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Similar to law enforcement, crime control can also be controversial. Everyone is in favor of crime control, but crime control really means that the police are seeking to control people’s behavior. Unfortunately, people who engage in criminal behavior are not necessarily easy to identify. As a result, the police seek to control everyone’s behavior. For instance, a commonly used crime control strategy in many police departments today are SQFs, which involve stopping, questioning, and frisking citizens on streets and sidewalks. For example, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2018, the police conducted approximately 7,000 subject stops (SQFs). (In 2017, more than 13,000 stops were made.) This is in a city with a population of about 600,000 people, which equates to one out of every 86 residents being stopped on the streets or sidewalks over the course of the year.¹³

Exhibit 4.2 “Reality” Television

The television show COPS is one of the longest-running shows on television, now in its thirty-first season on Spike TV. The first episode aired in 1989 and the show ran on the Fox network for twenty-five years before moving to Spike. Each episode consists of twenty-two minutes of unwritten script from police officers on the job and the citizens with whom they interact. Reportedly, to create those twenty-two minutes of program content, it takes weeks or months of filming. The show focuses on street crime and the moments of excitement and intrigue during officers’ work days. The show has been criticized for not accurately portraying police work even though it is a “reality-based” program and for focusing exclusively on the crimes of the lower class and thus distorting the reality of criminal offending.

Photo 4.2 Live PD is presented as a “reality-based” police television show but it still provides a distorted view of policing.

PD Live Archive/Bill Tompkins/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

A&E’s Live PD television show is a more recent entry into the reality-based police action genre. This show features select encounters between police and citizens in various police departments across the country shown in real-time (with a broadcast delay). As with COPS, Live PD has been criticized as focusing only on the most exciting or unusual dimensions of police work.