Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars

by Kliph Nesteroff

TV Guide reported, “A high-ranking New York police official, insisting that he not be identified, said he would like to see Car 54 cancelled because it makes all policemen appear to be morons.” Footage of real-life policing made them look worse. Law and Order, a cinema verité documentary that shadowed police in Kansas City, Missouri, aired on public television in March 1969. A black-and-white precursor to the long-running Fox series Cops, its realism was shocking to viewers. Variety wrote, “Episodic, and abounding in human interest, drama, comedy, and tragedy with everything from the cliché of candy for the lost child to the brutality of a fat vice squad plainclothesman choking a Negro prostitute nearly senseless, the film’s overall surface effect was to evoke empathy for the men doing tireless, dirty and dangerous duty among the debris of humanity [but one] could find plenty to criticize in the police attitudes and handling of certain situations … A sequence showing the particularly rough arrest of a Negro teenager … had nuances of police arrogance, ignorance and prejudice.”