Dan Abrams wishes Live PD didn't destroy its footage of Javier Ambler's death while in police custody

Deadline

The Live PD host wrote on his Law and Crime website that the show would never have aired Ambler's death because "A&E standards and practices didn’t permit us to show a fatality on the show.” He added that footage of Ambler's death was destroyed because "we did not become an arm of law enforcement attempting to use Live PD videos to prosecute citizens seen on the footage.” Abrams stressed that the point of the show was “to chronicle law enforcement, not to assist the police as a video repository for prosecuting alleged criminals.” In retrospect, Abrams wrote he now wishes “the tape had been preserved and the policy should have had an exception for this sort of situation...Many of us were advocating for a change in the policy before the show was canceled. It would have been very difficult to watch but in an ongoing effort to show all sides of policing I wish this had been aired just as we had shown many other controversial moments that led to criticism of, and appreciation for, police."