On July 18, Officer Charleston Armstrong with the Baton Rouge Police Department interviewed a suspect as she sat on the concrete of a gas station parking lot following a traffic stop.
The night also happened to be BRPD's premiere on the reality television show "On Patrol: Live."
As Armstrong walked around his unit and began to read the woman her Miranda Rights, she saw the cameraman behind him.
Before Armstrong could remind her she had the right to remain silent, the woman gestured to the camera and asked, "Y'all are starting that new thing?"
Yes, they were.
In the first few weeks, at least five BRPD officers were featured on six episodes of "On Patrol: Live," documenting their exploits to an audience of tens of thousands across the country.
In that time, officers have been filmed making traffic stops and drug arrests, searching abandoned buildings for a fleeing suspect and assisting motorists after accidents.
Police Chief Thomas Morse, who championed to bring "On Patrol: Live" to Baton Rouge, said the show so far has succeeded at providing what its brand of live-filmed police television promises: showing the day-to-day realities of being a cop.
"It's just basically where the calls take them; (we're) not micromanaging that at all," Morse said. "I really do want people to see the kind of full shift and average night of an officer."
After a contract between the department and the show was approved by the Metro Council in June, Morse put a call out to his officers to see who was interested in representing the department before a national audience.
Interviews were conducted, similar to the process for promoting uniform patrol officers to a specialized division. Then, Morse and his senior officers made their selections.
"What I look for is really just somebody that will represent Baton Rouge Police Department well, and bring that law enforcement professional spirit," Morse said.
Those criteria describe no officer better than Cpl. Scott Hinson, a six-year veteran with BRPD known for his success as a field-training officer, certifying rookies in their Taser and DUI-stop training.
Hinson received the 2024 Officer of the Year award from the h Association of Chiefs of Police for helping keep a young woman from jumping off the Mississippi River bridge.
"This job isn't all catching bad guys and driving fast with red and blue lights," Hinson said. "One minute you may be responding to a shooting, one minute you may be doing CPR on somebody, the next minute you're changing a light bulb at an elderly person's home. You never know what your next call is going to be, and it's just a lot more than what people think the police actually do."
In the first few episodes, Hinson has been partnered with Cpl. Wendolyn George, a seven-year veteran with BRPD.
George wanted to show BRPD is more than just the "bad reputation" she said it has developed in the past. And she wanted to be an example of a successful woman on the force.
"I wanted to be an example to other women, because I think law enforcement could benefit from having strong women more interested in the field," she said.
So far, the pair have made a handful of traffic stops during their segments, only one of which ended in an arrest.
This is part of the conceit of "On Patrol: Live": It is broadcast live with up to a 30-minute delay. What's being shown is what crime actually took place that night. If one city in the show's roster of departments is having a slow night, it cuts to another.
So far, nothing as eye-catching as a car chase or a fistfight has yet been captured in Baton Rouge for the show.
In one of their stops, George stopped a couple and their young son for being in a car with no back license plate. As she started the interaction, she found that the couple did not speak English, the wife was pregnant, and the car was their only mode of transportation.
Soon, the boy was performing stilted translations between George and his parents. He struggled with some words and concepts, and George can be seen trying to comfort him.
Eventually, she let them off with a warning. George said she usually ends up giving out one "freebie" per shift.
"I thought, if I take the car for these people, it's only going to cause more hardship," George said. "I was well within the law to (impound the car), because it's not legal to drive around like that, but in this case, I just thought let's give this guy an opportunity to try to get things straight."
George said being able to offer that kind of officer discretion when deciding whether arrest suspects allows her to connect better with the community.
At a stop of their own, Armstrong and his partner, Cpl. Blake Welborn, caught a "hardworking man" with a small amount of weed in his car. They allowed him to snuff it out on the ground and avoid a possession arrest.
"We let him go on his way. He stomped out the marijuana, and he's going home to his kids," Welborn told cameras immediately after the stop.
In one segment, Armstrong and Welborn demonstrated for the audience how to properly clear a building while looking for a suspect. In another, they ruled in on a dispute between two men in a parking lot over the price of a turkey neck one had sold to the other.
While Morse is happy with how the show has given the department an opportunity to show the reality of their work, he says there is a lot left to see.
"There's so much more we can show off and we're just barely scratching the surface," Morse said. "I mean, we haven't been able to really highlight our canine units. We haven't really been able to highlight our drones."
Now, after seeing a few episodes, which air at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturdays on the Reelz network, Morse said other officers are reconsidering their decisions to not be featured on the show.
"It's catching on," he said.