Barry Cooper appears in Never Get Busted! by David Anthony Ngo and Erin Williams-Weir, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

What happens when a former Texas cop with a stunning record of drug arrests starts helping people fight the law? The grim answer lies in Never Get Busted, an addictive new documentary about cop-turned-rebel Barry Cooper, now playing at Sundance.

The film, by director David Anthony Ngo, takes us back about 25 years, before marijuana was widely legalized in the United States, and casual pot users lived in fear of being pulled over and searched. One of the best cops at busting drug users and dealers was Barry Cooper, who so loved his job that he once trained his own drug-sniffing dog.

But as the film recounts, he soon began to question the helpfulness — and decency — of raiding homes and breaking up families over drug possession. And so he switched sides, producing the hit Never Get Busted! DVD series, in which he shared a slew of tips for dodging arrest.

(One of the weirdest: If you have marijuana in your car, keep a cat in the front seat, because it will distract and upset drug-sniffing dogs.)

Also Read: Zodiac Killer Project Exposes Tricks of the True-Crime Genre

For a while, Cooper is something of a man without a country. The editors of High Times are initially mistrustful, wondering if his promises to help drug users evade arrest is just a complicated sting operation. Cops, meanwhile, regard him as a traitor.

He finds his way with a colorful supporting cast the film delights in introducing, including Barry’s partner, who turns him from cop to pot smoker, and a gamer/indie filmmaker who helps launch the Never Get Busted! series.

But as Barry’s war on the war on drugs gets more ambitious, he takes risks that make him a huge target — even as he fights to set others free.

Never Get Busted! isn’t a perfect record of the Barry Cooper story — it skips a few years to get to where Barry is now, in order to focus on the most dramatic, caught-on-video moments, and avoid the drudgery of consequences.

But it is, for most of its runtime, exhilarating, and a fascinating look at how a keen legal mind can stand up to overzealous prosecutions. It is also an often infuriating watch, as you see how easily good people can be caught up in the courts.

What resonates, after the film ends, is the spirit of Barry Cooper, who could have profited from a broken system, and chose instead to fight it.

Never Get Busted just premiered at Sundance.