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 with co-anchor Curtis Wilson (Richland County, S.C., deputy sheriff), along with the often-snarky or playful social media reaction, follows.

Ofr. Ryan Tillman of the Chino, Calif., PD., joins the duo as this weekend’s guest studio analyst.

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

Please review this important DISCLAIMER.

On Patrol: Live Summary for March 1, 2024 (#OPL Episode 02-55)

  • Hazen, Ark. — Chief Bradley Taylor, Sgt. Clayton Dillion, and other units attempt to serve felony warrants at a residence. One man at the house is yelling, and the chief tries to calm him down. Chief Taylor explains that “the lady we were looking for is not here,” but at least one man at the location allegedly have felony warrants. “When we walked in, there was meth pipes on the table, a little bit of dope, marijuana, meth…” Chief Taylor says that cops will confiscate the evidence and draw up an affidavit for a warrant, but he seems to suggest that the males won’t be taken into custody at this time because the jail is full. Officers will continue to look for the female. About two hours later, Chief Taylor returns to the location where he interacts with a bickering man and a woman and advises them to try to get along. Abrams: “Peaches and burgers don’t apparently go together.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Sgt. Mike Bryant and other units respond to a scene where a car wound up in the river. Sgt. Bryant questions a man (“just take me to jail”) and a woman who were allegedly in the car. Dan Abrams: “They’re trying to piece together the various stories which don’t seem to quite fit, at least not yet.” The duo is subsequently released with no charges (see below).

Sgt. Bryant summary: “So at the end, the registered owner of the vehicle is actually here in the city. He knows that they’re driving the car. The two witnesses that we had that came by positively identified them leaving the vehicle. They couldn’t tell whether they were getting out of the driver’s seat or the passenger’s seat. By the time they got over to the embankment and looked, they were just in the water, out of the car. So we can’t even charge them with leaving the scene of a crash and property damage, and the owner didn’t want to prosecute. So at the end, all’s fair in love and glory. You crash a car into the water; you kind of get away with it. Your buddy has to eat the bill. So…he was saying, ‘take me to jail, take me to jail.’ We aren’t the kind of cops who just take people to jail because they say so. We have to have probable cause that they actually committed a crime to do that…so they’re getting released, and hopefully they can… enjoy Bike Week like normal citizens.” Abrams: “That couldn’t have been an easy call with the owner of the car. ‘Hey, I got some bad news — it was an accident and actually the car’s in the river.'”

  • Berkeley County, S.C. –Deputies attempt to serve a failure to appear warrant and interact an irate bystander, possibly a relative of the subject, at the scene. Abrams: “A warrant is a warrant is a warrant.”
  • Indian River County, Fla. — Dep. Jon Lozada responds to a disturbance at Walgreens and makes contact with a subject outside the store; heavy bleeping. Dep. Lozada sends the man on his way and warns him not to “cause any more problems.”
  • Indian River County, Fla. — Dep. Lozada is re-dispatched to a burglary at a nearby GameStop store which allegedly turns out to be a smash-and-grab robbery using a rock. Sgt. Chris Lester also participates in the foot search for a suspect. “So…we’ve gotten information that the subject walked in. He was armed with a large rock, told the clerk ‘don’t move, don’t move,’ smashed the glass case, stole a bunch of video game consoles, took off running. So at this point, we are treating this as a robbery. So our K9 dog Knox, he’s gonna deploy on a track, and then we’ll get our helicopter to start scanning the area, see if we can find him.” OPL airs store surveillance footage of the incident. Officers suspect the alleged robber may have fled in a vehicle. The investigation is turned over to detectives.

Abrams: “There is a difference between a robbery and a burglary.” Ofr. Tillman: “Absolutely. With a burglary, you’re dealing with a property crime at one point, but now once you know that there’s a rock involved, and that there is a threat with force or fear, I think now you can upgrade that to a robbery charge if they are able to find this guy and substantiate those allegations.” Abrams: “Yeah, so a big difference legally between those two and that’s why the officers there are focusing a lot on that distinction.”

