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Cops aired for thirty-two seasons and was canceled by Fox in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. For years prior, Cops had been criticized as evidence of an unholy alliance between law enforcement and media—the show was dependent on the police allowing TV crews to shadow their street work, which would only be allowed if the police were featured in a positive light. When public sentiment toward law enforcement collapsed, the very premise of a program delivered from that viewpoint was seen as irredeemable. There was, however, an ancillary aspect to Cops that played an underrated role in its watchability: the uniqueness of its geography. Cops was filmed in multiple cities across multiple states, and since the sole focus was on criminal activity, it ended up featuring neighborhoods and communities that would never appear on TV for any other reason. It’s possible to argue that Cops was a soft form of fascism, but that it was also an unorthodox form of tourism.
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