Keystone Kops

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The Keystone Kops in a typical pose. The desk officer using the telephone is Ford Sterling. The policeman directly behind Sterling (in extreme background, left) is Edgar Kennedy. The hefty policeman at extreme right is Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The young constable with bulging eyes, fourth from right, is Arbuckle's nephew Al St. John. The casting of the Keystone police force changed from one film to the next; many of the individual members were per-diem actors who remain unidentifiable.

The Keystone Kops was a series of silent film comedies featuring an incompetent group of policemen produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.

The idea came from Hank Mann, who also played police chief Tehiezel in the first film before being replaced by Ford Sterling. Their first film was Hoffmeyer's Legacy (1912) but their popularity came from the 1913 feature The Bangville Police. However as early as 1914 they were being pushed out by Sennett in favor of comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle.

The term has since come to be used to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes happened after a great deal of energy and activity, or if there was a lack of coordination among the members of the group. For example, the June 2004 election campaign of the Liberal Party of Canada was compared with "the Keystone Kops running around" by one of its parliamentary members, Carolyn Parrish. In criticizing the Department of Homeland Security's response to Hurricane Katrina, Senator Joseph Lieberman claimed that emergency workers under DHS chief Michael Chertoff "ran around like Keystone Kops, uncertain about what they were supposed to do or uncertain how to do it" [1]

In 1983, a video game called Keystone Kapers was released for the Atari 2600 and 5200. Playing as Keystone Kop Officer Kelly, your object is to stop would-be robber Hooligan Harry from escaping Southwick's Mall. The game, which became a hit, was produced by Activision.

In 1994, the Keystone Kops were honored with their image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. This stamp clearly featured the spelling "Keystone Cops", not "Kops". It should be noted that Mack Sennett's Keystone film studio always used the spelling "Cops" (not "Kops") whenever publicizing their films: surviving press releases from the Keystone studio contain phrases such as "another 'Cop' comedy", invariably with the "Cop" spelling, never "Kops". The "Kops" misspelling is a modern error which has now become engrained in the public consciousness. Although Mack Sennett became a hugely successful businessman, throughout his life he was deeply sensitive about his lack of formal education. It is very unlikely that he would have condoned an intentional misspelling of "Cops", out of fear that the public might think Sennett didn't know the proper spelling. No contemporary citation of the "Kop" spelling has ever surfaced, whereas film historian Kalton C. Lahue and others have found many documents issued by the Keystone studio which retain the spelling "Cop".

In August 2006, the terror alert response and security measures of the British government to the alleged plot of bombing transatlantic aircraft in mid-air was termed as "Keystone Kops"-like by Michael O'Leary of Ryanair

The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance features, in the second Act, a platoon of incompetent and cowardly policemen, under a Sergeant, engaged by Frederic to arrest the pirates. Although the stage show dates from 1879 and the Keystone Kops appeared a quarter-century later, it is now customary for the policemen in the show to be portrayed in the style of the Keystone Kops.

The Keystone Kops also appear in the computer game NetHack, typically when the player steals from one of the shops. They are more dangerous than their cinematic inspiration however; they typically surround the player's character so escape is impossible, and then attack with rubber hoses from all directions, while temporarily blinding the player with thrown cream pies.

The Keystone Kops re-emerge every year in the town of Cedar Springs, Michigan during their Red Flannel Festival.

In an episode of Reno 911!, a TV show about a bunch of inept cops, the Keystone Kops were mentioned.

In December 2006 investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss called President Bush's tabling of a new plan for Iraq victory "a Keystone Cops performance".[2]