The title sequence of this short is filmed to look like a police car racing West at night on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, with siren blaring, and a windshield wiper 'erasing' each set of credits and 'sweeping in' the next. Along the route, mostly on the left (South) side of Wilshire, we see a Cut Rate drug store; a billboard (or perhaps a building logo) for Mullen & Bluett clothiers; a billboard ad for R&H Pilsner Beer. An apparent 'jump cut' puts us a few blocks farther West on Wilshire, where, again on the left, we see a movie theatre marquee (probably the Fox Ritz at 5214 Wilshire); a large, billboard-sized Coca-Cola sign in lights on the right; and in the distance, on the left, a rooftop lighted sign on the Myer Siegel building at 5410 Wilshire.
This film was originally planned to be entitled "Tickets for Two", with Lloyd French directing. That title and the original plot (about two friends attending a boxing match) was eventually dropped and the project evolved into a story about two policemen. French was retained as director. Before its release as "The Midnight Patrol" it went under the working titles "Calling Car Thirteen" and "Calling All Cars."
At the beginning of the film, Stan gets out of the patrol car and marks an "X" on the car's left front tire with a piece of chalk. This was a method police used to use to see how long a car was parked in a particular spot if there was a signed restriction on the time a car could be parked there.
The Police Car used by Laurel and Hardy is a 1927 Cadillac Series 314-A Sedan. (It was common at that time to use large luxury cars as Police Cars because they were powerful.) The Spare Tire thieves are driving a 1925 Chevrolet Superior Touring Car.