THE chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation is \u2018sick to death\u2019 of videos being posted online and used by the media which don\u2019t show police actions in context.<\/p>\n
Steve Kent and the Federation are right behind new calls to make police body-worn video footage more widely available to help balance out coverage of arrests and assaults on officers.<\/p>\n
He says edited videos and pictures being used by the media and posted on social media only show one side of the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sick to death of seeing media snippets of officers\u2019 actions which don\u2019t show the full picture and the full context of the incident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe keep hearing stories about officers allegedly stopping people based on their ethnicity where there doesn\u2019t seem to be any grounds for those claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw the news last week where a professional footballer says he was stopped and he believed it was down to his race, but it since turned out he collided with a curb which had obviously given officers due suspicion to stop him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no wider context being given, so we need to make sure that we put out the full picture to inform the public and give the public confidence in what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
PFEW Chair John Apter has written to Chief Constables urging them to make full BWV footage available to the public. It\u2019s a conversation Steve has already started with the South Yorkshire Police leadership team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have had these conversations with our SLT, our chief and our deputy, and they are supportive of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey quite rightly say that it would have to be taken on a case by case basis rather than just automatically releasing everything, and I can understand that because sometimes there might be sensitive issues involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is something that I\u2019ll continue to push for because it\u2019s absolutely vital that the full picture is out there for the public to make their own mind up on what the police are doing, and not be driven by any hidden agendas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public aren\u2019t daft, they can see for themselves. What is unacceptable is seeing the little five-second clips which do not show the before and after and what led up to the situation,\u201d Steve added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe absolutely need to sort of start naming and shaming people who are submitting these videos and making these allegations for ulterior motives – we need to have our side put across.\u201d<\/p>\n
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