St. Louis police are weighing a reality television show, while the city's mayor has warned of legal risks. The proposed production, from Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, has prompted concerns about the consequences of filming police activity.
The board didn't reject the pitch outright. Instead, members tabled the proposal until their next meeting, according to STLtoday.com. The proposed show would bring police activity to television.
The proposed show would focus on St. Louis police work.
No Payment, but Producers Would Control the Footage
Questions About Payment and Footage The proposed arrangement leaves open questions about payment and control of footage.
The mayor has warned that the proposal could carry legal risks.
A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling limits officers from bringing media into a home during police activity.
A Genre With a Troubled Recent History
Cops premiered in 1989, and Live P.D. later followed a similar formula. Both shows were canceled amid protests over George Floyd's death in police custody in 2020, according to cnbc.com.
The cancellation followed revelations that Live P.D. had captured the death of a man in custody in Texas under circumstances similar to Floyd's killing in Minneapolis. That man, Javier Ambler, died in custody after deputies repeatedly used stun guns on him following a 2019 traffic stop, and footage of the encounter never aired and was destroyed, per the same cnbc.com report.
Research cited by the Los Angeles Times found that Cops depicted drug crime far more often than it actually occurs — 35% of on-screen crime versus 13% in FBI statistics — while violent crime made up 7% of crime depicted on the show, compared with 4% in real life. The paper noted that producers depend on police cooperation to make these shows, making critical portrayals of departments unlikely.
A Tennessee Lawsuit and a St. Louis Precedent
More recent cases underscore the mayor's concerns. A Tennessee grandmother sued Knox County, its sheriff and four deputies, alleging her 2025 arrest was staged for On Patrol: Live and involved excessive force, according to CNN. The Knox County sheriff's office had already stopped participating in the show about a week before the lawsuit was filed. CNN also reported that in 2024, a Texas county agreed to pay $2.5 million to a resident who alleged a sheriff's office staged his son's arrest for broadcast on Live PD.
St. Louis itself has run this experiment before, just with a different department. The St. Louis Fire Department entered an agreement with Big Fish Entertainment to allow filming around emergency calls and crises, producing a show called Live Rescue, as detailed by stlpr.org. That arrangement, produced by Big Fish Entertainment, came with built-in safeguards: filming inside a home or in the back of a medic unit with a patient required signed consent, and the fire chief said the department could kill footage even after someone agreed to be filmed. Still, the fire department received no money for its participation.
The police board is expected to revisit the proposal when it reconvenes.
