This Weekend’s On Patrol: Live Highlights, Commentary, and Social Media Activity

An On Patrol: Live recap, including NYC studio host Dan Abrams’ puns, analysis, and banter (usually) with co-anchor Curtis Wilson (a Richland County, S.C., deputy sheriff), along with the often-snarky or playful social media reaction, follows.

For background information about On Patrol: Live (i.e., Live PD 2.0), click here.

Dep. Wilson is taking the weekend off for the first time since OPL launched.

Capt. Tom Rizzo (Howell Township, N.J, PD), and Ofr. Ryan Tillman (Chino, Calif., PD ) both return to the studio to as this weekend’s guest analysts.

Please review this important DISCLAIMER.

Note: This blog was offline during the March 22-23, 20024, episodes which were anchored by substitute host Ashleigh Banfield. .Also, OPL was in reruns during the March 29-30, 2024, Easter weekend.

On Patrol: Live Summary for April 5, 2024 (#OPL Episode 02-63)

  • Richland County, S.C. — Dep. Sloan Simpson responds to a report of a motel disturbance. One man wants another man to leave the room, and the latter appears to call a Lyft or Uber to make that happen.
  • Richland County, S.C. — Cpl. Rebekah Smith and other units respond to a report of a disturbance involving a large group of people arguing outside. A motorist who may have been asleep in a parked car is detained; a gun and cash allegedly found. “I’m a landscaper.” Heavy bleeping of bystanders. OPL host Dan Abrams update: “It turns out the gun was legal but he was arrested for possession with intent to distribute marijuana.”
  • Berkeley County, S.C. — Cpls. Carli Drayton, Devante Smith, Bryon Fowler and other units from multiple jurisdictions pursue a fleeing vehicle in a chase that goes on for about 30 commercial-free minutes (according to Abrams). Cpl. Drayton originally tried to pull the car over for alleged reckless driving. Spike strips (a.k.a. stop sticks) deployed. Cpl. Smith” He’s trying to fake us out now, but we know the game.” Ultimately, a male driver and a female passenger are detained at gunpoint. [See update below.]

Ofr. Tillman: “If you’re the first initiating the pursuit, then you have comms, you try and pay attention to the suspect, and try to pay attention to everything else. Once you get the second man in the pursuit, now the second officer takes over all the comms…so that way, that number-one job, you just just focus on the suspect and the suspect alone.” Cpt. Rizzo on the potential dangers for police in a pursuit: “Cars coming the other way, singe lane on each direction, nature, right?, as an animal comes out into their path, whatever the case may be, they have to be ultra careful for that.” Ofr. Tillman adds that it’s important to avoid tunnel vision: “Tunnel vision is when you just basically get so fixated on that suspect that you forget what’s going on around you. So you have to breathe, just stay calm, because you might have to pick up that guy just running across the street or that innocent person that’s just passing on the sidewalk.” Cpt. Rizzo suggests that the subject “knows the lay of the land, the way he’s taking the turns…he knows where he’s going. A tactic here would be to close off your on-ramps and off-ramps so you that have to stay on the highway…”

Cpt. Rizzo: “Ideally, you would want the jurisdiction that the chase is occurring in currently to be the lead car on that. They are familiar with their roads; they know the ins and the outs. Cross communications, though, is always a challenge between department to department, depending on what frequency the radios are on. It’s not like the movies where you hit a button and everybody hears you, that’s for sure.”

“You didn’t smoke a cigarette while you were running from us. You’re good….”

Cpl. Drayton: “He said he didn’t stop because he didn’t know why I was pulling him over. But if he would have stopped, I would have told him why I was pulling him over. It’s my second shift back on patrol, and I chase a car. I hope my baby’s at home watching.” Cpl. Smith: “The driver is definitely going to jail now for failure to stop for blue lights and reckless driving after we inventory the car and search the driver — make sure they don’t have nothing. She’s going to jail if we get charges on her.” Cpt. Rizzo about the post-pursuit stop: “For multi people in one vehicle like that, they’ll do one at a time; slow it down. Normally, a counter-clockwise when you’re starting with the driver and go around the car that way. My favorite about these is always, ‘well, I don’t understand; what was the problem?’ I don’t know if it’s selective amnesia — the half hour of pursuit driving that’s going on.” Ofr. Tillman: “‘You mean those blue lights were for me?’ But another thing to consider, too, is also just slowing it down like you brought up because you’re going up from being at 100. Now you have to pull people out of a vehicle. So it’s always important for people to slow it down, especially when you’re doing a high-risk traffic stop.” Abrams comments that the passenger is saying that she was trying to get out of the car. “Obviously, they’ll have to investigate that to determine if there’s any truth to it, but that could certainly change things for her.”

