The show's formula follows the cinéma vérité convention, which does not consist of any narration, scripted dialogue, incidental music or added sound effects, depending entirely on the commentary of the officers and on the actions of the people with whom they come into contact, giving the audience a fly on the wall point of view.

In June 2020, Paramount Network pulled the show from its schedule in response to George Floyd protests following his murder while under arrest by the Minneapolis Police Department,[7] and announced its cancellation days later.

[8] The show remains in production for its international and overseas partners, and began to film anew in Spokane County, Washington, with its sheriff's department in October 2020.

[23] In the wake of the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota under police custody, Paramount Network pulled the series from the air ahead of its season 33 premiere, which was scheduled for June 1, 2020.

[28] In the late 1980s, after producing the live syndicated specials American Vice: The Doping of a Nation, Murder: Live From Death Row, and Devil's Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground all with Geraldo Rivera, Langley and Barbour pitched the Cops show concept to Stephen Chao, a Fox programming executive who would one day become president of the Fox Television Stations Group and later USA Network.

Since then, it has often been one of the highest-rated reality-TV programs, in part due to its low production cost (estimated at US$200,000 per episode in the early 1990s) and thus its capacity to show new material each week.

It turned out that the APD officer had been injured during a foot pursuit; meanwhile, mixing console Steve Kiger picked up the camera and continued recording the action, which eventually made the air (season 11, episode 5).

[citation needed] During the recording of episode 7 in Season 27, the camera crew assisted in detaining the passenger of a vehicle whose operator had fled on foot from officers in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Dion was caught in the ensuing crossfire as the officer returned fire at Washington, who stumbled into the parking lot and fell from his injuries before his arrest.

After the scene was secured, authorities learned that Washington's pistol was actually an airsoft handgun that strongly resembled a real Taurus firearm.

[39] Approximately 20 minutes before the Wendy's robbery, his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jeneva Arias, robbed a Little Caesars pizza restaurant, using the same airsoft pistol; Washington served as her getaway driver.

While in jail awaiting trial, she committed felony assault via throwing a soap mixture into a health care worker's face and fracturing a jailer's hand.

[citation needed] The Spike TV-Paramount Network version of the show added the Twitter handle and Facebook URL as its social media pages to the intro in 2013 until it was removed in 2020.

After Viacom's acquisition of Pluto TV in 2019, a 24/7 channel made up of episodes of the series directly programmed under license from Langley Productions was launched.

[56] In January 2013, 20th Television announced that a new syndicated version titled Cops Reloaded would begin airing on CMT as well as local stations and The CW Plus.

This version contains all new graphics and soundbites during the opening theme song, and older segments are modified and framed to a sharpened widescreen image for the high-definition format if they were originated in standard-definition television.

[59] Cops: Too Hot for TV also had a deluxe edition which had a segment containing especially graphic content, including police finding a man who had hanged himself in his garage and the aftermaths of two different shootings.

"[60] A Cops: 20th Anniversary Edition two-disc DVD with viewer favorites from each season, several behind the scenes features, and the original one-hour pilot was released in the United States and Canada on February 19, 2008.

In Season 3 (1991-1992), Alan Bunce of The Christian Science Monitor praised the show as network television's "only true 'cinema verite' series"—declaring it "innocent of re-enactments," and "free of fancy production effects," while remaining "doggedly faithful to its format.

[75] The civil rights group Color of Change began a campaign to cancel Cops in 2013, stating that the show's producers and advertisers had "built a profit model around distorted and dehumanizing portrayals of black Americans and the criminal justice system."

"[76] In June 2004, researchers at Old Dominion University videotaped 16 episodes of Cops and then evaluated them for crime content, and for the race and gender of characters depicted.

They concluded that the program was racially skewed, negatively misrepresenting African-Americans, depicted as a criminal class out of proportion to their actual percentage of U.S. crime, in particular.

It also found that students interpreted Cops scenes as valid and informative representations of the genders and races different from their own—eliminating the need to learn about them through direct personal contact.

In 1994, children's show Bill Nye the Science Guy did a parody called "Cops in Your Bloodstream", with said 'police officers' representing white blood cells attempting to stop 'criminal' infections.

The Dead or Alive video game series had a parody show called Agents which showed the man being arrested by government agents for torturing and abusing his ex-girlfriends, grifting, fraud, movie piracy, TV episode piracy, impersonating now-deceased Fame Douglas, mocked and impersonated on Helena Douglas on the internet and forging his own video game and sent to federal prison.

The court affirmed (or reaffirmed, in some views) the policy that officers may not bring into the home with them people whose role was not in the direct service of the purpose of the warrant.

[85][91] Cops dedicated an entire episode ("Smooth Criminal", season 24, episode 3, originally aired September 24, 2011) to the case of escort Delilah "Dalia" Dippolito of Boynton Beach, Florida, who was convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder after being secretly videotaped hiring a hitman (who was actually an undercover cop) to kill her husband in 2009.

[93] In truth, Cops producers were outraged when investigators persuaded Dippolito to sign the release form before they questioned her, believing that since it was done under color of law, it would be useless.

[106] The Dippolito case has also been featured on ABC's 20/20,[107] NBC's Dateline,[108] CNBC's American Greed,[109] and the syndicated show distributed by Warner Bros.

[113][114] In 2015, "late at night in a high-crime area," a Fort Myers, Florida police officer—accompanied by a Cops video crew—stopped and frisked a man who was wearing dark clothing and walking in the middle of the street.