Keystone Cops - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

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". Another example is a statement by Peter Beattie, Premier of the Australian state of Queensland, on the counter-terrorism investigation into Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef in July 2007. After the Australian Federal Police committed a series of blunders, the Premier likened their actions to those of the "Keystone Kops". A 2012 U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report which investigated the response of the Canadian energy company Enbridge to a July 2010 pipeline spill in Michigan where millions of litres of oil began to pour in and around the Kalamazoo River compared the company’s handling of the spill to the Keystone Cops.

The Keystone Kops re-emerge every year in the town of Cedar Springs, Michigan during their Red Flannel Festival, and also in Sitka, Alaska during the annual Alaska Day festival.

The Police Academy movies that began in 1984 are frequently considered a modern day version of the Keystone Kops.

In sport, the term has come into common usage by television commentators, particularly in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The rugby commentator Liam Toland uses the term to describe a team's incompetent performance on the pitch. The phrase "Keystone cops defending" has become a favorite catchphrase for describing a situation in an English soccer match where a defensive error or a series of defensive errors leads to a goal.

According to Dave Filoni, supervising director of the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the look of the Police 'droid is based on the appearance of the Keystone Kops.