A&E True Crime asked Live PD analyst Tom Morris Jr. to look back on the past year and tell us about the show moments most memorable to him. From a dog in a bar to an intense takedown, here are his Top 5.
5. In Warwick, Rhode Island, Sgt. John Curley and other officers pursued a young man, and the chase ended in a foot pursuit with the suspect being tased. As Sgt. Curley and another officer walked the handcuffed suspect to the squad car, he blurted out something to the effect of, “You tased me. I’ve never been tased before!” To which Sgt. Curley replied in his unique, almost deadpan way, “Well, you can scratch that off your bucket list.” That’s one of the best lines uttered on Live PD in 2018.
4. A dog walks into a bar… Sounds like the start of a joke, right? Well we saw a dog do just that in Nye County, Nevada over the summer. A dog literally walked into a bar. It didn’t order a drink, but bar patrons gave it some food and water and called the Sheriff’s Office. One of the patrons offered to take care of the pooch if deputies couldn’t reunite it with its owner.
3. As we take Live PD viewers around the country on Friday and Saturday nights, we see a lot of animals on the show. Fans see me taking notes during the show and one of the things I am keeping track of during every episode is what specific animals popped up on the air during some law-enforcement encounter.
Here’s a short list of what I’ve noted in 2018: a turtle on a leash in Nevada, a barn owl swooping down out of the night sky in Texas, a lost potbelly pig, a wandering calf in Florida, Officer Mercado chasing a runaway pony in Mission, Texas and the woman our viewers dubbed the “Snake Lady” in Missouri who made several appearances on the show with her white boa constrictor—until somebody stole her serpent! Don’t know if she got it back. Cats, those notoriously finnicky little creatures, are often just calmly popping up in Live PD camera shots watching people—sometimes even their owners—get arrested. Those felines never show ANY emotion!
2. Usually, Officer Andrea Zendejas of the El Paso (Texas) Police Department is able to use her calm demeanor and people skills to diffuse potentially volatile situations. But when she responded to a call of a man attacking people with a hammer at a fast food restaurant, talking the suspect into compliance wasn’t an option.
Officer Zendejas and other responding officers had to wrestle and tase the violent suspect in the kitchen of the restaurant to take him into custody. They would later find out the man was also a suspect in a homicide and was on parole. It was an intense incident that demonstrates how quickly an officer’s day can go from zero to 100 on the danger scale with the next call for service.
1. For me, personally, one of the highlights of 2018 was the partnership between Live PD, A&E Network and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Each week we profile missing children and our Live PD Nation viewers have helped recover and reunite missing and abducted at-risk children with their families. As soon as they air, the missing-children segments are instantly posted—and then re-posted by Live PD fans on multiple social media sites—to spread the word about these critical cases. All of us who work on the show see using this small portion of air time as one of the most important things we can do to help investigators. These segments generate tips from the public to help close these often heart-breaking and mysterious cases. Using the power of television to change lives is a unique way to help both victims of crime and the investigators who are working to get justice for those victims.
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