Live PD, A&E’s highest-rated present, is canceled on the cable community. The controversial police actuality present’s cancellation comes simply someday after Paramount canceled Cops, as America continues one other week of anti-police brutality protests within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide on Could 25.
“This can be a vital time in our nation’s historical past and we have now made the choice to stop manufacturing on Dwell PD. Going ahead, we are going to decide if there’s a clear pathway to inform the tales of each the neighborhood and the law enforcement officials whose function it’s to serve them. And with that, we shall be assembly with neighborhood and civil rights leaders in addition to police departments,” A&E mentioned in an announcement to TV Information.
Dwell PD, which is hosted by ABC Information anchor Dan Abrams and options reside video feeds from police businesses by way of the U.S., is beneath fireplace after admitting it destroyed footage of a person dying in police custody. Javier Ambler, a 40-year-old black man and father of two, was pulled over in March of 2019 for failing to dim his headlines when turning into oncoming site visitors. Physique cam footage from one of many Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies concerned within the arrest confirmed Ambler explaining he had congestive coronary heart failure and pleading for mercy earlier than he was shocked for a last time with a taser, in response to the Austin-American Statesman, which obtained the physique cam video. The incident was filmed by Dwell PD producers who had been gathering footage whereas the present was on hiatus, however the footage has been destroyed and cannot be handed over to investigators, present reps informed the Statesman.
Abrams posted a statement on Twitter saying that neither the Austin Police Division, which performed an investigation of the incident, nor the district lawyer’s workplace requested the producers for his or her footage or for an interview. “As is the case with all footage taken by Dwell PD producers, we now not retained the unaired footage after studying that the investigation was concluded,” he wrote. “As with all calls we comply with, we aren’t there to be an arm of the police or regulation enforcement however relatively to chronicle what they do and air a few of that footage, and our polices had been in place to keep away from having footage utilized by regulation enforcement in opposition to non-public residents.”
No expenses have been filed within the incident, however the Statesman stories that Travis County District Lawyer Margaret Moore, now tasked with investigating Ambler’s demise, plans to take the case to a grand jury. A&E didn’t reply to TV Information’s request for remark in regards to the footage.
Dwell PD was initially pulled from the community’s schedule final week “out of respect for the households of George Floyd and others who’ve misplaced their lives,” the network said. The sequence was the No. 1 rated present on primary cable, having risen to the highest spot throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as sports activities and different programming has been off the air.
Deadline was the primary to report the information of Dwell PD‘s cancellation.
Dan Abrams, Sean “Sticks” Larkin, Tom Morris Jr., Dwell PD