"Huh. Litterbugs! This is why I joined the force..."
— Officer John, "Driven to Tears"
The police of Bikini Bottom rarely, if ever, respond to any real crimes, but make simple things like littering Serious Business.
- In "Hall Monitor", the police are looking for the Maniac terrorizing Bikini Bottom, and decide to interrogate Patrick. It's made clear that Patrick is frightened of the Maniac's wanted poster, and instead of trying to move the interrogation forward, the two officers decide to toy with Patrick by pulling the poster up and down, before driving away laughing. Later, when SpongeBob realizes that he was the Maniac all along, the police swarm him under the pretense that it's a confession, only for Mrs. Puff to claim that SpongeBob is her responsibility, which causes them to misinterpret it as her confessing, resulting in her going to jail for 6 months, and SpongeBob never gets punished for his destruction or impersonation of a detective.
- In "Something Smells", SpongeBob's bad breath causes a driver to lose their vision and crash their boat, which promptly explodes and kills the driver inside, leaving only the boat's pipe frame. Despite this, an officer still walks up and gives the boat a ticket.
- In "Life of Crime", SpongeBob and Patrick attempt to rat each other out to the police, before collectively confessing that they stole a balloon. When the officers hear about this, they decide to humor the two by throwing them in a cell, only to let them out a mere 3 seconds later. Only after the charade is up do they inform SpongeBob and Patrick that it was Free Balloon Day.
- In "No Free Rides", two officers are sitting in their car and see SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff fighting each other over the horizon, but only respond by saying, "Hey, look." It's not until the boat is falling on top of them that they react in horror.
- In "The Smoking Peanut", two officers enter SpongeBob's house to interrogate him about the Oyster Incident, but once SpongeBob answers truthfully that he was at the stadium and was a witness of the peanut throwing, they instead arrest Patrick and put him on a Produce Pelting display in the middle of the stadium.
- In "Sandy, SpongeBob, and the Worm", when the Alaskan Bull Worm eats a boat that a police officer was giving a ticket, he picks up a fire hydrant, moves it in front of another boat, and gives it a ticket pretending that it was the first boat.
- In "Nasty Patty", two officers proclaim that they're gonna have to arrest SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs, under the charges of not being at the Krusty Krab to make them some Krabby Patties. Even with SpongeBob giving oddly specific expressions that would be a dead indicator that he's acting suspicious, the two never suspect anything until Mr. Krabs blocks the freezer from them, thinking that the Health Inspector's dead body is stuffed in there. Upon seeing the Health Inspector and believing him to be a zombie, the two officers beat him over the head with an anchor and a barrel.
- Subverted in "Idiot Box" when Squidward believed he violated a law against, of all things, kicking boxes, only to find out the police noises he heard were part of SpongeBob and Patrick's imagination game.
- In "Doing Time", two officers are seen beating what looks to be a criminal with their batons, only to be revealed they're straightening out a dented parking meter. SpongeBob carelessly drives by in the background, knocking over an entire building, and they only decide to pursue him because they see his boat has no front license plate.
- Subverted in "Party Pooper Pants" when SpongeBob is caught trying to break into his own house after getting locked out, and the police are perfectly okay after he explains the situation. Double subverted when they proceed to arrest him for not inviting them to the party. Using stocks instead of handcuffs.
- In "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler", the Strangler draws a picture of SpongeBob on the back of a police cruiser's seat and viciously tears it up, obviously implying he's going to kill him. After the police see this, and SpongeBob asks for their help, what do they do? They tease him about it.
- In "Driven to Tears", SpongeBob snitches to a police officer that Patrick was going over the speed limit, causing the cop to pull out a radar gun and disregard what SpongeBob said, as he scanned Patrick's parked speed of 0MPH. Later, SpongeBob tears up Patrick's license out of jealously, and the scraps land in the hand of a cop flirting with a woman, who proceeds to chase after Patrick saying that littering is why he joined the force.
- In "Goo Goo Gas", SpongeBob calls the police on Plankton after finding out he turned Mr. Krabs into a baby, but Plankton easily escapes their custody because they took him in with fish-sized handcuffs over twice that of Plankton's size.
- In "Krabby Road", the police go to the measure of keeping Plankton's cell in maximum security, but they don't go to the measure of using a substitute for bars that can accommodate his size, resulting in him easily sneaking out of jail underneath an officer's mustache.
- In "Ditchin'", the police cut SpongeBob's badminton game short due to the fact that he's playing with Dale, a convicted felon who they know has violated his parole. The way they find out is by searching his pockets, pulling out a bag of Quasi-Gummy Chewy Candy Fish, and concluding that he's a cannibal.
- In "Shuffleboarding", the jail warden makes absolutely no attempt at trying to resist SpongeBob arresting him for the crime of wasting a Krabby Patty, let alone pointing out how Patrick shouldn't have imprisoned children for "loitering".
- In "Growth Spout", the police completely ignore a crazed Mr. Krabs running by them loudly searching for food just after responding to a call about someone going around stealing food.
- In "Someone's in the Kitchen with Sandy", the police were among those who made fun of a furless Sandy, yet in the ending, they arrest her for nudity instead of arresting Plankton, even though Sandy was only naked because Plankton stole her fur for his latest scheme.
- In "Keep Bikini Bottom Beautiful", a police officer keeps giving Squidward tickets for littering in situations where he's simply near litter. Except for one moment when he properly tickets him for putting a trash-absorbed SpongeBob into a trash can on SpongeBob's property.
- In "SpongeBob's Last Stand", when SpongeBob and Patrick are protesting Plankton building a superhighway over the Krusty Krab and Jellyfish Fields, the police arrest them for playing a sitar without a license, then, instead of taking them to jail, simply dump them on the outskirts of town. Said police are nowhere to be found when the jellyfish go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and trash Bikini Bottom.
