Single-handedly launching the reality-based entertainment genre, COPS has penetrated the American psyche unlike any other show in television history and has earned its place in popular culture. The four-time Emmy Award-nominated series, which has celebrated its 500th milestone, has beaten the records of venerated classics as the longest-running program currently on primetime television.

COPS pioneered the use of the video-vérité technique, bringing the viewer directly into the action as it takes place, foregoing the use of scripts, actors or narrators.

COPS premiered on March 11, 1989, to critical acclaim and record ratings and has continued to rank No. 1 in its time period among key adult demographics. The series’ cameras have captured barricaded suspects, spectacular car chases, undercover drug raids and busts, and a myriad of domestic disputes that offer vivid and often unsparing glimpses into the human condition. COPS broke waves when the show captured crime from Hawaii for the first time ever in season 16.

COPS has profiled law enforcement agencies in over 140 different cities in the United States and has also filmed in Hong Kong, London, Central and South America, Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). It was the first American television program given permission to follow the KGB in the former Soviet Union.

Howard Rosenberg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former television critic for the "Los Angeles Times," wrote of the series: "...it’s absolutely captivating, raw and unpredictable, a bubbling boiler of excitement rendered in the style of ’48 Hours.’ When it comes to entertainment, COPS crackles."

John Langley is the executive producer of COPS for Langley Productions, Inc. in association with FTSP and is distributed by Twentieth Television.