When a real TV show “Real Crime” “First 48” comes to the city, police and sheriff departments that work with it do not receive financial compensation from the show. The advantages are more intangible: the chance to demonstrate and celebrate the work of the department officers, the ability to improve their image in the eyes of the public and some recognition of the victims that can be seen in the media.
But two decades has been shot in US cities in US cities, also left a difficult trace of problems and municipal regret, According to propublica. Detectives acknowledged that they shot the scenes when the cameras swept. Key developments in investigations are sometimes not shown or mentioned. The episodes sometimes aired before the defendants went to court, publicly revealing the information that potential jury and witnesses usually never heard in court.
Moreover, many law enforcement agencies and legal experts are wondering whether it changes the simple presence of cameras, how the police behave, twisting the truth for the only purpose of a more attractive story.
“I don’t think anyone denies that having a camera when you are making a behavior,” said Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm in 2010, after a 7-year-old girl was shot dead during a Detroit style raid. “I think it’s not good practice.”
Disputes, such as the Detroit, have pushed at least one and a half dozen cities to cancel contracts or stop their relationship with the “first 48”. Dallas; Memphis, Tennessee; Mobile, alabama; Minneapolis; And the new Orleans, like other cities, stopped working with the show, and some municipal officials caused criticism on the program when they broke the connections with him.
It was not found that the show was engaged in violation of the rules.
“I do not want the investigator to spend even a minute, which essentially works on the camera instead of the elements of the case,” said police chief Miami Jorge Colin in 2018, five years after the city finished connection with the program. “It’s not worth a compromise.”
Representatives of the company Kirkstall Road Enterprises, ITV America and ITV, companies that produce the program did not answer the requests or the detailed list of questions. A & E, the television network, which aired “the first 48”, refused to comment through the press secretary.
The last seasons of the shows were filmed in Tols, Oklahoma; Gwyneth County, Georgia; and mobile.
Once the problems arise, these once enthusiastic and mutually beneficial partnerships between the police and realistic television can turn into dirty breaks. It can also take the time to make the problems associated with the “first 48” that came into the world, sometimes years after the episodes came on the air, and only after the cases have made their way through the courts.
Here’s how it was played in three cities.
Mobile
In 2022, the judge tried to help lawyers determine whether the “first 48” fans were in the jury. The accused in this case was presented on the episode of the show, which aired his trial, and lawyer Chase Darman was concerned about supporters to find his client guilty.
“This is an extremely popular show, especially in the south,” Dearman said in an interview.
The judge instructed the commissioned future juror to act when they were ordinary viewers as “60 minutes”, “20/20” and “real crimes”. Three juries, then two, then two jurors, again, respectively. Then he mentioned “The first 48.” Fourteen potential jurors rose to their feet.
“It’s a more popular show. Good,” the judge said, the trial said.
Darman said that the refusal of the show, that “all the suspects are allegedly innocent, not yet proven guilty,” it is not enough to fight human prejudice. “What do you think they will do these jurors when they go home at night?” said Darman. “They’re going to look and see it.”
Dearman’s client was justified after two parsing.
The Domingo Soto’s mobile phone was also concerned when one of his clients was shown at an exhibition before the trial. “The police decided the version of the truth from the beginning and sold it” first 48 “and, more importantly, sold it,” he said.
The press secretary of the mobile police department refused to comment on his participation in the “first 48”, as well as on the affairs of the men represented by Darman and Soto.
In 2023, the city did not extend the contract with the “first 48”. James Barber, former police chief and former public security director in the mobile phone, and now the chief of staff of the mayor, said the show helped to enlighten the positive light on the “dedication and professionalism of our investigators”.
“However, our main attention is always public security, and we have seen that pre-trial coverage of criminal cases has led to court proceedings and legal problems in other jurisdictions,” Barber said. “We did not want our work with any media partner to influence any criminal case or created legal problems for the city.”
Dolos
Sometimes small stories touch the “first 48” episodes, perhaps insignificant for the viewer, have great consequences in real life. In 2013, the man nicknamed Arcan Jones was interviewed by the Dallas police about the murder of a drug dealer, an investigation, lifted in an episode “Safe House”.
