‘Cops’ Hits Streets of L.A. : The Fox show had been trying to videotape the city’s police in action for years, but then-chief Gates said no. Now that Williams is in charge, the cameras are on.

Over six seasons and nearly 200 episodes, Fox’s TV show “Cops” has featured police departments in cities across the nation, from Las Vegas to Washington to New York, and countries around the world, from Russia to Britain to Bolivia. But never had the cinema verite series, with offices in Los Angeles, videotaped the police department in its own back yard.

Though not for a lack of trying. The Los Angeles Police Department received repeated requests from “Cops” producers to tag along with officers on the beat, and turned them all down. The department was reluctant to allow TV programs to record its daily activities for commercial purposes, a long-standing policy upheld over the years by then-chief Daryl Gates.

But there’s a new chief in town, Willie Williams, who is working hard to overcome image problems that occurred under Gates’ watch. “Cops” had shot eight episodes in Philadelphia when Williams was police chief there, and a few months ago the producers appealed to him in a personal letter.

Now there are six camera crews roving Los Angeles, each one paired with officers from the Los Angeles Police Department or the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which has participated with “Cops” before.

“We are are trying to find every avenue we can to open up the LAPD and allow the public to see exactly what goes on in the organization, what makes police officers tick and how they do their jobs,” said Cmdr. David Gascon, who was made commanding officer of the community affairs group by Williams in 1992. “We don’t feel there’s anything to fear by letting the public look at L.A. police officers doing their job.”

The first Los Angeles “Cops” episode was rushed out last Saturday night for the May ratings sweeps, with a car chase in North Hollywood, a foot chase in the Foothill Area and a man waving a gun on Hollywood Boulevard. Another one will air tonight, and the rest will be saved for the new season in late summer.

“The department, since the Rodney King incident in particular, has had a very negative reputation, far more negative than the reality,” said Gary Greenebaum, president of the Police Commission, a group of citizens appointed by the mayor to oversee the department. “At this juncture, it makes certain sense for the department to receive some positive coverage, and for people to understand the real-life problems police officers have to deal with every single day.”

Not everyone is convinced that focusing the cameras on local cops is appropriate, however. Gates, who was police chief for 14 years before he retired under pressure in 1992, still believes that police officers have an obligation to protect the privacy of citizens.

“If someone broke into my house, and I called for help, and the police showed up with TV cameras, I would resent the hell out of that,” he said. Even though “Cops” producers obtain signed releases from the subjects they videotape (or else electronically blur their faces), Gates said, “the pressure is there for those people to consent, because the police have allowed them to be there.”

Although many other law enforcement agencies have praised “Cops” for giving the public a positive view of their job, Gascon and Lt. John Dunkin, the LAPD officer in charge of press relations, were both reluctant at first to work with the program. Gascon had turned down a request from “Cops” producers just last year.

“Both of our views were that the program was too much about the chase, the fights, the kicking in doors, the bad guys being arrested,” Gascon said. “It was too much of what is actually only a small portion of the police officer’s daily routine. We thought it was too sensationalized--kind of a highlights reel.”

But at the urging of Williams, Gascon agreed to invite the “Cops” producers in, to learn if they were willing to present what the department considered an accurate depiction of its myriad activities. Most of what local officers do, said Gascon, is low-key: “We talk and talk and talk. We interact with people and solve problems.”

The producers explained to Gascon that “Cops” has featured a range of police work in past episodes. So Gascon sat down with them to identify different aspects of the organization--officer academy training, helicopter patrols, traffic units, scientific procedures, vice operations, specialized bunco and forgery investigations. The producers agreed to videotape all those activities, and they will run the footage they shoot by the Los Angeles Police Department for approval, which is standard procedure for the series.

(The episodes airing on Fox this month involve the more traditional street patrols because that’s what the “Cops” crews shot first.)

In addition to his concern over privacy and commercial exploitation, Gates has a problem with TV camera crews because he believes they endanger officers and interfere with their work. He explained: “I still have trouble seeing cops go on a raid, and some cameraman from a TV program running after the cops. You can’t help but put police officers in danger. There’s lights all over the place.”

John Langley, executive producer of “Cops,” countered that his crews, which are on the road nine months a year, have extensive experience with police procedure.

“Our crews are very sensitive to victims,” he said. “They certainly film perpetrators differently than victims. The mandate from my standpoint is: You do not add to the problem, and you do not become part of the story. If there’s any kind of (dangerous situation), our crews are instructed to shut down and move out of the way. We’re not there to become the story. The moment we become the story, we’ve failed. We want to record the story.”

Frank Berry, executive director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in Los Angeles, objects to “Cops” taping here for another reason: He does not believe that viewers are going to learn anything about how local officers treat minorities.

“Those of us who have witnessed the contact between law enforcement and citizens, particularly African American citizens, know that what’s portrayed on the television version of ‘Cops’ is not real,” he said. “It doesn’t reflect the same attitude cops have when the camera is not there. In many cases, the cops are acting for the camera, trying to make it a P.R. (public relations) program to drum up support for law enforcement. That’s not bad, but to portray law enforcement acting in a manner that’s different than what they would do if the camera is not rolling is inappropriate.”

Gascon noted, however, that times have changed, and police officers never know when a camera is pointed at them--as the men arresting Rodney G. King discovered.

“We all have to realize that everything the Los Angeles police officer does in 1994 is under a microscope anyway,” he said. “Whether it’s for television news or documentaries, or other police departments, or John Q. Citizen, we have to perform as though we are clearly on center stage, and that there are cameras out there watching every move.”

* A Los Angeles edition of “Cops” airs at 8 tonight on Fox (Channels 11 and 6).