In the Rick and Morty episode "Rick Potion #9", several donuts can be seen on the ground next to the dead policeman when Jerry grabs his rifle.
Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons. But, then again, Donuts are popular with other characters as well. Still, he's the only one who threatened someone with violence because of some donuts that fell on the sewer.
In Treehouse of Horror IV episode, Homer - due to an encounter with The Devil - has his head turned into a four-foot-wide donut. As a result, the Springfield Police Department lays siege to his house, cups of coffee in hand, waiting for him to emerge.
When Homer wants to find a fancy donut cart all he does is call 911 and the police promptly call out a massive search complete with helicopters. Once they find it and the donuts are already sold out Wiggum pulls out his gun and threatens the owner.
In the episode where Marge becomes a cop, she's seen having coffee and a donut for breakfast while her family eats more regular breakfast fare. Marge, is, however, much more competent than the usual Springfield policeman.
In the Springfield's Most Wanted special, every desk has a box of donuts.
A cop show about the Springfield Police has Snake Jailbird escape their attempted arrest by car, taunting "Close but no donut!"
Mayor Quimby once called Wiggum a "talking tub of donut batter" during an argument.
Stick Girl: In the episode "Activism", after the police are done asking Stick Girl who broke into a lab in released all the bunnies (completely ignoring the fact that Stick Girl is sitting in a bulldozer), the head cop turns to the others and says "Let's go out for donuts.", to which they cheer.
American Dad! - Roger wonders if there's a donut shop nearby when a bunch of cops appear. The currently drunk Stan doesn't get it.
Roger: Cops already? What, are we next door to a freakin' Krispy Kreme?
Stan: You're thinking about donuts now?
Roger: No, I'm just saying the cops got here fast.
Stan: What the hell do fast cops have to do with a Krispy Kreme?
The episode "Cop Out" has Mike Brickowski (see page image) a fat and lazy cop who's first seen sitting in his patrol car eating donuts and bragging about what a "great" cop he claims to be, while his partner Perez is across the street foiling a bank robbery. On the way back to the station, he got donuts from practically every donut shop he found, including one that also sells Chinese food. And he's still eating donuts back at the station when Da Chief gives him the Turn in Your Badge speech. Brikowski then hands over his gun, which the Chief tells him to keep as a "souvenir"... and asks for his donut instead, because he's hungry for one himself.
The Movie has the cops portrayed in a bad light. Before the girls came along, crime was rampant, and we see the reason... during every crime, the policemen were ALWAYS at the donut shop.
Subverted in Sealab 2021: Quinn tries to get a cop to leave a crime scene by throwing a donut away from it, even speaking to him like a dog ("go get, get it!"). The cop then tells he's diabetic, so Quinn just tasers him.
Harvey Bullock's love of donuts goes without saying. There's one scene early in the show's run, in "Pretty Poison", where most of the police rush out of headquarters in response to some emergency and he lingers to grab one. Twice.
Also, "Sins of the Father", Tim Drake's origin story, begins with him stealing a whole box of them from an elderly cop, then using them as improvised weapons against Two-Face's thugs.
In "Girls Night Out", Supergirl visits Gotham and teams up with Batgirl to take on Livewire, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. After Detective Bullock makes a snide remark toward the two heroines, Batgirl assures Supergirl, "Don't let that donut dunker get to you."
While the main food of the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Short Order Crooks" is Cheddarhead Charlie's Cheese Chowder, an early scene has Officers Kirby and Muldoon picking up a box of donuts at the diner. Ma's donuts are highly praised, though Ma suspects they just come there because it's conveniently next door to the station.
Courage the Cowardly Dog once distracted a cop from his evil package by throwing a donut down the subway train. He came back anyway, mouth covered in frosting.
Lucky Piquel, partner of the titular anthropomorphic bobcat cop of Bonkers, sure loves his pastries.
In one episode of Funky Cops, Ace gets a new partner, a fresh academy grad, when Dick is incapacitated.
Ace: So what do they teach you at the academy these days?
Dash: Uh, I, uh... could we get some donuts?
Ace: Heeey, that's what they taught me, too.
In the first episode of Dan Vs., a cop eating a donut watches Dan and Chris chasing a little boy down the street. He continues to eat his donut, then realizes, "Oh yeah, I'm a cop!" and goes after them.
One scene from the Pixar animated shortTokyo Mater involved Mater luring a Japanese police car into a donut shop while attempting to beat the villain to the top of Tokyo Tower as part of a drift race. Since the characters are cars, the donuts are of the stunt variety.
Subverted on an episode of Birdz. Officer Pigeon buys a box early in the episode, but after losing his job due to Eddie and Sleepy's interference, he throws them at the bank robbers to stop them and admits that he doesn't eat them because "they're bad for you".
Osmosis Jones tells Drix he has police work to do. The next scene, he orders donuts(?) (one glazed, and one with a jelly-filled nucleus) from a cell that has a donut for a face before calling the Memory Center and asking about "El Muerte Rojo" The white-blood-cell precinct is also right next to the donut shop.
