New Video Sizzles With ‘Cops Too Hot For TV’

The new video, “Cops Too Hot for TV,” makes “NYPD Blue” look like “Romper Room.”

Taking a page from motion pictures that sport previously unreleased footage when they hit the home video market, the 45-minute tape features R-rated material cut from the popular, long-running Fox cinema verite TV series, “Cops.”

Included in the video, which sells for $20, are scenes of law enforcement officers losing their temper, being berated by suspects in language that would make David Mamet blush, getting the naked truth when they answer a domestic dispute, dealing with intoxicated suspects who refuse to believe they’re drunk, and chasing down a runaway white cow in the middle of the night.

“Cops Too Hot for TV” has certainly captured the attention of the series’ fans. Since November, more than 500,000 tapes have been purchased through direct mail.

Philip Knowles, president of Music Video Products Home Entertainment, the company distributing the tape to retailers, says orders have been coming in “thick and fast.”

Scott Barbour, producer of “Too Hot for TV,” says the video was born out of requests from the show’s fans.

“(They) were saying, ‘We know there is stuff that we are not able to see because of censorship or whatever reason, and we want to see it.’ Over the years, everybody and their brother would call us asking for a T-shirt and ask us for stuff they didn’t see on television,” Barbour says.

“The videotape was an outgrowth of that.”

Police officers, Barbour says, have been extremely supportive.

“They want everybody to understand they are human,” he says. “They almost crave for people to really see how much they have to go through. That’s really what you see on the tapes. This is life on the street for a cop.”

Though the video contains snippets that aired in edited pieces on “Cops,” which enters its ninth season this fall, the majority of the footage has never been seen before.

MVP will be releasing additional videos with material culled from the series: “Cops in Hot Pursuit” (Aug. 23), featuring high-speed chases, and “Cops Caught in the Act” (Sept. 23), focusing on dangerous arrests.