Did “Live PD” Let Police Censor Footage?
As police work goes, the call about a suspected shoplifter was mundane. The wrinkle? A crew for the popular A&E show “Live PD” was filming from inside the squad car dispatched to the scene.
Lights and sirens blare on the video footage as the Warwick, Rhode Island, police officer drives to the shopping strip. Soon, he finds the suspect: A man skateboarding out of a supermarket, pushing a full cart.
“I’m out with him,” the officer says. He revs the car’s engine. It lurches forward, swerving behind the man. Then there’s the ding of a door opening and a loud thump—the officer appears to whack the skateboarder with the open door of his cruiser.
But the show’s millions of viewers never saw the chase, filmed in 2018. A supervising officer—whom the show allowed to review the tape—asked producers to pull the plug on the scene before it aired, records show. In an email to show staffers, the supervisor explained that the officer’s actions violated the police department’s policy.
“The car vs. skateboard takedown is way outside of our policy and we would be opening up some scrutiny issues with the city and our insurance company if they were to see this,” Capt. Ryan Sornberger wrote. “I get that it’s exciting to watch, but it’s a little to[o] ‘wild west’ for how we do things in this department.”
"Live PD" recorded a police officer seemingly hitting a suspected shoplifter with his car’s door during a chase. The Marshall Project blurred faces to protect people's identities and edited the video for length, but the sequence of scenes as the show had them
