By Jim Shay
Connecticut Post
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — On Friday night, Bridgeport police officers will be on patrol to keep their city safe; it’s something that happens 24-7.
But this Friday night, the work of some of its officers will be shown on live television before a national audience in a new A&E show called “Live PD.”
Bridgeport police and five other law enforcement officers from Walton County in Florida’s Panhandle; Richland County, South Carolina; Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Arizona Department of Public Safety; and the Utah Highway Patrol will be seen on live cameras.
Over the course of eight weeks, dash cams along with fixed rig and handheld cameras, will capture the work of a varied mix of urban and rural police forces around the country on a typical Friday night. In-studio host, ABC’s Dan Abrams, alongside Dallas Police Department Detectives Rich Emberlin and Kevin Jackson will guide viewers through the night, giving insight to what audiences are seeing in real time, bouncing minute-by-minute between the featured police departments and offering an inside look at each live incident.
The show premieres at 9 p.m. on Friday on A&E, the network which is owned by Hearst and Disney. Hearst also owns Hearst Connecticut Media.
“As the debate over the policing of America continues to be a part of the daily conversation across the nation, A&E will offer viewers unfettered and unfiltered live access inside the country’s busiest police forces and the communities they patrol in the new documentary series Live PD,” A&E said in announcing the new series.
“We’ll be watching police activity when it happens,” Abrams said.
A control room with technicians and producers will monitor 30 live cameras from the six police departments. “The producers will make the decisions of where do we go, when do we go and why to we go” to a live camera in one of those departments. “We are going to have an expert, a producer who is following to follow that particular police department to say, here’s what’s happening. monitoring very closely and carefully.”
“Maybe most important,” Abrams said, “we don’t know what the beginning and end of the show is because it’s live. It hasn’t happened, we don’t know what’s going to happen. You the viewer are going to learn the same time we do.”
Yet, the Hollywood Reporter says Live PD will air on a delay “due to the potential of capturing intense and possibly disturbing content.”
Before the show airs, there have been rehearsals with Bridgeport and other police departments to prepare for the “live” television series.