7 News Belize

COMPOL Encourages Public To Hit Record
posted (August 18, 2014)
So, a critical part of story was told by the cellphone footage recorded shortly after the incident. But, many times, there are moments captured like this on video, which never make it out in the public because officers often confiscate the civilian's recording devices and delete files. Sometimes, they try to block members of the press from doing their jobs by threatening them with deletion of their images and videos.

The different media houses have all encountered something like this once or twice over the years, and today, Commissioner Whylie was asked give the department's position the recording of police officers doing their duties. He told us that he doesn't have a problem with civilans or photojournalists recording these materials, as long as they are respecting the cordoned area of the scenes:

Allen Whylie - Commissioner of Police
"There is no policy from the department that people cannot. We are living in the age of technology where all these smart phones have video. As long as you are outside the area that the police have cordoned off to deal with their scene, if you are outside of that I do not see any issue why the police should be taking away or confiscating anything. I would hope that people would continue to record these things because it will keep my officers consistent and professional and be honest and even if they confiscate one, I don't think they will confiscate 10 and 20 because I am certain there is more than one persons. As I say we don't have a policy. If the police obviously have the area cordoned off, if they have barriers up that you should not be climbing to see then that's a different matter. But if it's cordoned and you are behind the cordon I don't have a problem with it. I just wish that sometimes we would exercise better judgment because I don't think anything is gain by showing people gruesomely killed or murdered and those sort of things and so I would just ask that some sensitivity be given to the feelings of whoever is the deceased family because family always remain."

In our coverage of this accident today, we spoke with the families of both victims in Benque, but due to the late hour of the police press conference, we were unable to bring them to you tonight. We'll have their comments in tomorrow's newscast.

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