A civilian breaks the law and gets a view from this side of the badge.

An interesting read from this morning's Houston Chronicle.

Filmmaker channels ‘Cops’ experiences Amy Dickerson / New York Times 

Luke Greenfield, director and co-writer of “Let’s Be Cops,” admits he impersonated police officers. 

LOS ANGELES — As if grasping at wisps of a long-forgotten high, Luke Greenfield was trying to remember the first time he did it. Impersonate a police officer, that is.

It was certainly on Halloween, he said, probably in 2000, before the Sept. 11 terror attacks made that sort of stunt even dumber.

Then 28, Greenfield had persuaded a reluctant friend in the movie costume business to lend him a Los Angeles Police Department uniform. According to California Penal Code Section 538d(e)(2), just supplying the outfit is good for a $1,000 fine.

Now, sipping mineral water in a lounge at the Four Seasons, Greenfield, a nerdy, dismissible kind of guy, recalled the rush of his first cop-walk, along Sunset Boulevard.

“All of a sudden, I notice, there’s an energy,” he said. Girls looked interested. Drunken frat boys showed respect.

That is something every rookie cop gets and hopefully learns to use that respect right. In doing the job correctly. The people on the street (and the other cops) respect the badge and uniform. But that only goes go far. The man has to show he earns that respect.

It was, he explained, “like wearing a superhero uniform” — and punishable by a year in county jail, or a $2,000 fine, or both.

But Greenfield, then a struggling University of Southern California film school graduate with no serious credits to his name, did it again. And again. And again.

“Three, four, five times,” he said.

“Maybe five,” he allowed. “It wasn’t like I was doing it every day.”

Greenfield did it in New York City, where he had himself photographed wearing a New York police uniform and flirting with a model, talking to a real cop, flopping down on a park bench next to a couple of kids who were obviously smoking marijuana.

He also did it in Tempe, Ariz., where he was arrested and sentenced to community service. The service experience helped inspire the 2008 comedy “Role Models,” about mentorship gone wrong, of which Greenfield was a producer.

Oh well, nothing good last forever! :<)

On Wednesday, Greenfield’s shenanigans will get another fictionalized airing, this time in a broad comedy from 20th Century Fox. Titled, simply enough, “Let’s Be Cops,” it was directed and co-written, with Nicholas Thomas, by Greenfield — who now has a few films under his belt, including the 2011 Warner Bros. romance “Something Borrowed.”

The new film stars Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. (who can both be seen on the Fox sitcom “New Girl”) as young Los Angeles men whose lives are going nowhere, until they do what Greenfield did: pretend to be police officers.

Then things get worse. Albanian mobsters chase them. Wayans gets his girl, but the girl, played by Nina Dobrev of “The Vampire Diaries,” wises up and gets very, very mad. A corrupt cop, portrayed by Andy Garcia, makes even the Albanian mobsters look sweet.

Along the way, aficionados of Hollywood portrayal of cops — a genre that stretches to “Dragnet” and beyond — will spot the cinematic references.

I loved Joe Friday! He used to say "Just the facts ma'am", I usually say "To the point please!"

Johnson and Garcia square off in a moment that might have been lifted from “Heat.” Johnson and Wayans walk, talk and wear bulletproof vests like the hotshots in “Bad Boys II.”

And their buddy banter in a squad car is an unabashed tribute to “End of Watch,” whose writer and director, David Ayer, was about to become involved with “Let’s Be Cops” — whether as a writer, a producer or, in his word, “a godfather” — when “Watch” suddenly got a green light in 2011.

“There’s definitely wish fulfillment there,” Ayer said. “Who doesn’t wonder what it feels like to be a cop?”

Come on fellow cops out there, who didn't like the Joe Friday's and Bill Gannon's, the Reed's and Malloy's, the Lennie Briscoe's, you all know a Tackleberry, a Barney Miller and a Fish!

Asked whether Greenfield had acknowledged his own police charades, Ayer said: “Yes. Yes. Not good. Funny. Good research. But not good.” (Fox executives were aware of Greenfield’s past adventures.)

In fact, Ayer said, he once briefly toured the streets of Los Angeles in cop drag, while filming “Training Day,” which he wrote and in which he was cast in a bit part as an officer. During a spin through the city in a fake police cruiser, he at first thought the obvious attention from those on the outside was “awesome.”

Then, Ayer said, it hit him.

“We’re a target; we’re a freaking target,” he recalled thinking. “There are a lot of people who don’t like cops.”...

As an old army buddy used to say, "DA!" As a rule, our customers don't like us. We're the guys who tell these people, "No, you can't do that!". Or in the words of End of Watch, "I am the police, and I'm here to arrest you. You've broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathies, nothing you do will stop me from placing you in a steel cage with gray bars. If you run away I will chase you. If you fight me I will fight back. If you shoot at me I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun....

Truer words were never told. I think I will check out this movie this month.  Be safe out there my fellow cops.