History YMMV / COPS

* SocietyMarchesOn: The show was always a product of the late '80s War on Drugs era in which it was created by oversampling drug crimes relative to their real life occurrences. Drug crimes accounted for a little over 10% of arrests throughout its early years but the show's arrests were about one-third drug crimes. It also oversampled the arrests of black and Latino men for these low level crimes, even though white people do drugs at the same rates. This wasn't so much of a problem for about the first half of the show's run throughout the Bush Sr., Clinton, and first half of the Bush Jr. administrations as they all were very much focused on the "tough on crime" mentalities. However by the second half of the Bush Jr. administration and throughout the entirety of the Obama administration, both the federal government and the public at large began to realize how disastrous the war on drugs was and opinion shifted from thinking that low level drug criminals were bad guys who needed to be put away for the good of society to thinking that they were sick/down on their luck people who needed empathy and treatment and that they weren't hurting anyone else. Arrests for drug crimes have gone down every year since 2006 but the show actually started having more drug crimes at that point and kept arresting black and Latino men at disproportionate rates as well. It just kept assuming people felt the same way they did about these victimless crimes in 2019 as they did in 1989 and was part of the reason it was eventually cancelled.

* SocietyMarchesOn: Could the example of GettingCrapPastTheRadar that I put on the main page, of Mainframe's sexual misconduct in the workplace towards Mace, be a reflection of such behavior being more tolerated in the era in which the cartoon was made (and was it actually more tolerated back then?) than in the 21st century, in which it is set?

* EarWorm: "Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"[[note]]In case you're curious, the song is "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle[[/note]]

* EarWorm: The theme song; here, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dmucx-c9ig take a listen]].

* WhatAnIdiot: Berserko. Though the DrugsAreBad episode [[TropesAreNotBad is a surprisingly positive case]] [[GodzillaThreshold because it results in the other villains forming an]] EnemyMine to catch the dealer [[EvenEvilHasStandards that they already refused to work with]].

* RetroactiveRecognition: A young Creator/TabithaStGermain [[note]] Credited under the alias of "Paulina Gillis" [[/note]] was the voice of Ms. Demeanor and several one shot characters.

* WhatAnIdiot: Berserko. Though the DrugsAreBad episode [[TropesAreNotBad is a surprisingly positive case]] [[GodzillaThreshold because it results in the other villains forming an]] EnemyMine to catch the dealer that they already refused to work with.

* WhatAnIdiot: Berserko.

** But to be fair, it's easy to say this, but in an actual situation where someone is confronted by police, it's all easy to panic and have a "fight or flight" response, not thinking through a situation rationally.

* MostWonderfulSound: The awesome [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AloXrnU7BkM&feature=player_embedded Blues]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNBNUgfWGJ8&feature=player_embedded Riff]] of the Langley Productions VanityPlate after '93.

* NightmareFuel: ...the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It5efcmEc24 original]]. Many a child was creeped out...damn synth...

* EarWorm: "Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"

* MemeticMutation: "You can't break those cuffs!"

** And the guys who are wearing a shirt are usually in little more that a white, sleeveless undershirt. To the point where the frequent appearance of such men in domestic disturbance calls on ''Cops'' has lead such shirts to become irrevocably known as "wife beaters".

* FridgeBrilliance: With the exception of the two parters, each case file number ends with the last two numbers being the number of the episode.
* FridgeHorror: The Big Boss's coat is buttoned with ''police badges''. [[spoiler:Yes, the file card does imply he took them off officer's he'd personally murdered. The cartoon, not to much.]]
* FridgeLogic: Combined with AmbiguousSyntax. When someone says they'll "call the cops", do they mean the regular police, or the [[FunWithAcronyms Central Organization of Police Specialists]] of the show's title (hence, calling the "C.O.P.S.")?...

* FairForItsDay: Yes, the series was terribly written, but a 1980s WesternAnimation series with an African-American lead character who is indisputably in charge and more than one female C.O.P.S. member in the main cast was progressive for its time.

** This series would not be the only time that a [=DiC=]] cartoon series [[WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers would do a rather blatant episode about drugs]], although the second time would be MUCH darker than this one went.

* FridgeHorror: The Big Boss's coat is buttoned with ''police badges''.

* SocietyMarchesOn: Could the example of GettingCrapPastTheRadar that I put on the main page, of Mainframe's sexual misconduct in the workplace towards Mace, be a reflection of such behavior being more tolerated in the era when the cartoon was made (and was it actually more tolerated back then?) than in the 21st century, in which it is set?

* SocietyMarchesOn: Could the example of GettingCrapPastTheRadar that I put on the main page, of Mainframe's sexual misconduct in the workplace towards Mace, be a reflection of such behavior being more tolerated in the era when the cartoon was made than in the 21st century, in which it is set?

* FridgeLogice: Combined with AmbiguousSyntax. When someone says they'll "call the cops", do they mean the regular police, or the [[FunWithAcronyms Central Organization of Police Specialists]] of the show's title (hence, calling the "C.O.P.S.")?...

* HilariousInHindsight: A [[WalkerTexasRanger Texas Ranger named Walker]]? Kids, can we say, "Low-hanging fruit"?