Police have yet to be defunded, but “Live PD” has suspended production, just days after “Cops” announced its demise just before its 33rd season start.
In each easy-to-produce reality show, cameramen tagged along the forces of blue to watch them stop, question, arrest and sometimes harass citizens who largely seemed poor, people of color, or had the bad luck of having a small amount of drugs on them.
“Cops” was edited, and presented with blurred faces of the suspects, reminding before each episode briefly that they were considered innocent until proven guilty but were otherwise not treated that way at all. “Live PD” turns out to have not been live at all, but on a delay of up to 25 minutes with each participating police force allowed to turn off a camera or otherwise edit whole segments.
“Cops” was a relic of the past, an early reality TV hit whose syndicated success had long since faded into the depths of cable (appearing on the Paramount Network, the former Spike TV, whose channel numbers elude most watchers),. But “Live PD” was as recently as two weeks ago calling itself “the most watched series on television” and had just ordered another 160 episodes as it approached its 300th episode. Also: Each episode is three hours long.
The milestone 300th episode never aired Saturday, as it turned out, as the network pulled it at the last minute amid unprecedented uprisings in all 50 states and internationally against police behavior.
Nobody was ever killed on “Live PD,” but news was just coming out that their cameras were on board when a 40-year-old black man in Texas, stopped for failing to dim his lights, died in police custody after being tased. That footage never ran, and in fact was destroyed, the network said.
Even without that shocking incident, there was much to complain about “Live PD,” which, if it were actually live and anything close to the police reporting I did in my youth, would be filled with a whole lot of nothing going on.
Still, it was fascinating to watch at times, as it took up more and more space on A&E — the entire prime time slot on Fridays and Saturdays, with reruns during the week.
Even with the police edit, it provided a window into modern law enforcement, which had long since gone way beyond the kind of homespun Andy Griffith portrayal television once provided.
So many cars were pulled over for failing to signal, broken headlight or other tiny infractions. So many people of color absolutely terrified, often to tears, by the magnitude of every moment under a police eye, where any errant move might well mean incarceration or death.
With the investigating cop all full of swagger and command, and the citizens often cowering, there was all manner of rights being shrugged off. Nearly every cop who said something like “You’re not carrying any drugs or weapons in your pockets are you?” would follow with, “Then you wouldn’t mind me searching you, right?” Cars and trunks would be rifled through on the same casual consent: “You wouldn’t mind me looking through your vehicle then, right?”
I never heard commenting panel at ground control — hosts Dan Abrams, Tom Morris Jr. and Sgt. Sean “Sticks” Larkin — reminding viewers that anyone stopped by the police in most places in the U.S. had the right not to consent to any searches.
More often, the panel would chuckle at how intoxicated a suspect might be, what weird thing they might have said or what they were wearing. It was always clear who’s team they were on.
Often the show unwittingly displayed the inequities in applying justice. A group of suburban white teens pulled over while drinking in one episode never appeared worried at all. Rather, they were quite excited and, as cable subscribers, exclaiming, “Are we on ‘Live PD’? And sure enough, the police would shoo them home without a warning. I’m thinking a similar encounter in another part of town would pack much more tension.
Only once did I see someone assert his rights. It was a passenger in the car who was asked for ID and calmly said no, knowing that passengers in that jurisdiction didn’t have to say who they were. So he opened the door and walked away.
The cops were left to shake their heads, bemoaning this wiseacre kid who knew his rights (even if the panel didn’t point it out).
In addition to insight on American policing “Live PD” also reflected a lot of modern life — how dreary and similar each policed town seemed, with their highways, Wal-Marts and liquor stores — and how every police team barked in pretty much the same gruff manner no matter where they were (do they go to conventions to learn the same techniques? Yeah, probably).
The preponderance of viewers — up to 2 million of them each weekend nights — were simply along for the police ride, wondering what’s around the next corner, or in the next radio call, after the next commercial break, hoping maybe they’ll see a busted head or chase if they’re lucky. If not, they could sit and pass judgment on those pulled over, who almost always seemed teetering on the edge of poverty, the American Dream having slipped away.
Still, they keep to the same kind of blue line vs. bad guy mindset offered on all of the reality jailhouse shows that had been growing along with the prison industrial complex. Cheap entertainment (and no art) for the A&E viewer; cheap to produce for the show makers.
Police departments were lured into teaming with these shows in order to help make a kind of recruitment video for a job that may not exist in the same form if demonstrators have their way. The departures of “Cops” and “Live PD” may be one step in reconsidering America’s relationship to its increasingly militaristic police forces. A far bigger task will come in taming the number of scripted cop shows at a time when White House tweets seem only to promote them, bellowing “LAW & ORDER.”