Seepersad: Body cameras a ‘win-win’ for police, citizens

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

High Court Judge Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad says the use of body-worn cam­eras dur­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions rep­re­sents a “win-win” for both law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and cit­i­zens, as the tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide an ac­cu­rate, re­al-time ac­count of en­coun­ters which lat­er come be­fore the courts.

Speak­ing against the back­drop of de­bate over the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and ques­tions sur­round­ing the use of body cam­eras, Seep­er­sad said video footage could pro­tect both po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the launch of the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) Peace Pro­gramme held at Hugh Wood­ing Law School, St Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad ac­knowl­edged that equip­ping of­fi­cers with body cam­eras could al­so be a ques­tion of re­sources.

Al­ter­na­tive­ly, he not­ed that cit­i­zens al­so have ac­cess to their mo­bile phones.

He re­it­er­at­ed that peo­ple were free to record po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty once they did not in­ter­fere with of­fi­cers car­ry­ing out their du­ties or ob­struct the course of jus­tice.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions sur­round­ing the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and con­cerns about how the pro­posed pow­ers could af­fect cit­i­zens in cor­doned-off ar­eas in “closed ar­eas”, Seep­er­sad said the courts re­mained an im­por­tant safe­guard for cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned those who be­lieved con­sti­tu­tion­al rights can nev­er be re­strict­ed.

“We have a con­cept in so­ci­ety that rights are ab­solute. They are not. No right, whether en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion or not, is ab­solute or im­mutable, and it is for the State and for the le­gal sys­tem to de­ter­mine whether laws are pro­por­tion­ate and whether they in­fringe the fun­da­men­tal rights in a way that is un­ac­cept­able,” he said.

Seep­er­sad said when­ev­er leg­is­la­tion is test­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly leg­is­la­tion which may af­fect fun­da­men­tal rights, the courts con­tin­ue to have an im­por­tant role in de­ter­min­ing whether the mea­sures are pro­por­tion­ate and rea­son­able.

He said that ju­di­cial over­sight re­mains even when leg­is­la­tion is passed with the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­quired ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment.

“While there’s al­ways fear and there’s con­cern, I think it’s im­por­tant for cit­i­zens to un­der­stand that we live in a coun­try where the Supreme Court ex­er­cis­es its au­thor­i­ty with­out po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion and the courts will ul­ti­mate­ly speak if its ju­ris­dic­tion is in­voked. At the end of the day, the up­hold­ing of the rule of law is what is of para­mount im­por­tance.”

TTPSS­WA: More body cam­eras need­ed

Mean­while pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) ASP Ish­mael Pitt said while he was sup­port­ive of any strat­e­gy that would seek to se­cure com­mu­ni­ties, au­thor­i­ties had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the well­be­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers weren’t com­pro­mised.

Re­spond­ing to Sec­tion 21 (1) of the Bill which in­tro­duces a manda­to­ry pol­i­cy for po­lice and sol­diers to wear Body Worn Cam­eras (BWCs) while on du­ty, Pitt said such a pro­vi­sion would en­sure that stan­dards of trans­paren­cy and pro­fes­sion­al­ism were up­held.

He, how­ev­er, said ad­di­tion­al cam­eras were need­ed as he urged the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide of­fi­cers in the field with the nec­es­sary tools for their pro­tec­tion.

“At this point in time the ser­vice doesn’t have a full com­ple­ment of body­cams to out­fit every, sin­gle po­lice of­fi­cer. In ad­di­tion it is my in­for­ma­tion that the cams that we do have are not ad­e­quate to with­stand the de­mands of polic­ing.

“Hav­ing said that if it is we are treat­ing with an is­sue that re­quires a par­tic­u­lar man­date, we will on­ly ask that the re­sources are pro­vid­ed and the prop­er re­sources are pro­vid­ed in terms of the right items in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the de­mands of polic­ing.”