This Weekend’s On Patrol: Live Highlights, Quotes, Social Media Activity, and Puns
The docuseries On Patrol: Live — i.e., Live PD 2.0 — premiered on the Reelz channel in July 2022 and generally follows the same basic format as its A&E network predecessor in which videographers accompany cops on night patrol in real time.
About 50 On Patrol: Live cameras go into the field with the law enforcement officers usually from eight different U.S. departments during the ride-along on Friday and Saturday evenings. Pre-recorded segments are usually part of the show as well.
An On Patrol: Live recap, including studio host Dan Abrams’ puns, analysis, and banter with co-anchors Sean Larkin and Curtis Wilson (retired Tulsa, Okla., cop and Richland County, S.C., deputy sheriff, respectively), along with the often-snarky or playful social media reaction, follows.
Note: Volusia County, Fla., Deputy Sheriff Royce James is sitting in for Larkin this weekend while the latter is on hiatus.
Please review the important DISCLAIMER.
On Patrol: Live Summary for July 14, 2023 (#OPL Episode 01-95 )
- Berkeley County, S.C. — Sgt. Tyler Clark, Dep. Bryson Fowler, and other cops engage in a long and intense pursuit of an alleged stolen truck. At one point, their vehicles go airborne on a dusty, dirt road. Fowler’s vehicle apparently got stuck “in some tough terrain.” Clark and others continue the chase. During the jumping in and out of the cruisers, an OPL cameraman is accidently left behind. An OPL producer continues filming from the back seat with a cell phone camera. Stop sticks deployed as the subject reverses course and drives past Fowler who is on the side of the road. Driver eventually abandons truck and bails in wooded area. K9 deployed to track. Thanks to the K9 alert, the driver is located hiding in a duck blind gives up, complies, and is taken into custody. Abrams: “Stop sticks were thrown out; tires were blown out…” In a subsequent Abrams update, he informs viewers that the cameraman is okay and back at work.
Clark: “It was a good, successful, no-bite apprehension of the suspect. So he’s going to jail. Everybody is safe. The cars are kind of beat up a little bit, but everybody is safe, and that’s what we’re looking for. Also got the victim’s vehicle back, and it doesn’t look like it was destroyed too bad.”
Abrams: “These kind of pursuits can always be a bit dangerous for the officers involved. James: “Absolutely; there’s a lot going on. You have a balancing act; you want to apprehend the suspect, but at the same time, you want to make sure you’re safe as well as the public is safe. So sometimes there’s a little bit of a balancing act there.” Wilson: “You know you’re losing visibility. You know you’re chasing; you’re going at high speeds. Anything can happen…” Abrams: “And the good news is they were able to get back into the right lane of traffic there, because for a moment, I don’t think they even realized that there was a vehicle coming the other way as it was happening.”
James comments on the successful stop-sticks deployment: “Didn’t expect that guy to come back like that… people running from us, there’s no regard for safety, so I’m glad he didn’t run into the patrol car…As soon as [they run over the tires, you can hear the tire deflation system working as the vehicle drives off.”
Abrams: “So this guy, you heard them say the name Walter there, this is actually Walter Brown. This is the guy last week, who they were searching for, who fled from a different vehicle. And we were watching as they searched at night. They found a couple of items; they couldn’t find him. And now they found him in a different stolen vehicle, and this time they caught him. And I think that there is one lesson here, we were all talking about it, you can’t hid from the K9. And you got to follow the nose of the K9…”
James: “When he first walked by, you could tell the K9 wasn’t interested in continuing. He was interested in going back to that blind…” Wilson: “Running from the cops, and then here it is, you got the same guy, ‘frequent flyer,’ running again, and finally you’re gonna get caught.”
The driver claims he is in some sort of distress. Abrams asks, “you see lots of complaints, right?,” which prompts James to remark that “a minute ago, this guy was running from the police, high-speed chase, he was a track star when he got out of the car. Now all of a sudden, he’s allergic to stainless steel. We see that a lot. Sometimes, it’s a ploy to run or they play like they want to go to the hospital, things like that, but I’m glad they got him in custody safely.” Wilson: “What they’ll do is they’ll get EMS to get him checked out just to make sure, because he’s in our custody, and get him on to the jail.” James: “Things like this — sometimes before you drop them off in jail, the jail wants them medically cleared, and everything like that. So get him quickly medically checked out, and then off to jail he should go.”
Abrams: “And again, it is worth point out again, that this is the second weekend in a row where this guy has fled from the authorities in a stolen vehicle. And the first time, he actually got away. So you can understand why maybe they’re not gonna be that trusting, and say ‘oh, yeah, sure, whatever you need, sir.’
