Sharing of body worn video would assist public empathy and support for policing

THE release of officers’ body worn video footage would assist public empathy and sympathy for policing as people would see the aggression and challenges colleagues face, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

A national Federation campaign to put officers’ side of the story across and combat some of the misleading, often heavily edited social media footage of incidents has led to several guidelines for forces being able to release the footage.

The PFEW wants forces to make officers BWV footage available to head off what can be unfair criticism of officers and make viewers aware of the whole story.

The campaign has now led to a debate in the House of Lords.

“This needs to be looked at as a matter of urgency as far as I’m concerned,” said Steve Kent, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation.

“We have seen, time and time again, incidents that have happened and then when we’ve actually seen the body worn video the picture is totally different. What we need to see really is that the forces do it as a matter of course and let the public actually make their own mind up on what actually has happened.

“The other side to that is we need to see the media actually want to pick it up, to be perfectly honest, because sometimes they don’t have an appetite for it. But there was a case in South Yorkshire about two years ago with somebody quite high profile who made a complaint in the media about it and actually having seen the body worn video the only person who actually behaved in an appalling way was that individual. So that’s a great example of how we need to use it going forward.”

Steve added that realising the footage as promptly as can be allowed, will actually increase “public sympathy for what we’re doing.”

He added: “If the public can actually see the full picture and actually see what we encounter, and certainly seeing the aggressive things that we sometimes see in terms of officers being assaulted then that absolutely would start getting more sympathy and empathy from them.”