Dan Abrams reflects on Live PD’s legacy

CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — Dan Abrams made his first appearance on NewsNation Tuesday following the announcement of his primetime show launching in September.

As a guest on On Balance with Leland Vittert, Abrams said his show will look into the daily lives of police officers.

“I think quite honestly, that people don’t appreciate police officers enough and some of what they go through now,” Abrams said. “Believe it or not, you can be both pro-police and pro-accountability.”

He was one of the hosts of Live PD, which ran for four seasons before being canceled in the wake of the George Floyd murder and protests in 2020.

One of the takeaways he will bring from that show to NewsNation is an appreciation for the uncertainty police officers face every shift.

“I’ve been on ride-alongs, but I haven’t been on hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of ride-alongs,” he said. “I’ve never been a cop. But it allowed me to get a much better sense of what police officers deal with day to day.”

Abrams said his show will feature bodycam video from officers to show what he calls “the other 99%” of police work.

“It does seem that in this current media environment that you just can’t show or we haven’t seen much of the more mundane aspects of police just doing good things for people,” he said. “And I intend to highlight that.”

Abrams’ media career dates back to 1997, and has included stops at MSNBC, ABC News and SiriusXM among others, including websites he owns. An important focus for him will be eliminating a sense of bias.

“The way you do that is you come out and you can say, as I will say, on my show, ‘here’s what I think about this particular issue, here’s where I’m coming from, on this particular topic,'” Abrams said. “Now, I’m gonna have a guest on this person may show that I’m wrong. We can have a civil conversation, but at least it gives the audience the information I think that they can then start the evaluation make up their own minds.”

Dan Abrams Live premieres September 27 at 8 p.m. ET.