“You heard him mention, a moment ago, you heard Sgt. Tyler Clark say this, that the cars got beat up a little bit. And part of the reason that happened was they hit this sort of — they got dusted out, right? — you see all of the dust coming from the car in front. And as a result, they didn’t see exactly what was in front of them. That is what they hit.” James: “A sewer, like a manhole cover.” Abrams; “This is a quite a scene that we have been watching, and quite a series of events, starting last week, and continuing into now, followed by this intense pursuit.”
- Fullerton, Calif. — Cops respond to a woman who says a burglar has entered her home. Multiple officers clear the house; no intruder found. James: “I love [the formation]. They have plenty of resources here. I see rifles out; I see handguns out, tazers; they have lethal and less-lethal options. Obviously, they have have the K9 out. Before they entered the residence, I also heard someone mentioning the layout of the inside of the home. So when you go inside of the home, people already know there is a room to the left, room to the right. They really did a good job in setting that up.” Wilson: “They’re being tactical about it, which is good, because they know exactly where everyone is gonna be so there’s no crossfire…and again, we also know doing that doing what they’re doing, and doing it strategically, going from room to room, clearing it, they have time. Time is on their side to be able to find these individuals if anyone is in that home.”
- Nye County, Nev. — Deputies respond to possible burglary in an apartment.
- Fullerton, Calif. (pre-recorded segment) — Cpl. Alexa Elkabarra and colleagues respond to an alleged domestic incident. There is an allegedly “be nice” rather than a physical restraining order allegedly on file. Cops arrest a male who insists “I didn’t do nothing” for alleged domestic violence, false imprisonment, and violation of the restraining order. Abrams asks James if he’s ever heard of a “be nice” restraining order. James: “Not in those terms. In our county, we have a ‘no violent contact’ order, which basically means you can have contact, but you need to be nice and have no violent contact, but I think I’m gonna take that back to the county and start using it.”
- Volusia County, Fla. — OPL broadcasts a video montage of some of Dep. James’ greatest moments.
- Daytona Beach, Fla. — Det. Selina Puentes, Ofr. Brandon Ramirez, and other cops pursue a fleeing vehicle that apparently fled from an attempted traffic stop over a window-tint infraction. Stop sticks successfully deployed. When Abrams mentions that stop sticks “can be dangerous,” James agrees: “Very, because when these people are running from us, they have no regard for anything else. They will run you over, they go through red slights, so you really have to be very, very careful.” On a tip from a citizen, cops locate the vehicle in question parked at an apartment complex. Puentes: “This is 100 percent the car. You can tell by the tires. We’re gonna search the car real quick. Make sure there’s no kind of firearms or anything like that for the K9 who’s gonna be…tracking for us. We’re also gonna try to look for some IDs to identify the driver…so far, we got an empty holster for a firearm, so they might have a firearm on them.” Abrams: “Stop sticks — they work…” James: “They do. Once we hit them, and the tire goes flat…it gets pretty destroyed down there. Sometimes it messes up the whole wheelwell of the car.”
- Toledo, Ohio — Multiple cops respond to report of a burglary in progress and search for suspect in nearby woods by following a trail of blood. Broken car windshield also noted. Det. Rob Tyburski: “So we got here originally — the guy was breaking windows out of cars, I guess. He’s apparently injured. We’re finding blood trails down in the wood line there. But they found that the trail just kind of ends, and we’re not sure if he doubled back into the house or kept going. So I think we’re gonna try to get in the house possibly, just to verify that he’s not there, and then we’ll just kind of develop a plan from there, see if we can pick him back up.”
- Fullerton, Calif. (pre-recorded segment) — Traffic stop. Abrams: “Driver gave Officer Robert Murray a pretty wild excuse for why he was speeding; turned out, though, he was ‘full of crap.'” Murray: “So right now we’re just waiting for the records check to come back…kind of an unusual car stop right now. The driver told me that he defecated in his pants…he was telling the truth. As long as everything ‘s good and checks out , we’ll get him out of here. I think he’s had enough for one night.” Motorist released with warning so that he can “head home and take care of your business,” Murray says. Abrams quips that “The officer there, just doing their ‘duty.'” James: “That’s a crappy situation.” Wilson: “We get all kinds of distraction techniques and excuses and so forth, but this guy literally dropped ‘the bomb’ on the officer.”
- Richland County, S.C. — Traffic stop by Master Dep. Braylyn Salmond at a gas station apparently near the Obama convenience store which is an allegedly sketchy area known for “guns, drugs, prostitution,” according to Salmond. He mentions to the older man that “he’s just checking to make sure everything is all right,” and that it’s “not the best place to just hang out.” Voluntary car search. The motorist, who had a valid driver’s license, is released with no charges.
- Fullerton, Calif. — Cpls. Brandon Ramek and Elkabarra detain four males in front of a residence.
- Richland County, S.C. — Deputies respond to report of someone who has allegedly barricaded himself in a home and is possibly suicidal. During the investigation, they detain a man outside the home who is later released with no charges.
