Couple criticizes 'On Patrol' TV crews with BCSO

Oct. 15—Last week Josephine Medina was driving in the South Valley when a tire on a nearby car came loose and collided with her vehicle.

The 23-year-old wasn't hurt but the crash damaged her car and scared her. She started to cry.

Medina told the Journal she was speaking with the driver of the other car when a passing deputy pulled over to check on them.

With the deputy was a camera crew from the reality television program "On Patrol: Live."

Medina said she asked what was going on and the deputy told her that the crew was filming him and "if you don't want to be in it, turn around." She called her boyfriend, 22-year-old Luis Ramirez, and he left his job playing the vihuela in a mariachi band at a local restaurant to come to her aid.

"My boyfriend also asked them to put the cameras away," Medina said. "I swear we asked them like 15 times because we were stressed out and we didn't want that and we didn't know what was going on. They weren't giving us an answer."

The couple and Medina's mother attended the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office Advisory and Review Board Friday morning to voice their dismay over being in "On Patrol: Live" — which follows Bernalillo County Sheriff's deputies on their shift every Friday and Saturday night.

The nine-member board discussed the agency's participation in and promotion of the for-profit show as well as the issue of its use of Spartan helmets and what looks like a wolf on its recruiting vehicles. The symbols were chosen by previous cadet classes and approved by the chain of command.

It did not make any determination on either issue at the meeting, and its members will decide whether to make any formal recommendations in its annual report.

BCSO representatives reiterated that the agency doesn't get paid to be on the show but the county gets a "nominal insignia fee" for the use of its logo.

Jayme Fuller, a BCSO spokeswoman who attended the meeting along with Chief Deputy Lori Carrillo, said she had known the producers of "On Patrol: Live" and, when they approached her, thought it was a good way to connect with the community.

She said the sheriff's office will review Medina and Ramirez's encounter.

"That gentleman's air time on 'On Patrol: Live' was less than a minute but that could be the worst minute of his life and that's an unfortunate situation that needs to be looked into," Fuller said. "The majority of the other things have been very great so far and our feedback has been very positive."

She said there is at least a 30-minute delay in when the action is aired and the command staff has the option to watch it live and tell the producers not to show something that would violate policy or someone's rights.

"As far as just declining to be filmed I think we've seen it across the country — officers asking not to be filmed or people not to be filmed in general with the media," Fuller said. "There's no ... policy in place that says if they just asked not to be we have to stop filming."

One of the board members, David Montoya, asked if it would be "too much to ask" to have the people who are filmed be able to opt out.

"I think that would probably solve about 80 or 90% of the controversy here," Montoya said. "I think it's really important when we are in law enforcement that we protect and serve, and I think part of that protect is protecting the privacy of citizens."

Medina and Ramirez said they couldn't bring themselves to watch their appearance on the show but it was humiliating to have neighbors, acquaintances and relatives bring it up.

Medina — whose grandfather was in law enforcement — said she felt like the deputies were less empathetic to her as a victim of a car crash than they would ordinarily be and seemed to be antagonizing her and Ramirez. At one point, she said, a deputy put his arm on her as she was going up to the other driver to exchange insurance information and told her he would cuff her and put her in his car if she got any closer. The deputy called for two other deputies as backup — one of whom also brought a film crew.

Ramirez — who was still wearing his Mariachi outfit — caught the eye of fans of the show on social media who mocked him and, he said, made a meme about him.

A community and live-tweet account for the show tweeted a GIF from the "Three Amigos" movie and said, "You can't act like a tough guy when you look like one of the Three Amigos. Sorry not sorry. You just can't. #OnPatrolLive #OPLive #OPNation."

"They're putting out reality TV shows out with the public, and they're really spinning the situation and blowing it out of proportion," Ramirez said. "When trying to create that entertainment, you know, for the sake of entertainment."

As for the use of "irregular" symbols on BCSO's recruiting vehicles, board members said they thought they gave the wrong idea even if they were well-intentioned. Referring to the phrase "Always choose the hard right" — which leaves out the end of the quote "over the easy wrong" — one board member said "that's the problem with symbology and all of that is that you get to see it for 30 seconds, five seconds, 10 seconds."

Chief Deputy Carrillo said BCSO does not want any extremists in its ranks and conducts background searches, which include a review of social media posts and polygraph tests, along with psychological evaluations.

She said its hard to "keep up with what is related to white supremacist and the far right" but "in the future, we will definitely do our best to try to do the most recent Google search on all the symbols that are there and remove them."

Editor's note: this article has been updated to correctly identify the type of account that tweeted the GIF from the Three Amigos.