I used to love watching Cops with my dad as a kid, humming along to the iconic “bad boys, bad boys…” theme and giggling at the parade of small-time criminals and weirdos that got cuffed by police.
I may not have realized it at the time, but the show’s treatment of alleged criminals (we never did know who was guilty as charged) made it clear that we, as the audience, were justified in pointing and judging these supposed lawbreakers as disordered dummies who deserve to be shamed.
I thought about Cops a lot while watching the return of Stanley Roberts’ “People Behaving Badly” on KRON last night.
The segment is famous in the Bay Area, having run on KRON from 2006 to 2018 before Roberts took a hiatus and moved out of the Bay. The premise is simple: Roberts finds people breaking laws or social norms around the city, and confronts them on camera. Usually, he’s working alongside police officers as they pull people over or give out tickets.
Last night’s debut, themed “Beware the Illegal Left Turn,” was hyped by KRON and fans as a Roberts’ big return.
It landed more like a cynical, no-stakes lowlight.
The segment is so short and stale that there’s hardly anything to describe. Roberts is camped out at the intersection of Bryant and Rincon streets, where some drivers make illegal left turns or use the HOV lane illegally as solo drivers. San Francisco Police Department officers are also there, pulling people over and giving them tickets.
Roberts’ vibe in each of these interactions is that of a hall monitor who happened to win tenure. Despite how minor the infraction is, a sense of self-righteousness seeps through the screen. I would call it Orwellian, but that seems to be an insult to the seriousness of George Orwell.
“You see that big sign that says no left turn?” Roberts asks people inside of a passing pickup truck.
“Is this on the news?” a passenger asks.
“Not yet, but you will be,” Roberts replies confidently.
Cops feels like a Jerry Bruckheimer production compared to the smallness of “People Behaving Badly.” But the undercurrent is the same: Roberts’ camera is a cop, and we, the audience, get to see wrongdoers get what’s coming to them. It makes the viewer, by extension, a kind of cop as well.
God, I hate it so, so much.
“People Behaving Badly” is, in essence, doom loop commentary. I’d think after all those years of influencers, newscasts, and The New York Post hyperventilating over smash-and-grabs and petty crimes, the last thing SF residents would want is more pessimistic, finger-pointing content from a mainstream local news channel.
I don’t see any meaningful schadenfreude to be had from watching our neighbors get tickets or be detained for minor infractions. But apparently, some people still need to celebrate the panopticon, even if there’s no underlying wisdom to be gleaned.
Consider why people are taking an illegal left from Rincon onto Bryant. A quick Google Maps search shows that, if you need to get on the Bay Bridge, you can either take the illegal left and an immediate right turn onto the on-ramp, or…. make a giant circle toward the Embarcadero and back around.
As a transportation planner once told me: If a few people do it, it’s their problem. If a whole bunch do it, it’s the city’s problem. But you wouldn’t realize that watching “People Behaving Badly.” All the program does is prime you to think, “look at these assholes.”
We already know that doom-scrolling has a negative effect on our minds, largely because of the isolating effect of staring at strangers doing things that piss us off. The same detrimental effect has been seen in research of broadcast news programs that pump negative content, including about crime, onto our TVs.
I’d rather the resources go toward broadcasting people doing good. Re-painting bus stops, installing guerilla benches, feeding people for free: The things that build up our sense of place in SF, and help us to understand why things are the way they are.
Put simply, “People Behaving Badly” is performative outrage for views and ad sales — an act of cynicism that’s harmful to a city still in recovery. And beyond any seriousness, last night’s segment was just whack. Are we really still watching an old guy yelling at clouds, but for clout?
Let them who have not made an illegal left turn cast the first stone.
