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Critic’s Notebook

Squad Cars, Sirens and Gangs, and the Cameras That Love Them

A scene from “Bait Car,” which shows the police trying to capture thieves stealing cars left unattended (by the police).Credit...TRUTV

In May, during a police raid in Detroit, a 7-year-old girl, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, was shot in the head and killed as she slept on a living-room couch. It was an undeniable tragedy, and might have remained a local one but for an unusual circumstance: The police officers involved in the shooting were accompanied by cameras from “The First 48,” the reliably engrossing A&E show that documents the early stages of homicide investigations. Last month the girl’s family filed suit against A&E Television Networks, alleging that filming the raid was tantamount to encouraging it.

Crime has had a place on reality television ever since the 1989 debut of “Cops,” but it has rarely seemed more pervasive than it is now, with several channels featuring shows that use criminals and police forces as stars or jails as locations. In addition to the long-running “First 48” this month A&E is showing “Beyond Scared Straight,” a jail-based series about juvenile intervention, and last month showed “The Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars,” about a negotiator seeking truces between rival Los Angeles gangs.

At the forefront of this movement is truTV, which since its rebranding from Court TV in 2008 has become the go-to network for crimes in progress. On Monday nights it broadcasts a pair of shows that raise different sorts of questions about the ethics and logistics of filming criminal behavior: “All Worked Up,” which purports to document workers in confrontational fields (process server, repo man, etc.); and “Bait Car,” a fly-on-the-wall program about auto theft.

In the wake of the Stanley-Jones killing, this intersection of reality television and crime feels riskier than ever, especially as the cameras become part of the stories they’re ostensibly there to document. The ubiquity of cameras feels increasingly incendiary: instead of encouraging best behavior, their presence threatens to be a provocation. Crime — the discussion of it, the execution of it, and the attempted solving of it — makes for great television, so where’s the incentive for it to be diminished?

Dave Bing, the mayor of Detroit, banned reality television crews from police ride-alongs after the death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Months later he fired the police chief, Warren Evans, partly because of a leaked video teasing Mr. Evans’s role in a proposed reality series, “The Chief.”

That is a lonely public dissent, though; few others are keeping cameras away from potential conflagrations. “The Peacemaker” tackles tensions between gangs that, off camera, appear to have little problem resorting to violence and, on camera, little problem discussing it. Nikko, of the Playboy Gangster Crips, tells Malik Spellman, an ex-convict negotiator, “It’s easy for me to push a button and say war, but I can’t do that and expect to live throughout this life.” Speaking of a disturbance with a rival gang, Sico of the Payback Crips says, “My first thing was, you know what I’m saying, go get the guns.”

Mr. Spellman has said his connections allow him this level of access. (Ice-T is an executive producer of the show.) And everyone involved appears remarkably comfortable discussing the shades of gang life. But while some gang members appear wary of the cameras, others take to them. During a barbecue held by one set of Crips men flash weapons and throw up gang signs at the camera as one of them boasts, “Ain’t no peace treaties going on over here.”

The crime is implied, never shown, on “The Peacemaker,” but it’s plain as day on “All Worked Up,” a show in which the only language, apart from the dart-quick metaphors of the repo man Ron Shirley, is physical violence.

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Malik Spellman, right, an ex-convict turned negotiator, with gang members in A&E’s “Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars.”Credit...Scott Council/A&E Network

Each of the program’s stars faces a sequence of hypertension-inducing confrontations, which often have the stagey air of “The Jerry Springer Show.” (There is vibrant online debate about the degree to which the show is dramatized.) In one episode Mr. Shirley is hit over the head with a bottle as he tries to repossess a car from some rowdy young people. (His shop is the subject of its own truTV spinoff, “Lizard Lick Towing,” which is to have its premiere next month.) In another, Byran McElderry, a process server with the mellifluous vocal tone of Geoffrey Holder, is threatened by a pizza shop employee wielding a metal peel.

Perhaps these are real people merely acting real, participating in the dramatization of everyday life. Certainly each show has elements that appear rehearsed, or at least prearranged. Many of the gang members filmed for “The Peacemaker” cover up the logos on their caps with tape. On “All Worked Up” some brawl participants have their faces blurred, presumably because they didn’t sign releases.

A&E declined to make representatives of either “The Peacemaker” or “The First 48” available to discuss the particularities of creating their shows. A representative of truTV, noting that “All Worked Up” is produced by an outside production company, RDF Media (which was bought last summer by Zodiak Entertainment), referred an inquiry to a publicist for that company, who did not return calls last week.

Who did return a call was John Langley, a creator of “Cops” and a more-than-20-year veteran of vérité television, who lamented the recent surge in crime-theme television: “It’s not real — it’s provoked, manipulated, scripted.”

Mr. Langley said he preferred a naturalistic mode, waiting for a story to unfold rather than shaping it in advance. “You can’t preclude or jump ahead of the experience,” he said. “I come from the documentary tradition. I don’t want people to act, I don’t want people to be aware of the camera.”

But in this new wave of shows, the camera often becomes a character in and of itself, or at least an agent in shaping the behavior of its subjects. There are the gun-waving gang members on “The Peacemaker”; on “All Worked Up” the camera operators are often visible, giddily angling for the best shots, practically taunting their subjects.

The closest in spirit to “Cops” is “Bait Car,” which uses hidden cameras to capture thieves stealing cars left unattended on city streets by the police, a common crime deterrent tactic. Mostly the footage is humdrum, though in one recent episode three young men ditch the car one has taken, make a break for it and are chased by the police with cameras racing after them, a “Cops”-like vignette.

Mr. Langley said the main rule he imparted to his camera operators on “Cops” was not to get involved in what they were filming. “Do not ever interfere,” he said. “I told my guys, ‘If you become the story, there is no story.’ ”

Footage shot for “The First 48” on the night of the Stanley-Jones killing has been turned over to the Michigan State Police to assist in its investigation.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Squad Cars, Sirens and Gangs, and the Cameras That Love Them. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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