- Volusia County, Fla. — Traffic stop for reckless driving. Dep. Brady Bergeron claims that he smells “a strong odor of alcohol” on the driver, and that “he’s unsteady; he’s slurring his words, so he’s obviously showing some signs of impairment.” Field sobriety testing. Abrams: “It doesn’t seem like this going all that well.” James: “This is going very poor for poor for him. I mean, he seems completely hammered.” The motorist is arrested for alleged DUI.
James, who is a DUI instructor at the police academy, explains that “by nature, law enforcement is a reactive profession. Something has happened. We are called, and we’re responding to something that’s already occurred. My passion with DUIs is that it gives us a chance to being [pro-active]. Because Deputy Bergeron is almost certainly gonna take this guy into custody the way it looks, somebody down the road, life isn’t gonna get impacted. Their car doesn’t get damaged, their property doesn’t get damaged, no loss of life…”
- Daytona Beach, Fla. — Det. Puentes provide backup on a foot pursuit of a subject who is subsequently taken into custody by Det. Noah Galbreath. Puentes to suspect: “You ran from the police, and you’re rushing us. That’s nice.” Puentes adds that “we’re just backtracking to make sure he didn’t throw a gun or any narcotics like that. He had a bunch of cash in his pocket. He’s pretending he’s having an asthma attack or having an asthma attack. I mean, if you have asthma, you probably shouldn’t be running from the police…”
- Volusia County, Fla. — In studio, Dep. James answers a few viewer questions, including revealing that he previously worked as a financial advisor, and “the transition was very difficult” financially, including that after graduating the police academy and passing the state certification exam, nine different police agencies rejected his application before he got his first law enforcement job. He also said that he doesn’t care if people think his style it too abrasive. “I represent the victims, the people that are being victimized, the people that are having their lives impacted by a criminal…my allegiance lies with them, not the person who is victimizing them.”
- Fullerton, Calif. — A man, age 61, who is allegedly either on parole or probation is detained at a gas station. Caption: “Probation check.” He appears to inform officers that he allegedly has some meth on his person in a sock. He also claims that he’s been snorting meth since age five. Abrams: “If that’s true, that’s a long life of meth.”
- Nye County, Nev. — Traffic stop by Dep. Nicholas Huggins on a truck with no license plate. The driver informs the deputy that the plate was stolen twice. The vehicle has provocative window stickers. Abrams: “‘Lovely’ sentiments offered in those bumper stickers.”
- Daytona Beach, Fla. — Officers search for suspect who fled on foot. They set up a perimeter and also try to obtain a handprint from a vehicle. James: “A lot of times when we’re trying to lift latent prints, if there is any condensation on the vehicle, it’s a really bad surface for collecting prints, you get a little hairdryer or something, dry the vehicle out, and then you can collect the latent print. Catch him later.” Puentes: “He’s gonna put some tape on it, take it off, and put it on a piece of paper…” Abrams: “Real CSI stuff going on here.”
- Crime of the Night — Dayton, Ohio.
- Richland County, Nev. — Master Dep. Salmond responds to what Abrams describes as “a literal cat fight between neighbors.” He mediates the situation. Caption: “Feline released, no charges.”
- Wanted Update (Kansas City Chiefs superfan arrested) and new Wanted segment (Atlanta, Ga.).
- Volusia County, Fla. — Dep. Meshelle Naylor makes traffic stop on vehicle because the license connected to the vehicle owner is suspended. It turns out that person with the suspended license is the passenger. Dep. Naylor advises driver that she will just quickly double-check to make sure his license is valid and then send them on their way. Abrams: “Nice to see occasionally people doing the right thing, right? The person whose license is suspended actually is in the passenger seat.”
- Nye County, Nev. (pre-recorded segment) — Abrams: “We’ve all heard of people getting in trouble for laundering money, but…a Nye County woman found herself in trouble reportedly for just plain laundering.” Sgt. Joe Marshall makes contact with “kind of an erratic” woman who was allegedly “wandering through people’s [yards], folding clothes, putting them on people’s doors…,” and allegedly trying to get into a particular house. After speaking with a homeowner on the phone who says he doesn’t know her, Sgt. Marshall advises the woman that she is formally trespassed from that address and is subject to arrest if she returns there.
- Toledo, Ohio — Officers respond to a head-on accident at an intersection. One of the vehicles has serious front-end damage. Abrams: “Yikes. That does not look good.”
- Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — Ofr. Jimmy Verdekal responds to a noise complaint and asks the homeowner to turn down the music a bit.
- Nye County, Nev. — Traffic stop on car with a large chair on the roof. Dep. Huggins to driver: “The reason I stopped you is this doesn’t appear to be too secure to me up here on top of your vehicle.”