Jones said Propublica that he did not represent he was shot at the exhibition and not sign the consent form to appear in the program. He said he only learned that he was at the “first 48” after the episode. Despite the efforts of the show to hide his identity by blurring his face and changing his voice, Jones said that it was obvious to the people who knew him in the episode.
“I start getting all kinds of threats. They start coming to my mother’s house,” Jones said.
According to Jones, the worst thing was that the episode was edited in such a way that he became a police informant; Jones denied that he voluntarily talked to the police or that he was an informant. Threats to his life became so bad, he said that he had to stop working. The court records show that Dallas police have charged with revenge against several people for alleged threats to Jones and his family. According to Jones, these accusations have never led to a conviction.
In 2015, Jones was shot several times in the hairdresser as a result of an attack, which also injured an accidental observer. He was hit in his chest and thighs, and he said he had a metal core in his thigh. A person who shot Jones found himself guilty of exacerbating the deadly weapon attack and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.
According to the Dallas police reports, the shooting was motivated by Jones’s appearance on “first 48”. Jones filed a lawsuit against Kirkstall Road Enterprises, saying he acted carelessly. In their response, the lawyers at the exhibition mean that Jones’s criminal history could become the root cause of the attack and that his “only claim on negligence was prohibited by the first correction.”
The judge dismissed the case and the Court of Appeal supported the decision.
“If we could put the burden to prevent the appearance of unforeseen Jones injuries in this mass media, the result would be a significant violation of its constitutional defense in the report on issues that are of public interest,” the court court wrote.
A & E removed the Johns episode from its catalog. However, in a decade after the shooting, Jones said his reputation never resumed. He said he was attacked and robbed, and last year his truck was killed. He sent photos of the truck to the propublica reporter.
“You look at this only for a good TV. You know, you don’t care about innocent lives,” Jones said about the show. “My life in a situation, for example, I’m dead. That’s how I see it. I’m dead. Because I can’t live life.”
The Dallas Police Department refused to comment. In 2021 Governor Texas Greg Fra signed a law on the law This prohibits realistic television shows from law enforcement. The law was named after Javier Ambler II, a Texas man who died after a high -speed pursuit and a violent arrest captured by a camera crew for “Live PD”, another realistic A&E series. “Live PD” was canceled in 2020.
Metropa
The immediate offensive of one of the worst massacres in the history of the Memphis was captured by the manufacturers “The first 48” for the episode called “Lens -Strait”. On March 3, 2008, police discovered the bodies of four adults and two children in a small brick house. The other three children have undergone the attack with serious injuries.
The investigation approached Jesse Dotson, a brother of one of the victims who confessed to the camera that he had committed the killings after a drunken combat. The episode was aired before the trial, concerned about Bill Gibbons, concerned by the district prosecutor, raised in a letter to the police chief.
“A number of judges expressed concern about the prosecutor’s office in this position that the events of the expected criminal case are edited, out of the sequence, and then aired at the national level,” Gibbons wrote. “I hope you will not continue the contract of the Memphis Police Department with the” first 48 ” – a show that is clearly on the air of potential evidence and information on criminal cases.”
The judge in the case did not allow the juror to watch the edited personnel about Dotson’s recognition at the “first 48” because the show representatives said they had already destroyed the raw materials. Dotson was convicted and sentenced to death. The city of Memphis ended its relationship with the “first 48” in 2008.
But the show threw a long shadow over the case. In January 2024, Kelly Henry, a federal public defender who represented Dotson, submitted a dozens of questions with the original investigation, including Dotson, which “neurocognitive disorders”, there was a pressure on recognition, although he refused. She said she believed that the “first 48” influenced the detectives to exert this pressure before the FBI was going to take on the case and that Dotson is innocent.
The Memphis Police Department did not respond to a comment request. Dotson’s appeal is in consideration.
“It is really crystallized for me, how dangerous these people are, and the pressure they exert in cities, prosecutors and police departments to come up with history,” Henry said. “Not necessarily what they are angry, but their objectivity is disturbed by the presence of these cameras.”
Mariam Elba have made research.
