TV COPS WEEKEND - GUEST BILL CRIDER

Once upon a time there was a crime show with two of the toughest cops around. And I’m not talking about Crockett and Tubbs or Starsky and Hutch or Cagney and Lacey. I’m talking about Taylor and Fife.
Andy Taylor and Barney Fife patrolled the mean streets of Mayberry, North Carolina. They were the law, and they didn’t know the meaning of fear.
They worked together as an efficient team, even though they had different philosophies about law enforcement.
Fife, for example, knew that “there are two kinds of cops. The quick and the dead.” So he trusted his sidearm in any situation: “Well, I guess to sum it up, you could say, there’s three reasons why there’s so little crime in Mayberry. There’s Andy, and there’s me, and (he pats his pistol) baby makes three.” He knew that a lawman has to be prepared and never let down his guard: “Gun-drawing practice, ten minutes every day. If I ever have to use this baby, I want to teach it to come to papa in a hurry.”
Taylor, on the other hand, didn’t even carry a gun. “When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he’s getting might really be fear. So I don’t carry a gun because I don’t want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I’d rather they respect me.”
Both men were tough, but fair. As Barney explained to some new inmates of the Mayberry jail, “Here at the Rock we have two basic rules. Memorize them until you can say them in your sleep. Rule number one: obey all rules. Rule number two: do not write on the walls.”
And they both knew that crime prevention was as important as apprehension of criminals after the fact. As Barney put it, “Today’s eight-year-olds are tomorrow’s teenagers. I say this calls for action and now. Nip it in the bud. First sign of youngsters going wrong, you’ve got to nip it in the bud.”
Maybe The Andy Griffith Show wasn’t the most successful cop show ever on television, but it ran for eight years and ended its run as the number one show in the country, never having finished lower than seventh in the ratings. Crockett and Tubbs might have had the colors, the cars, and the cool outfits, but they didn’t have Fife’s sangfroid or Taylor’s savoir faire. Nor did anyone else. That’s why Taylor and Fife remain TV’s top cops.