JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

It’s not against the law for civil­ians to record po­lice of­fi­cers while they ex­e­cute their du­ties, says the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Me­dia Am­bas­sador, ASP (Ag) Ra­jesh Lal.

“Record­ings are per­mit­ted, once they do not in­ter­fere with the of­fi­cer's job,” the TTPS spokesman told CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, to­day.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion comes as a po­lice of­fi­cer at­tached to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for slap­ping away a mo­bile phone out of the hand of a civil­ian—an in­ci­dent that oc­curred less than a week af­ter a WPC from the same sta­tion was served with a Dis­ci­pli­nary No­tice for scold­ing the vic­tim of a crime. 

ASP (Ag) Lal notes that these record­ings of­ten work in the of­fi­cer’s favour.

“Noth­ing pre­vents an in­di­vid­ual from do­ing that.  How­ev­er, you can­not do it where the of­fi­cer is ex­e­cut­ing their du­ty, or if you are mak­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of those du­ties more dif­fi­cult,” he ex­plained.

“How­ev­er, if you are not ob­struct­ing the of­fi­cer in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, and they are per­form­ing a pub­lic func­tion, then there is no im­ped­i­ment to a per­son record­ing it,” he said. 

He ad­mit­ted that he, too, has been the sub­ject of record­ings by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

“They pulled out their phones and start­ed record­ing, and I told them, ‘I am glad you are see­ing me. I hope you are record­ing, and you have enough da­ta.’  Be­cause, at that time, I would even ex­pand my lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, for ex­am­ple: ‘Good day, sir. You know you have com­mit­ted a traf­fic vi­o­la­tion, and I am is­su­ing you a fixed penal­ty, and have a won­der­ful day’.”

The TTPS spokesman re­vealed that the Ser­vice was in the process of ex­pand­ing the use of body cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers.  He says a record­ing by a mem­ber of the pub­lic shows one side of the sto­ry, and the record­ings made by of­fi­cers’ body cams help to present a more com­plete pic­ture and un­der­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion that was record­ed.

ASP (Ag) Lall states that po­lice of­fi­cers must al­ways be mind­ful of the na­ture of their busi­ness and serve with pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

“Po­lice of­fi­cers in gen­er­al must un­der­stand that it is a ser­vice we are pro­vid­ing—to pro­tect and serve with pride,” he as­serts.  “Those are our core val­ues: pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­spect, in­tegri­ty, dig­ni­ty, and ex­cel­lence.”

The Po­lice Ser­vice Me­dia Am­bas­sador al­so con­firmed that if of­fi­cers are found to be in vi­o­la­tion of the law, those of­fi­cers will be held ac­count­able.