Morning Wire - The State Of Law Enforcement & The PR Crisis Facing Police Today

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Law enforcement in America is under intense scrutiny. From anti-ICE protests in major cities to their handling of high-profile cases. Critics say policing is broken. Supporters say officers are facing impossible expectations. In this episode Dan Abrams, host of On Patrol Live and veteran legal analyst, joins us to break down the state of law enforcement today. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2656- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Lean - Get 20% off when you enter code WIRE at https://TakeLean.comQuince - Go to https://Quince.com/WIRE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Law enforcement in the U.S. is facing a barrage of criticism in recent years, whether it be from anti-ice sentiment in Democrat-run cities or the way high-profile cases such as the search for Nancy Guthrie in Arizona have been handled. In this episode, we sit down with Dan Abrams, host of On Patrol Live to discuss the uphill PR battle law enforcement faces and some of the current high-profile cases shaping the national discussion. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. This is a weekend edition. of Morning Wire. This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You've probably heard about those weight loss injections that everyone's been talking about. And for good reason. The results can be pretty incredible.

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If you were noticing my blue sweats today. It is from our sponsor, which also happens to be one of my favorite clothing retailers, Quince. Quince sells high quality, classic clothing and home items made of real materials like cotton and cashmere for extremely affordable prices. So I have this cashmere sweater in at least six colors, and I reach for them all the time. And it's actually a dupe of a $400 dollar sweater from Jenny Kane that I also have and also love. But the Jenny Kane one was $400 and the quince version was 99. And the weight of the knit, the hand feel, the durability. They are pretty much exactly the same. I have not found a difference. That gives you a sense of how much

value you get for your dollar with quince items. I really appreciate that quince makes styles that are very classic and timeless. So they just look and feel a lot more expensive than they are. So if that is appealing to you, I highly recommend you check out quince.com slash wire to receive free shipping and 365-day returns. Also, if you are in Canada, that applies to you, you also get free shipping. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash wire. It really supports this show, and you'll get free shipping and a full year to decide if you like your items. That's quince.com slash wire. Joining us now is Dan Abrams. Dan, thanks for coming on. Happy to do it.

So your show on patrol live, which we're going to talk about, follows various law enforcement agencies around the country, essentially bringing that ride-along experience into people's living rooms. So we wanted to get your thoughts on a few law enforcement-related headlines that are pretty big right now. The first I want to ask you about is the Nancy Guthrie case. We've now entered the third week in that case. And you hear a lot of chatter online about how the Tucson police may have really bungled this. But I want to hear your perspective.

What really stands out to you about this case? Well, look, we don't know yet, right? I mean, remember in the Brian Coburger case, people were saying, oh, the police bungled the case. And then, you know, weeks later, we realized, oh, actually, they knew they figured out exactly who it was. And they were able to use cell phone records and video and match them up and be able to, you know, identify exactly who did it. So it's a little early to start saying, you know, who bungled it, et cetera. But I will say this, there are a number of irregularities with regard to how information has come out, right? And what I hope has not happened is I hope they didn't wait too long to reach out to the FBI.

I hope there's been communication going on between the local officials there and the feds and even the local officials amongst themselves. because that's critical in an investigation like this. You know, look, I think there are a lot of people who are saying, you know, well, why did it take so long, for example, to get the video? You know, look, my understanding is that it wasn't easy, that they literally had to sort of go by hand to go through all of the ring camera, et cetera, to try and find something that hadn't been saved. Typically, should that be able to happen faster?

I don't know without knowing the very, very specifics that haven't been made public about this case. I think that officials in a high-profile case like this are under enormous pressure for answers, right? It's like, you know, why don't we have this yesterday? And typically, I would be saying, give them time, let them figure it out. The difference here is you're talking about a kidnapping, potentially a kidnapping. And so you don't have the time, right? We can't just say, oh, give them the time to investigate, which is what I'm always saying, right? Which is, hey, I know that, you know, you watch Law & Order and the cases get solved in 24 hours,

but real life doesn't often work that way. The problem is when we heard from the beginning that this was a suspected kidnapping, well, then time is of the essence, and then every minute does matter. And so it is legitimate to be pushing law enforcement to say, what do you got? I would ask you your theory of the case, but if you've not thought about it too much, I won't, I won't.

Well, no, it's not that I haven't thought about it. I think about it all the time. In that case, what is your theory of what may have happened to Nancy? I don't know. Look, you know, I don't know. I'm relying on them.

