By Daniel Tepfer
Connecticut Post
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Perhaps A&E should have kept the cameras rolling.
Because the cable television channel would have caught police Sgt. Stacey Lyons, one of the stars of its inaugural episode of “Live PD,” allegedly breaking into her ex-boyfriend’s home and assaulting him after finding him with another woman.
“Domestics are the most dangerous calls a police officer can go on,” Lyons told a national TV audience Friday night after arresting a local man for allegedly choking his girlfriend.
She is then seen on the program turning to the man who is sitting in the back of her police car, urging him to turn over any guns he has.
“We have rules that are above me,” she tells him as he protests his innocence. “This is a domestic situation and I don’t have a choice.”
Hours later Lyons was in the back of a Trumbull police car after her former boyfriend called police on her.
Police said they later went to Lyons home and seized, under the state’s domestic-violence law, her service weapon and two other guns along with a 15-round magazine.
Lyons, 33 — who received an award for heroism in 2015 — was charged by Trumbull police with disorderly conduct.
Bridgeport Police Chief Armando Perez said Lyons is on administrative status as a result of her arrest and has turned in her service weapon.
“This is really sad because she is a conscientious officer, a very good officer,” Perez said. “But you have to be able to control your actions. Anytime you get into a problem with someone you are involved in a relationship with, you should just leave.”
“Live PD” is a weekly two-hour series that will show six police departments in action in real time, according to A&E, which is owned by Hearst and Disney. It is hosted by attorney and television personality Dan Abrams and two Dallas police detectives who narrate the action.
In the first episode, Lyons is viewed in three segments. In one, she is assisting in the search of three men for drugs. In the second, she and Officer Mark Blackwell search a home after receiving a tip about drugs.
In the third, which appears to have been recorded earlier, she makes the domestic-violence arrest.
Segments from Tulsa, Okla.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Richland County, S.C.; and Walton County, Fla. and the Utah Highway Patrol are part of the program.
Don Sikorski, of Norwalk, executive producer of “Live PD,” said he could not comment on the officer’s arrest until he gets more information.
During the arraignment hearing Monday morning, Lyons showed no emotion as she faced state Superior Court Judge William Holden.
The judge ordered Lyons to have no further contact with her former boyfriend and continued the case to Nov. 16.
Lyons is free on a promise to appear in court. Neither she nor her lawyer, Christian Young, would comment as they left the Golden Hill Street courthouse.
Trumbull police said they received a call about an assault at a Petticoat Lane home in the early morning hours.
Police said the male owner of the home told officers his former girlfriend, Lyons, had entered his home uninvited by using the security code, and then angrily confronted him about having another woman there.
The man said he and Lyons got into a shoving match, and Lyons left when he called police.
Police said the man had a minor abrasion on his right forearm and another on his upper nose. He declined medical treatment and refused to make a written complaint against Lyons, police said.
Police said Lyons denied hitting the man. While he claimed they had broken up two weeks ago, she maintained they were still involved in a relationship, and were to attend a wedding together on Sunday.
Lyon was promoted to sergeant in September 2014 after obtaining the highest score on the promotional examination.
Last year, she received the Bridgeport Police Department’s Police Combat Cross for an act of extraordinary heroism for helping to disarm a man without injury, after he had fired shots at officers outside the German Club.
In January 2014, a local woman claims Lyons and two other officers attacked her in the Barnum Publick House.
The woman is suing Lyons and the other officers for civil rights violations in U.S. District Court.