Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
A few years back Officer.com ran a poll question on what the readers' favorite cop television show was. Times change. Since then there are new ones and the older ones are hard (at best) to find. Still, it seemed appropriate to run that poll again (thanks, Tim!). I have to wonder about the results.
Now I know that not every visitor to our site is a law enforcement professional. We have a pretty good number of students, police family members, other media representatives, etc that come to Officer.com. Of all of the visitors who come to the site, though, about one fourth of them voted for the television show
COPS as their favorite. My experience tells me that not too many actual police officers really like the show, so I have to attribute the large number of those votes to non-law enforcement visitors. I freely admit that may be an incorrect assumption to make.
Listed in order of votes, this is how the choices broke down:
- COPS: 26%
- The Shield: 12%
- The Wire: 8%
- NYPD Blue: 8%
- Hill Street Blues: 7%
- Other: 7%
- Adam 12: 7%
- Law & Order: 6%
- NCIS: 6%
- Miami Vice: 4%
- Dragnet: 3%
- CSI (all flavors): 3%
- Barney Miller: 2%
- Homicide: Life on the Streets: 2%
It bothers me, for whatever reason, that the two top voted shows don't reflect (in my opinion) cops performing at their professional best.
I find it interesting that two shows which focus on forensics - so popular to watch if we believe the mainstream media - are actually so far down on the list (6% and 3% of the votes).
I've never watched
Homicide: Life on the Streets so I can speak about it intelligently. However, I assume it a relatively recent show and if it's only as popular as a show as old as
Barney Miller then the producers may want to rethink what they're doing.
I confess that my favorite is
NCIS (only because
Walker, Texas Ranger isn't on the list).
Thanks to everyone who voted. If anyone would care to comment on what they perceive as the strengths, weaknesses or attraction of their favorite cop shows, we'd love to read the comments!
Stay safe.
