Anyone who’s watched a crime procedural play out on TV or in film, or has been sucked into the all-consuming rabbit hole of monitoring local police scanners knows that law enforcement officers speak a secret language. Rather than yelling “we got a double homicide” or “there’s a cat stuck in a tree” over the radio, they use numerical codes to quickly and discreetly inform their colleagues about the situation that’s unfolding. So naturally we decided to test the mettle of the cast of the CHiPS reboot to see if they could decipher some real-life police codes. While at a recent press day in Los Angeles, our intrepid reporter Clarke Wolfe sat down with Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, and Michael Pena to put them through our very own version of police academy.
While the cast technically had the right to remain silent, that would have made for an incredibly uncomfortable and, frankly, boring interview, so we’re grateful they didn’t exercise their Miranda rights. In addition to starring in the film, Dax Shepard directed it, so we spoke with him about how that becomes an awesome excuse to hang out with all of your cool, famous friends. And before you go around crying “nepotism,” just take a long, hard look in the mirror and tell me that you wouldn’t do the same thing. Dax Shepard’s friends just happen to be better suited to being in a movie than Mike from your kickball team or Jean from accounting.
CHiPS is in theaters now.
Image: Warner Bros.
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