  • Daytona Beach Fla. — Cops detain one subject outside an apartment complex who fled on a motorcycle. Det. Noah Galbreath and colleagues, along with a helicopter unit, search in a wooded rea for another subject who is subsequently detained.
  • Berkeley County, S.C. — Cp. Cameron Blackmon and Dep. Hunter Rogers respond to an alleged disturbance at a bar. A woman, who is trespassed from the location claims that another woman struck her first in the altercation. “I didn’t do nothing.” Nobody wants to press charges according to the corporal. Amidst heavy bleeping, the woman has an animated, long-winded conversation with the officers while they stand by to wait for her friend to arrive to drive her home. Reacting to the downpour, Abrams quips that it looks “like movie rain.”
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Sgt. Bryant patrols the downtown area during Bike Week.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. (pre-recorded segment) — Officers converge on a house upon a report of a woman allegedly being held against her will at gunpoint. The woman is rescued. Cops detain a man who exited the house from the front door.

Lt. Richie Maher summary: “The call came out as an open line 9-1-1 call; that’s where someone calls 9-1-1 and can’t speak to us, but has the phone open in the house. Officers that were in the back heard a female screaming for her life. At that point, we decided we can’t sit back and wait; we need to dominate the situation, so we breached a couple of windows to gain dominance over the house. That way we had the tactical advantage looking into the house. Eventually she was able to break free, thank God, She had what appeared to be a gunshot wound to her head and possibly another one to her foot and another one somewhere on her body. Eventually he came to the proper realization, which is the only way out of this was to surrender to us…was taken into custody. My patrol guys, I’m going to pull them all together a little bit, tell them they did a phenomenal job. All in all, she’s gonna live to see tomorrow. He gets to live to see a judge, and none of us got hurt.”

Abrams: “The woman was grazed in the head, it turns out, by a bullet. Has since recovered from that injury. The guy was charged with attempted murder, sexual battery, and false imprisonment. Officer Ryan Tillman, talk to me about the approach that they did there to the house.” Ofr. Tillman: “That’s an extremely dangerous situation, because you know somebody’s actively being harmed. And then you get confirmation that she’s shot. So, the good thing is once she’s out, what you could do is slow it down a little bit and do a surrounding call-out, but ultimately you have to get this guy to come out. And you still don’t know if there’s anybody else inside. So, it’s an extremely volatile situation.” Abrams: “And Curtis, she did the right thing here.” Dep. Wilson: “Absolutely. She calls 911 here and puts the phone down. That open 911 was very important to the dispatcher because she was able, or he was able, to hear every single detail that was going on and pass that along to the responding officers. That way they know what they’re dealing with when they get there.” Abrams: “And they knew exactly how dangerous it was.”

  • Hazen, Ark. — After a traffic stop on a truck, Chief Taylor gives a warning to the driver (who has a dog in the back seat) for an expired tag.
  • Lee County, Fla. — Dep. Ryan Lineberger responds to an alleged disturbance between a man on a bike and a woman and another man over a cell phone and tries to sort out the situation. He tells the bicyclist to move on. Dep. Lineberger: “We were conducting a separate investigation. Was seated in my vehicle. Turned around and saw some people fighting in the street. Came over here and sounded like a verbal argument. One party was claiming that he got slapped. The other party said they…didn’t slap him. The witness that was on scene didn’t observe any slapping, so right now we’re getting everybody separated and on their separate ways and go back to the other investigation we were working on.”
  • Triple Play #1 — Duluth, Ga.
  • Toledo, Ohio — Ofrs. Heather Smith, Austin Bly, and other units detain a man on a report of someone waving a gun. The latter denies having a firearm. Ofr. Smith” Why do you have blood on your pants?” Subject: “That’s a great question. OPL airs surveillance video from inside the bar.

Abrams quips that “I’m confused. He said his name was ‘good citizen.’ And she’s calling him Joshua. I don’t get it. I guess that’s not his real name. But you were making the point, Officer Ryan Tillman, that a lot of babysitting going on here, and that’s part of policing. Ofr. Tillman: “A lot of it, man. You can see — we’ve been going all over the place. Seems like there’s been a lot of alcohol maybe involved in what everybody’s doing tonight. And so it seems like most of our officers tonight are babysitting a lot of these people, just trying figure out ‘where do you live at so you can go home and get sober.'” Abrams: “And Curtis, part of this is gonna be making sure when you’re doing that, you’re handling it in a respectful way, trying to get people to move along and go along with their day, and as long as they’re not to drunk, right?” Dep. Wilson: “And that would be, if you could get the mean drunk, get the drunks like we’ve been seeing, you’d rather get the ones we’ve been seeing, complaint, to the point.” Abrams: “Yeah, the kinder, the kinder gentler drunks.” Tillman: “There’s no telling where you can go, though. It’s like a rollercoaster. One minute they’re nice, the next minute you’re fighting with them.”