- In "Summer Job", Mrs. Puff gets arrested for, what else, littering, but somehow, this ends up warranting her having to take driving classes during her prison sentence.
- In "The Monster Who Came to Bikini Bottom", the police seem to have successfully rounded up Rrarrg, except for the fact that the pen he's in only goes as high as his shins. An officer then proceeds to sneeze into his megaphone, causing Rrarrg to grow agitated and easily escape his pen.
- In "Tunnel of Glove", when Pearl and SpongeBob gets trapped inside the titular tunnel, the cops surrond the area and blocks people from entering. But then they barely make any efforts to actually help the two out and they instead wait around outside for three hours.
- Averted in "Drive Thru" when a cop seems to want to inquire to Mr. Krabs about how disastrous his drive thru is, until he instead orders a take-out meal, only to then let the mayor of Bikini Bottom into the Krusty Krab to actually inquire about the drive thru.
- In "Sentimental Sponge", Squidward called the "Sanitation Police" to report SpongeBob, who was piling garbage in his house that was getting everywhere, including Squidward's house. One of the cops does nothing but scoff at Squidward and call him a snitch. Keep in mind that littering is treated seriously in Bikini Bottom.
- In "Oral Report", SpongeBob manages to avoid getting arrested for both unlicensed boat driving and speeding by simply giving his oral report on boating safety to the officers trying to chase him down, as well as Mrs. Puff having to bear responsibility for his actions under penal code 26-1.
- In "Sweet and Sour Squid", Squidward's bad clarinet playing ends up being considered a felonious act, but Plankton ends up being arrested for it instead, and without provocation, the police promptly destroy Squidward's clarinet of their own accord.
- In "Fiasco!", the police have been chasing Plankton all throughout town after he stole Fiasco's Krabby Patty art piece, and once they finally catch him in SpongeBob's house per Squidward alerting them to a noise complaint, they not only arrest Plankton, but also SpongeBob, Gary, Patrick, and Squidward until they've managed to sort everything out. Through Mr. Krabs' testimony, they end up setting SpongeBob, Gary, and Patrick free, but they still leave Squidward behind bars for no reason.
- In "Patrick-Man!", Patrick-Man sees what he thinks is Mrs. Puff trying to boatjack, when she's trying to help a student out of the boat who's locked inside. He proceeds to throw a net over her and leaves a note for the police to read which calls her a boat thief. Two cops come along and read the note, believe it, praise Patrick-Man for being a superhero, and haul Mrs. Puff off to prison, leaving the student still trapped in the boat.
- In "Little Yellow Book", two officers find a now-homeless Squidward laying on a bench and proclaim that he can't sleep there, only to recognize him as the diary reader and proceed to put him in a Produce Pelting stockade, but not before making this quip.
- Double subverted in "Bumper to Bumper" when a traffic officer rightfully chases after SpongeBob for reckless driving, only to then disregard the charges and shifts his focus to the fact that Mrs. Puff ended up violating her parole by going outside of Bikini Bottom.
- In "Jailbreak!", when Plankton and his cronies destroy the prison's back wall, the security guards pile up on top of each other to block their exit, which seems practical, until they realize that they're stuck inside the wall and can't apprehend the prisoners as they casually exit through the front gate. This then gets subverted, however, when it's revealed that the entire Bikini Bottom police force was hiding inside of the Krabby Patty Formula's safe, setting Plankton up to fail when he thinks he's won.
- In "The Executive Treatment", Business Industries has a group of officers set up to apprehend any corporate spies, and yet the stockholder eel sicks them on Scooter when he and Patrick get into a fight with rejection stamps that Patrick started. Later, when SpongeBob visits Patrick in jail and offers to take him home after letting him eat the Executive Treatment Patty, Patrick rips off his prison uniform and goes back to wearing his executive outfit, causing the detention center guard to not recognize him and report Patrick as missing.
- In "Patrick! The Game", Squidward destroy's Patrick's board game out of pent-up frustration, only for the police to show up on cue and arrest him for destruction of private property. Patrick then shows them his rules card, and for repeatedly breaking the rules of the game, Squidward's sentence is upped even more.
- In "Sharks vs. Pods", the Sharks and Pods are forbidden from doing their dance-off in the park because it's the cops' turf. Once they're caught trespassing, the cops show up, and rather than apprehending the two gangs, they instead start dancing themselves, until they too are stopped by Internal Affairs, who SpongeBob then beats at dancing all by his lonesome.
- In "Cave Dwelling Sponge", SpongeBob gets arrested for the acts of vandalism caused across Bikini Bottom by Spongy Spongy, and after he's proven innocent, the police decide not to arrest Spongy Spongy for all the acts of vandalism he caused, all under the pretense that him destroying City Hall saved them the money of having it be taken down the following week.
- In "Krabby Patty Creature Feature", the police department radios an officer saying that patty zombies are on the loose, but he ignores the call, saying he's on his break. Said zombies then proceed to hound his car and begin trashing it, with him more concerned that they're attacking him while he's on his break instead of trying to fight back.
- In "Call the Cops", the police have for whatever reason enlisted Patrick as their jail warden, who always shows up to work in an ice cream-drunken stupor, as well as having a room full of confiscated evidence that is never used for actual trial purposes. Some of the pieces of evidence are even elderly fish, completely alive and conscious.
- In "The Krusty Slammer", the jail warden arrests Mr. Krabs for setting free the prisoners he was paid to keep imprisoned, when it was their inhumane treatment from him that caused them to want to leave in the first place. She then has him imprisoned in the Chum Bucket with Plankton as his supervisor, even though her arresting Plankton for vandalizing the town was what provoked her to strike a deal with Mr. Krabs to begin with.
