When Naperville decided two years ago to host the reality show “Female Forces,” city officials saw it as a chance to bring national attention to the Police Department’s 18 female officers.
“We viewed it as somewhat flattering that the show would want to come out to our community,” City Attorney Margo Ely said.
But after two federal lawsuits were filed against Naperville and the producers this year, some city officials are questioning the decision to welcome a show featuring women armed with “brains, beauty and a badge.”
“When you start fooling around with people in town with TV cameras, in the middle of the night or otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble,” said Councilman Richard Furstenau.
In the age of “balloon boy” and White House dinner crashers, it seems that people are willing to do anything to get on reality television.
But the people suing Naperville say they were embarrassed by their appearance on the show and did not give their permission.
Communities open up themselves to litigation when they host reality-TV shows because they do not have full control over the editing of footage and getting people to sign waivers, said Alison Hearn, a reality-show expert and professor of media studies at University of Western Ontario.
“In the end, it’s not worth taking those kind of risks,” she said. “It just seems really naive.”
Naperville’s Ely said the city will not incur legal costs because the agreement stated that the company producing the show, The Greif Company, would indemnify and defend the city against any litigation.
She discounted the lawsuits, saying the plaintiffs “are people who are unwilling to accept responsibility for their own conduct.”
Naperville police Chief David Dial had the opportunity to review footage taken by the show’s producers and asked that some scenes be removed, Ely said.
But the producers were in charge of getting consent from people taped on the show, said Betsy Brantner Smith, a now-retired Naperville police sergeant who had a starring role on “Female Forces,” which is no longer in production.
When one of the officers made an arrest or a traffic stop, a member of the camera crew would ask that person to sign a waiver so he or she could legally appear on the show, Smith said. If people did not sign, production crews blurred out their faces or edited them out of the footage, Smith said.
“If at any time someone said, ‘Turn off the cameras,’ the cameras were turned off,” Smith said. “They never did anything deceptive.”
But the lawsuits claim otherwise. The latest litigation was filed Tuesday by Eran Best, of Woodridge, who says she was humiliated when the program showed her being pulled over in February 2008 for an expired license plate.
She alleges her segment aired on the Biography Channel despite her refusal to consent to her image being broadcast. She names as defendants the city of Naperville, two police officers and the show’s production company.
In her suit, Best alleges that her arrest for driving on a suspended license was sensationalized by the officers for the broadcast. The charge was later dropped, the suit said. Best said she was forced to stand in the cold as the officers searched her car and ordered her to take a field sobriety test, though her stop didn’t involve a moving violation.
Best found out about her appearance on the show from friends and family members after it aired. The suit alleges that the arresting officers mocked her before the cameras and showed private information about her on a computer monitor – including her name, phone number and driver’s license number.
The federal suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks a judge to prohibit any future airings of the episode.
In October, two sisters sued the Police Department and the show, claiming the producers never received permission to broadcast their images or likenesses. The women said they were embarrassed because the footage showed them with their pajama bottoms falling off and “indecently exposed skin.”
According to the suit, a member of the camera crew asked one of the sisters to sign a release form authorizing the use of her identity while she was in a holding cell, and she refused. The other sister was never asked to sign a release, the suit said. The episode of “Female Forces” in which they appeared was broadcast in November 2008.
A brief filed Wednesday by attorney Steven Mandell, on behalf of the show’s producers and the other defendants, rejects the sisters’ claims that the show invaded their privacy, asserting that the arrest was public and “nothing in the episode … would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.” The suit is scheduled for a hearing Thursday morning.
The producers of “Female Forces” chose Naperville as a setting after meeting Smith, who suggested they follow her fellow female officers.
“The concept was designed to show that women cops aren’t just women with badges and guns,” she said. “They’re women with kids and spouses and partners and personal lives.”
According to the show’s Web site, viewers “ride shotgun” with the female officers “as they fight a full gamut of big-city crime in the suburbs of Chicago.”
In July 2007, the Naperville City Council approved hosting the show in a 6-3 vote. Councilman Robert Fieseler said he voted for Naperville to host the show because he wanted to lift morale on the force and show that “our women police officers were doing a solid job and were being integrated into our force.” He said the city understood the potential for lawsuits.
“I think on balance we knew what we were getting into,” he said.
Councilman Kenn Miller said he did not regret voting to host the show, but said he was not certain he would do so again, given the lawsuits.
“We have some excellent female officers,” he said, “and from that perspective, it was appropriate to recognize that.”
But Furstenau, who voted against the show, said he had tried to warn other council members about reality-television shows, which he said “try to make fools of poor people who are caught in bad situations.”
Still, about 80 percent of the people who were approached by production assistants and asked to sign waivers did so, Smith said. During domestic disputes, she said, many people “pretended not to see the cameras,” she said.
“I was surprised,” she said, “but we live in a society where everybody wants to be on TV.”
–Gerry Smith
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