According to Cpl. Smith, drug paraphernalia allegedly found in the vehicle.

When the suspect asks about his cell phone, which is also being inventoried for safekeeping, Cpl. Smith replies that “you don’t have to worry about calling nobody right now. You’re going to jail…”

When the man indicates that he’d like a cigarette, Smith replies that “now you want to smoke a cigarette. You didn’t smoke a cigarette while you were running from us. You’re good….” The driver does subsequently get a cigarette, though, and some soda.

Abrams update: “The guy, the driver, charged with failure to stop for blue lights. The woman, the passenger, released with no charges.”

Update:

  • Indian River County, Fla. — Dep. Brandon McKenzie and another until respond to a disturbance at a bar and make contact outside with an older male who McKenzie suggests is intoxicated. Cops tell the man that “they want you gone” and that he should leave the establishment and walk home.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Det. Macon MacDowel and other officers interact with a group of pedestrians possibly in connection with potential drug possession.
  • Lee County, Fla. — Dep. Jacob Sahagian and a colleague make contact with a female and subsequently a male over a domestic issue of some kind. Dep. Sahagian: “…They’ve been married for six months, but only have known each other for nine months, so it goes to show…get to know the person you’re about to marry and spend the rest of your life with. And they’re both obviously intoxicated, and we’re gonna try to hopefully get her to go somewhere else, as she seems to be the primary in this one, at least for this verbal dispute, and we’re gonna try to get someone here, but she’s recommended that he leave and go to some type of motel, hotel, Holiday Inn. So we’re gonna wait and see if a friend can come by and pick up [her] and get her out of here. Maybe she’ll take the dog with as her as a collateral.”
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Sgt. Marcus Booth and other officers investigate a report of a man allegedly brandishing a weapon. They make contact with a man (“I’m a tree guy”) who complains about a neighbor throwing trash in his yard.
  • Indian River County, Fla. — Dep. Tony Lee assists other first responders at a serious, head-on crash. Motorists transported to the hospital. Dep. Le describes one of the drivers as allegedly “obviously intoxicated.” Referring to the car damage, Abrams characterizes it as “an ugly scene there,” and “a visible reminder of what drinking and driving can do.” Abrams mentions that the driver in question was allegedly too combative for field sobriety testing.

Dep. Lee summary: “So apparently there’s a witness that was behind the black BMW as they’re going southbound on this red right here. The silver car with an intoxicated female came out of nowhere, according to them didn’t have any headlights on, and just swerved in their lane. Southbound’s probably going 45 miles an hour. She’s probably going at least 45 miles an hour. So you got a combined 90-mile crash head on, just spun everything sideways.”

Dep. Lee subsequently explains about the alleged intoxicated motorist that “ever since we first got on scene…she can’t stand up or maintain her balance…It was a struggle trying to get her in the stretcher, just to try to get her down to the hospital to get her evaluated. So they just put some Ketamine to get her to calm down. She was fighting in there, kicking, scratching, grabbing the firefighters’ arms, and things like that. So they’re gonna wrap up the crash here. A deputy is gonna follow behind the ambulance to make sure that all the EMS and firefighters are safe. If they need anything, to pull over. We’ll come in and handle that if it needs to be. And then, obviously, it’s gonna be a DUI crash investigation as well with injuries. The elderly female that was in the other car was getting trauma as well. I think she has abdominal pain and possibly some heavy internal damage. So we’re gonna follow her up, get her medically evaluated, and then most likely we’ll get medical blood from her, if she doesn’t provide any kind of urine for a sample or anything like that…”

  • Toledo, Ohio — Ofrs. Lindsey Erhart and Brooke Janowiecki, along with other units, respond to a shots-fired call in a residential neighborhood. They detain a man and a woman at the scene. “Getting loud is not gonna help anything.” Ofr. Erhart summary: “When we arrived, the male that was matching the description wearing all blue is the one that they said shot a gun. There was a female that was in a vehicle here. She’s saying that he shot at her, and then she admitted that she rammed her vehicle into his vehicle. And the owner of the house is who we have here. She’s saying there’s no gun here. But we have everybody detained so we can figure out what’s going on and see what we’re gonna do with this situation.”