Ofr. Bly update about the alleged altercation: “He pulls the gun from his waistband, points it at the victim, and then goes outside, and he obviously stashed it in his vehicle. We’ll get some pictures documented and then some more information from witnesses and victims. We’ll go from there.”

  • Fullerton, Calif. — In addition to making contact with a witness, Cpl. Alexa Elkabbara makes contact with woman who was allegedly involved in a hit-and-run incident. The woman is detained.

Cpl. Elkabbara summary: “So the original call came out as a hit-and-run traffic collision. One of the cars…actually left the scene. This gentleman happened to be on scene when the first accident occurred. So he tried to call police; it just took a little while to get hold of us, I guess. The original victim took off. Once he got hold of us, he followed the vehicle all the way here to [the candy store], where he saw her get out of the vehicle. He was able to ‘put’ her behind the wheel and document, to help us document, that she was the only driver at the time of the collision. And now we’re just doing some follow-up with her. Seems like she has some signs, objective signs and symptoms, of impairment, so we’re gonna make sure that she’s safe to drive. And we’ll take her report, and that’s pretty much it.”

Cpl. Elkabbara update: “So after my partner finished conducting his test, he ultimately determined that she’s gonna be arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence, specifically in the drug category. So she’ll be taken back to the station, and then somebody will come in who’s a drug recognition expert, do a follow-up test to try and figure out what category of drugs she’s under the influence of.”

Abrams: “But…they did not see her driving the car.” Ofr. Tillman: “No, they didn’t see her driving the car, but even though you didn’t see a person driving the car, it’s always good to get a witness. And so that’s why you saw them interviewing the witness earlier, to ‘put’ her behind the wheel, because if they’re suspecting some type of DUI investigation, it’s gonna stand up a lot better in court when they can say, ‘hey, look, we actually saw her driving that vehicle.'” Dep. Wilson: “It was a hit and run originally, but they don’t have a victim. So they can’t charge her with that unless the victim comes forward.” Abrams: “Right, because, again, it was just an eyewitness that they were talking to and not the victim.”

  • Coweta County, Ga. — Dep. Shawn Searels initiates a traffic stop allegedly for no turn signal, no seat belt in use.
  • Toledo, Ohio — Ofrs. Mike Gee and Chris Mulinix make contact with what cops described as a “disorderly” man who appears to have a laceration on his head and also appears to be intoxicated. Heavy bleeping.
  • #AskTillman OPL audience Q&A.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — Sgt. Bryant makes contact with a man in a parking lot sitting between two vans who says he just got off the bus. Bryant: “Me, aggressive? The man is ultimately sent on his way. Abrams: “[Sgt. Bryant] showed some very significant patience there, and the guy is now gonna go on his way.” Sgt. Bryant: “He may be a little bit inappropriate, a little bit nervous around law enforcement, but that’s not crime. We’re gonna allow him to grab his things.” Abrams: “It’s not a crime as he said.”
  • Berkeley County, S.C. (pre-recorded segment) — Cpl. Daniel Lambert and other units conduct a traffic stop for alleged routine infractions. In introducing the segment, Abrams asserts that “a couple of women found themselves behind the eight ball, so to speak.” One of the occupants allegedly was arrested 24 hours previous for drugs. K9 alert on car. Probable cause search; drugs allegedly found. Cpl. Lambert: “So, the conclusion of this, the backseat passenger is gonna go to jail for distribution of cocaine and crack. And the other two ladies will be on their way.”
  • Fullerton, Cal. — Cpl. Elkabbara makes friendly contact with some teens in a park who have a bunny rabbit. “Good hare day?” caption. Ofr. Tillman: “That’s community policing 101 right there.”
  • Indian River County, Fla. — Cpl. James Ooley conducts a traffic stop for speeding; warning only likely.
  • Lee County, Fla. — Deputies respond to some sort of incident between neighbors.
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. — As the episode ends, Sgt. Bryant responds to a motorcycle accident scene. Paramedics summoned. “Just getting down to the brass tacks of the crash here. Apparently this gentleman was stopped at the light of the intersection we just went through. Then this guy came up behind him, crushed him. He’s spewing gas all over the ground. He’s obviously shaken up, but he’s probably a little bit injured…all his friends are witnesses, so we’ll get their statements to make sure it’s all buttoned up nice and tight…we’ll see if he’s in the condition to drive or not…”

On Patrol: Live Summary for March 2, 2024 (#OPL Episode 02-56)

CLICK HERE for the OPL 02-56, March 2, 2024, recap.

Click HERE for information about the pending OPL lawsuit.