I mean, look, I find it, I always found it hard to believe that an 84-year-old woman was kidnapped and that then there was no legitimate request for ransom. Right? You know, you would think if the idea was to kidnap someone to get something, right? Money, a statement, something that they would ask for it and not send it to TMZ. Right? That any legitimate ransom request would go to the family. Right. And that hasn't happened, which makes me worry that this wasn't a kidnapping. That's my concern. Maybe a robbery gone wrong is the fear here, right? Yeah.

I mean, look, there's a lot of potential scenarios. But, you know, in a case like this, which is, you know, A, so high profile, be so emotionally charged, et cetera, you know, what you don't want to do is start throwing out wild theories, right? Oh, she was smuggled into Mexico. You know, I had someone come on my show and say, well, you were thinking. I said, what is the evidence, even theoretically that she would, well, you know, it's close to the. the border, okay, it's close to the border. What's the actual, like, give me like a little iota of evidence that she may have been smuggled into Mexico, well, you know, just speculation. It's like, wow. Okay, look, I'm glad we, I'm glad we informed the Mexican authorities, right, just in case.

But that doesn't mean that there's any credibility to that. And I think that that sort of context is really important. You noted, you know, the FBI's presence in this case. And there is a lot of times there's sort of a conflict or tension between local authorities and the FBI. At least you perceive that from the outside. Maybe that's not the case always. But there is a lot of scrutiny right now on federal investigators, particularly connected with ICE investigations. And I wanted to get your, I know this is a kind of a thorny topic,

but I wanted to get your perspective on public perception right now of federal law enforcement. How do you see that going, you know, across the country? Look, I think the public is smart enough to be. able to separate out different departments, right, and not necessarily just lump in the FBI with ICE. And I will tell you that, you know, I have long been a supporter of all of our law enforcement, as you know, I host this, you know, this weekly show about law enforcement, and that includes federal law enforcement and includes, and it includes local law enforcement. And that means it includes local sheriff's departments and it includes ICE. But that also doesn't

mean that we can't be critical if we think that there's been something done wrong. And this is why I think it's very important to separate out, you know, the ICE agents who I think the vast majority of them are doing a very difficult job and doing it well from, I think, leadership. It has been issuing orders, which is making it very difficult for ICE to navigate what it is they're supposed to be doing and how they're doing it. And so I think it's very different to be, you know, criticism. look, and by the way, if there's individual ICE agents, and we've seen some excesses, I think those agents should be held to account in some way, shape, or form. But on the whole, ice, those ICE agents are in a tough spot, you know, in the public.

I mean, you know, they're kind of in a no-win situation through no fault of their own, and I always remind people, you know, they're executing on orders. Does that mean that all of them, every single one of them? have done it well? No. You know, there are bad apples in all police departments, federal and local. But on the whole, I have sympathy for the agents who are being put into this situation. And I think if you want to point the finger at the excesses, and I do think that there have been serious excesses with regard to some of what we've seen with ICE, you can't blame the agents without, who are supposedly on video without blaming the bosses.

Or sometimes the adjutants. I mean, we have seen evidence of, you know, clear organization for resistance efforts against ICE, putting people in situations that make it very difficult for law enforcement to make those split second decisions that often, you know, can lead to somebody's injury or even death. I think a lot of the onus has to be on them as well. I mean, do you agree that some of these organized efforts are really at least walking a very dangerous line there? It depends what the effort is, right? Again, same standard I apply to local and federal, right? I try not to get caught up in the, you know, oh, is this ice for, let's just apply the same standard to everybody, right? Which is, let's say there's a protest against police.

My question is going to be, how are you going about doing it? Are you doing it in a way that is scary or violent? Yeah, then I'm going to come down on you. And you know what? I think that those people should have the book thrown at them. the people who are engaging in any sort of violence against federal or local officers. I'm always supportive of the maximum for those. I think it is so dangerous to the fabric of our society to be going after federal or local law enforcement in that way.

But to simply say, well, you know, these guys are doing wrong and therefore that somehow puts into context, it puts into context maybe some reactions, right? Meaning, and again, I say this in local police all the time, which is if people don't see what happens, beginning, middle, and end in the story, they can't make a fair judgment on whether police officers or federal officers have crossed a line. But just because there are people who are doing things that I wouldn't do doesn't necessarily justify some of what we've seen from ICE. Another question about sort of holistic question about law enforcement and morale and perception, all that stuff. We have seen recruitment efforts being strained with local law enforcement, police forces, etc. From anti-police sentiment over the years. We've seen some reversals in some cities on those trends.