Abrams: We see this a lot, which is, police arrive at a scene; they don’t know exactly what happened. They detain people, and the people who get detained get angry.” Ofr. Tillman: “Of course…you have to understand, if you were handcuffed, you’re gonna get upset. But what they don’t realize is that sometimes you have to separate people in order to gain some clarity during the investigation. That’s what the officers had to do right there, and we were dealing with a possible shooting, so there’s evidence out here, you got to separate people, so you got to lower the emotions. That way you can get to the bottom of it, and just as fast as they go on, they can come right off.” Capt. Rizzo adds that “it’s a complete mess. Who’s the aggressor, who was in the wrong, and like Ryan said, separating everybody brings the emotions down because they don’t have to ability to feed off of each other.”

“Getting loud is not gonna help anything.”

Abrams update: “In Toledo…where they put a number of people in cuffs, the woman that drove the car into the house was released with a warning. The guy arrested for aggravated menacing and discharging a firearm. And the woman who was the homeowner was released with no charges.”

  • Lee County, Fla. (pre-recorded segment) — Deputies and paramedics respond to a report of a car in a ditch and find a woman outside the car face down. Dep. Nick Cittadino: “Your wife is kind of really drunk.” Paramedics transport the woman to the hospital. The investigation is ongoing to determine what happened. Abrams: “Apparently, because she was found outside the vehicle, she was not charged with DUI.”
  • Coweta County, Ga. — Cpl. Chris Teare makes a traffic stop on a motorcycle for no lights and obscured tag.
  • Lee County, Fla. — Dep. Terry Fogarty makes contact with a driver in a parked car outside a closed business. The motorist is initially reluctant to produce his driver’s license. Dep. Fogarty explains to the man why he is investigating.

“It’s suspicious, bro….And then I ask you for your license, you you give me sh*t about it….I’m doing my job, dude.”

Dep. Fogarty to the driver: “Put yourself in my shoes. When I come up, and all of a sudden lights go off and the car backs up, what does that tell me? It’s suspicious, bro. I’m a law enforcement officer. I have to think about [the bad]…so I have to go on the presumption that there’s something not cool going on here. And then I ask you for your license, you you give me sh*t about it…I’m not sure you’re not hiding anything, you’re not wanted, you don’t have warrants, you don’t have none of that stuff. So put yourself in my shoes…you’re in a private business, so that’s why I stopped, because we’ve had a lot of burglaries up here, a lot of cars getting broken into…I’m doing my job, dude…so I see a suspicious car, lights turn off, and it backs up. What am I supposed to think?…there’s a law that says you can’t be here when the business is closed…it’s called loitering and prowling…” Fogarty adds that the man could hang out at the nearby Winn-Dixie or McDonald’s public parking lots.

  • Triple Play #1 — Lathrop, Calif.
  • Richland County, S.C. — Cpl. Smith backs up Cpt. Danny Brown on a friendly traffic stop possibly in connection with weed. As long as the motorist’s license is valid, she will be likely be released with a warning.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Ofr. Roger Lawson and other units pursue a fleeing vehicle. After they lose the latter, they pursue another vehicle and track that car to a residence where they detain a male who was inside.

Toledo, Oho — Ofrs. Mike Gee and Chris Mulinix, among other units, respond to a report of three people shot in a residential area. A woman at the scene describes an ongoing domestic issue that many be connected. Cops speaks with eyewitnesses and search the area for evidence; a parked car appears to have bullet holes. Ofr. Tillman: “You have to maintain crime-scene integrity. There’s a lot of evidence out here: shell casings, witnesses, surveillance. So you have to dispatch a pretty large team. You’ll have detectives come on scene to go knock on doors, see what you saw.” Ofr. Mulinix: “So right now, we’re just trying to assist crews with looking for a crime scene from the shooting, so we’re just looking for shell casings or anything where the incident would have started and occurred.”

  • Fontana, Calif. — Ofr. Joe Richard and colleague make contact with an older male upon a report of a man brandishing a stick and, according to Abrams, possibly “foaming at the mouth.” Cops on to the subject: “Just a little bit [to drink]? A lot of bit…”
  • BOLO segment — Toledo, Ohio.

CLICK HERE for the OPL 02-64, April, 2024, recap.

CLICK HERE for information about the pending OPL lawsuit.