Although I occasionally like to turn participants into folk heroes in the name of clickbait satire, I'm not a big a fan of the live, wall-to-wall coverage of high-speed police chases. This is for a couple of reasons.
1. They provide little, if any, value to the public, and are nothing more than desperate ratings grabs by profit-driven TV channels that want you to stay glued to your TV screen.
2. You just never know if your going to watch a terrifying car crash, or see a guy get shot dead by police.
We were reminded of #2 yesterday when both Bob Mills SkyNews Ultra-4k HD Ranger 9, and Bob Moore Air Comfort Solutions In Your Corner Chopper 4, both provided live footage of a dangerous, armed man being rightfully shot and killed by police after leading them on a chase through Northwest Oklahoma City. He was apparently on the run after killing his wife – Caleea Broadus – during some sort of domestic altercation.
I'm not going to post a video of the shooting on this website, but I am going to show Kevin Ogle's reaction as he — like everyone else who tuned in for Jeopardy! — just watched a man get shot up on live TV:
Although I don't like to share videos of people getting killed on this website, there is one that does. It's called Twitter. If you're a fan of irresponsible journalism, or Faces of Death type of content, you can watch the graphic Channel 4 footage here, or slightly less graphic Channel 9 coverage here. I'm not sure if Channel 5 caught the incident live on air for its viewers, but if they didn't, I bet corporate is pissed!
Anyway, you'd think Channel 4 and Channel 9 would learn a lesson and probably stop providing coverage of police chases, or at very least, put a delay on live footage, but I doubt they will. They have bills to pay, and if paying those bills (and executive salaries) means occasionally showing a man who just took one life ultimately commit suicide by cop to their viewers of all ages, it's probably worth it to them. I mean, why else would we watch?