The Dan Danger Show referenced this trope and lampshaded how cliche it was in the short "A Date with Danger", where the dinner Dan ordered on his date with a female police officer named Pepper turned out to be donuts and Dan remarks that he knew cops like donuts because that's what he heard from washed-up comedians. In addition, some of the cops Dan's date works with complains that the stereotype of cops liking donuts was a rumor started by firemen.
The Cow and Chicken episode "Orthodontic Police" featured the Red Guy as an orthodontic policeman forcing everyone he meets to wear huge braces. One of his victims is a cop who laments being unable to eat donuts because of his braces.
In Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, the heroes' cop ally, after being knocked out, is able to revive and get the drop on the bad guy... after a donut rolls by his nose.
A literal version of this was seen on an episode of Garfield and Friends as a plot device. In that episode, Garfield tries to warn a cop about a bank being robbed. The cop ignores this and goes to a donut shop instead. To make him realize that the bank is being robbed, Garfield puts the message "Bank Being Robbed" in his donuts. The cop soon notices and goes off to find the robber.
The Bikini Bottom Police Department from Spongebob Squarepants has an entire room in the police station for storing them. Also the officer who arrests Plankton has Doughnut shaped earmuffs.
What's with Andy?: during careers week, a kid is told by the cop he is partnered with to memorize the different kinds of donuts there are, since this is a crucial aspect of becoming a real cop.
In the "Makin' Bank" episode of SheZow, Guy uses a donut truck to slow down his police officer dad and his dad's partner so he can restore his size and his superhero identity.
In Atomic Puppet, the Mega City police station is located next door to a donut shop. And in one episode, Joey and AP find a group of cops positioned around the donut shop waiting for somebody to come out. but it turns out they were only waiting for a rookie member to come out with the donuts.
Beetlejuice is able to distract two Netherworld cops by conjuring up a donut stand and yelling "Free donuts!" (Unfortunately, the donuts he has are the type he likes, dirty and covered with bugs, so it doesn't distract them for long.)
In an episode of SWAT Kats, two Enforcers guarding a prisoner hear a noise. The younger one thinks something is wrong. The elder one says it is nothing, and to “get yourself another donut” ostensibly to calm his nerves. Subsequently, that prisoner does escape because the guards went to get donuts. This is consistent with the show’s portrayal of Enforcers as useless.
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures alluded to this trope in the episode "Mighty's Tone Poem", where Petey Pate lambastes caricatures of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert by remarking that they can find the nearest donut shop by following the trail of cops.
In the Mixels episode "Every Knight Has Its Day", the MCPD (Mixopolis City Police Department) are introduced in the parking lot of a donut shop with donuts and coffee. They perform a Spit Take when they are alerted of an assignment.
The Toxic Crusaders episode "A Sight for Sore Eyes" has a police officer approach Mayor Max Grody while he's sleeping on a park bench and informs him that sleeping in the park is illegal. Mayor Grody replies that he invented the law to try and get the cop off his case, only for the officer to angrily reply that the mayor also made it illegal to eat donuts while on duty.
Sheep in the Big City referenced the trope in the episode "Baa-hind the Scenes" when Sheep's agent proposes that a new show Sheep could star in is a cop show titled Baaah and Order. The hypothetical show's opening narration states that the two most important kinds of people in the world of crime are the police officers solving the crimes and the bakers who make the cops' donuts.
The Bump in the Night episode "Loss of Face" had Mr. Bumpy dress as a police officer and take a bite out of a donut while interrogating Squishington about what happened to his missing face.
In the Arthur episode "Sue Ellen Moves In", the kids are curious about the family that just moved in, who they hear has been all around the world. Prunella guesses that they're on the run, and has an Imagine Spot of Sue Ellen robbing the Louvre while a security guard is distractedly eating a croissant.
Alluded to in the Transformers: Rescue Bots episode "One for the Ages", where Myles expresses his frustration at him and his brother Evan getting caught by Chase by sarcastically asking if there isn't a robot donut shop around.
The trope is referenced once more in the Sequel SeriesTransformers: Rescue Bots Academy, where the episode "Museum Mystery" has Chase invite Whirl to a police ride-along and Whirl offers to get the donuts. Humorously, neither Whirl nor Chase even know what donuts are, the latter guessing that they are some kind of puffy cookie.
In the first part of the two-part episode "The Case of C.O.P.S. File #1", Mace is shown biting into a donut and tossing it away before apprehending a pair of criminals.
The episode "The Case of the Baby Bad Guys" has Longarm remark that he needs to cut back on the donuts when his attempt to arrest Small Guy is thwarted by the diminutive crook escaping through a hole in a fence that Longarm is too big to go through.
The episode "Super Duped" has some cops at the scene of a robbery decide to leave to get donuts after they are convinced Johnny is a superhero who will do their job for them.
In "Substitute Teacher", a pair of police officers initially appear to be on the trail of Johnny and a criminal called Jimmy the Hands, but it turns out they were really driving their way to the donut shop.
"Fugitive Johnny" has a bit during the chase sequence at the end where a cop holding boxes of donuts is knocked over and some of the cops chasing after Johnny stop to eat the donuts off the floor.