What have you seen? You know, part of the goal of your show, as I understand it, is really, you know, to hold up in many ways and get to see the realities on the ground of how difficult this job is, but how important the job is as well. Have you seen any changes in the trends in terms of recruitment for law enforcement? Yeah. So on Patrol Live, as you said, follows between eight and ten departments for three hours on Friday and Saturday nights. This isn't just a highlight reel, right? The idea is to show you the officer's pulling over a vehicle. And you know what? sometimes that's just going to be a traffic stop, right? And other times, the person's going to flee.

And suddenly there's a pursuit going on. Or some other time, there'll be a domestic call where it's just two people yelling at each other and the police leave and say there are no charges. And another time, someone will pull out a weapon. And suddenly, in a split second, those officers are facing the possibility of a very, very serious situation. So I think that that's one of the things that this show highlights. But what's interesting from your question with regard to recruiting is that in the departments we follow, it actually helps a lot of them with recruiting. And I think that's because there is an appreciation for what law enforcement does. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing to it. People say to me sometimes, well, you know, do you think that your show is turning

police officers into celebrities? And my response to them is so actually, who pretend to be someone else deserve to be celebrities. They've earned it. They've earned the celebrity name. But a police officer who's serving his community doesn't deserve it. You know, it's like it doesn't make any sense. So, you know, I think that it does help with recruiting when people can see the various things that officers do every day.

And, you know, that's the problem with law enforcement in the media, which is that we only hear in the news media, typically when there's an officer involved shooting, or maybe on local news if there's some, you know, dog that was saved in a tree, right? But apart from that, you don't hear about what officers do on a daily basis. You don't hear about the little things that they do in their communities. You don't hear about the risks that they're taking every day. And I think that that's really important. So how do you structure the show and film it? So we're in multiple departments with a, you know, a producer, multiple producers in many of the cities. We use both a handheld camera.

Persons literally running after the officers in public spaces, right? Because, you know, a lot of this is happening in public. So they'll be following them as it's happening. We're seeing all of the screens at once as to what's happening. But we also have loggers who are literally. writing down everything that's happening in every department saying, hey, guys, you know, this is interesting or this is happening, et cetera. And all that stuff is feeding in at once, both visually and with producers who are watching and assessing. And then we got to decide, you know,

what makes it on the air? And those are sometimes not easy calls because you don't know what's going to happen next. And it's literally live? There's a small delay. It's live, but there is a small delay because as you can imagine, you know, when you're in contact with police, social security numbers come up or a kid is in the shot or there's an undercover a cop or, you know, or by the way, you know, look, we're not going to show someone, you know, killing themselves, right, or whatever. So we do have to have some amount of a delay, but it's not much. So it just allows us enough time to be able to protect against mistakes, et cetera. Now, I understand you were picked up for 90 episodes.

I mean, that's a huge accomplishment. What do you think makes your show stand out so much and made it such a hit? Yeah, I mean, look, this is, you know, we're entering season five here, or season four, I should say. And I think that it is compelling to watch police do what they do. And I also think it's important. I mean, it's a combination of both. And I think that, you know, there are really serious high-octane moments, and then there are moments that are funny. And when, you know, engaging with interesting people who are, you know, engaging with police in some way, shape, or form.

And so, you know, this is, you know, this has been kind of a mega hit show since it launched in 22. and every season we say, oh, you know, can it keep going? But, you know, look, it is, I think the fact that it is live, it is real. I mean, some people will say to me, you know, why aren't you guys following, you know, this officer who they like watching? And the answer is because it's not up to us. This isn't like a made-for-TV show, right? It's the real deal.

It's like the departments will say to us, hey, guys, here's who you're riding with. Okay. You know, we'll do what you tell us to do. do. It's the same thing in the news business is when you're kind of embedded with the troops, right? And, you know, you want to embed with the troops? Okay, you play by their rules and you better abide by them. Now, we still have the final say on what goes on the air and what doesn't. But meaning when you're in the police car, and I've gone down myself in the field. And, you know, the officer tells me, all right, here's how you got to do what you got to do. By the way, if there's any, you know,

major emergencies, you know, here's how you work this, et cetera. And so, you know, I get a, I get a training as do all of our crews when they go out every day on how to do what we do while trying to stay out of their way. Well, such a creative idea for a show and clearly a hit. Dan, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. That was Dan Abrams talking about his show on Patrol Live, which is a new season coming out and this has been a weekend edition of Pointe Wire.