know where I'm hit. I think I'm hit.
He then summersaulted away from his vehicle in a desperate attempt to gain some distance from the shooter. Now on his back, Hernandez panicked like a flailing turtle, drew his service pistol, and discharged the entire magazine into his own vehicle.
Nearby, the experienced and long-serving sergeant Roberts saw Hernandez fall, saw his terror-stricken face, and heard him screaming that he had been shot. Without taking any time to understand what was happening around her, Roberts immediately went for her gun. She fumbled the quickdraw, accidentally dislodging her spare magazine from its pouch. As it struck the ground, she began firing haphazardly in the direction she thought the shooter was. Afraid of being struck by friendly fire, Hernandez crawled to cover.
When the smoke cleared, the officers belatedly began to assess the situation. Miraculously, the hapless boyfriend, still handcuffed inside the vehicle as it was being pulverized, survived unscathed. No other civilians (or police) were harmed during the fusillade. Medical staff later confirmed that Hernandez had never suffered a gunshot wound. What had happened?
During the subsequent investigation, Hernandez gave his statement and was allowed to watch his bodycam footage. Then he was shown a still photograph from that footage. Investigators pointed out a tiny object striking the officer’s vehicle. Gears turned within the deputy, then clicked into place, prompting him to ask a vital clarifying question: “Acorn?”
An Investigator responded with appropriate brevity: “Acorn.”
Amid stutters and pauses, Hernandez tried but failed to articulate a response, eventually admitting that it was possible that an acorn had made the inciting noise. An investigator followed up with a question I’m sure every civil servant dreads: was Hernandez, “…in general…familiar with the sound of acorns striking vehicles?” He answered in the affirmative.
Investigators now offered him a chance to watch the footage again, that he might analyze the evidence anew and judge if the acorn had in fact been the mainspring of his actions. He declined.
Deputy Hernandez resigned from the department before the investigation concluded. Ultimately, the investigators found that Hernandez had acted unreasonably. They also determined, however, that sergeant Roberts, the other officer who discharged their weapon at the scene, had behaved within reason. The investigating officers concluded that Roberts had acted under the impression that another officer had just been shot, thus justifying the (haphazard and panicked) use of her firearm.
Why Don’t FireFighters Carry Guns?
On February 25th, 2024, Air Force member Aaron Bushnell self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest against the Gaza Genocide. Having just received a call about potentially “distressing” behavior, uniformed Secret Service officers were already on the scene when Bushnell began his protest. The Secret Service response was captured by Bushnell’s livestream.
The video begins with Bushnell matter-of-factly explaining that he is about to engage in an extreme act of protest. Having done so, he calmly sets his camera down, walks into center frame, douses himself in accelerant, and lights himself on fire, yelling Free Palestine. Off screen, we hear responding officers trying to communicate with him. Once the flames appear, they begin shouting that a man is on fire, that they need fire extinguishers. But we also hear someone repeatedly yelling for the young protester – already aflame – to get on the ground. We hear this over and over: Get on the ground! Get on the ground!
Officers then appear on camera. One rapidly engages his extinguisher, befogging the area. Despite the cloud of extinguishant, Bushnell’s fire still rages. Another officer appears on camera with his service weapon drawn and pointed at the protester. As officers move around Bushnell – and through this Secret Service agent’s field of fire – we hear further pleas for extinguishers. An officer, I think it’s the one who’s been calling for extinguishers the whole time, finally exclaims, “I don’t need guns. I need fire extinguishers!”
When later asked to comment on the officer pointing his weapon at a dying man, the Secret Service told a journalist at Reason: "The armed officer was ensuring the safety of the two Secret Service officers who were working to extinguish the fire and render aid to the individual." Once again, the police had judged their own actions to be reasonable.
“Get some cops to protect our policemen!”
- Intertitle from Buster Keaton’s 1922 short Cops
From their origins in the 19th century up through the 1920s, cops were not respected in the popular imagination. They only achieved a degree of social respect in the 1930s thanks to PR campaigns by the likes of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and LAPD chief William Parker, with the cooperation of radio and TV producers like Phillips Lord and Jack Webb. Despite this new-found respectability, however, cops could never shake their fear of losing status. As a group, they remain afflicted by a Napoleon Complex, wanting to be treated as professionals on par with doctors and lawyers but fearful that people will cease to honor their authority and expertise. We see this anxiety manifest in the innumerable small indignities and petty punishments meted out at traffic stops and metro turnstiles. Sometimes we see it explode in bouts of comic farce or deadly violence.
In achieving professional credibility, cops have built for themselves another world, one where they are the put-upon sheep dogs defending the ungrateful and ignorant sheep from the wolves of society. So whenever embarrassments or fiascos occur, many cops fall back on the an refrain: we have tough jobs; it’s a dangerous world out there; we’re doing the best we can with the meager resources you give us! Secret Service communications chief Anthony Guglielmi echoed this rhetoric when he defended the February 25th response, claiming: "[T]his situation was unpredictable and occurred rapidly. In that instant, the level of threat to the public and the embassy was unknown, and our officers acted swiftly and professionally." The swiftness of the response is undeniable, but it can only be characterized as professional if we take that to mean, as the police themselves do, that cops have a primary professional duty to defend themselves from any threat, regardless of its actual potential to inflict harm upon them, and regardless of the cost to the public.
Reformers, well-meaning but naive, recognize some of the shortcomings of police and recommend improved training, stricter use-of-force policies, better equipment. These reforms are stillborn, however, because cops don’t take them seriously. They can’t. Simply put, they don’t think that outsiders are qualified to judge police behavior. They’re happy to accept additional funding and resources, and maybe the savvy police executive will tow the reformist line during budget meetings, but once they have a greater share of the budget, cops will invariably do whatever they want. More money for reform simply results in more cops to protect policemen.
Right after World War 2, sociologist William A Westley imbedded himself in the department of a mid-sized US city for about a year. The book that resulted, Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality, remains a seminal work in the study of police culture. He identified the police as a society in miniature, with its own customs and its own moral code. Paramount to that code was – and remains – a determination to repel critics and outsiders. Thus, he observed, while most cops did not engage in violence, and a surprising number actively tried to avoid it, the brutes and the thugs that did exist were given a wide berth. Sadism was met with silence, badges deployed as a shield wall against the slings and arrows of ignorant critics.
Westley summarized the world of the cop:
The policeman’s most significant contact is with the law-evading public, which defines him as a malicious and dangerous intruder into their business and acts accordingly. His resolution of this problem includes an insistence on his will and on obtaining respect, by the use of violence, if necessary…He is exposed to public immorality. He becomes cynical. His is a society emphasizing the crooked, the weak, and the unscrupulous. Accordingly, his morality is one of expediency and his self-conception one of a martyr. [Emphasis mine]
Deputy Hernandez, the yet-unnamed Secret Service officer, and all the other members of that copper fraternity are given power, a gun, and a chip on their shoulder, so to go out and do battle with the demons of their own mind and making: with the hiss of acorns and the crackle of a true martyr’s flames. Our stories often bolster this state of affairs. They can do better. Reno 911 showed us how.
