Alex Reid

Paul Pritchard, who video recorded the scuffle between RCMP and Polish resident Robert Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver Airport two years ago, has won an award from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

The award is the first-ever for citizen journalism.

The video has handed over to RCMP at the time with the promise that the video would be returned within 48 hours; a promise that was later reneged. It wasn’t until Pritchard began legal proceedings and participated in a press conference when he feared “police cover up” that the RCMP returned the video.

Pritchard then sold the video to CBC, CTV and Global for several thousand dollars. The video contradicted what the RCMP initially said about the incident, and began a national outrage and later an inquiry into the incident.

“Without the tape we wouldn’t have had the journalistic investigation, the year-long inquiry into the incident, and we wouldn’t have seen the safer use of the taser by police departments across the country,” said Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) President Arnold Amber.

“The remarkable partnership between investigative journalists and the citizen who recorded the last minutes of Dziekanski’s life has led to all these revelations and impact.” Amber added “What he did probably will save many other lives down the road.”

Epic.

Vancouver City Councillor Andrea Reimer introduced a motion this week (PDF) endorsed by Mayor Gregor Robertson that will have the city develop open standards for city documents, maps and other data, to be released online.

It’s a big step for civic transparency.

It’s also a vert smart move for Vancouver because they know that “software companies” will aggregate that data for public usage just like Google Transit did when Vancouver made their bus schedules available in open standard in late 2007. By making the information that already exists (and paid for) available to the public for free, the City is allowing open source developers to connect the dots; effectively crowd sourcing the bulk of the programming work, for free.

EveryBlock is a perfect example of what could come of this. Using data from eleven major American cities, volunteers gather whatever city data is available (definitely not open format) and relate that information (crime incidents, bike rack installations, building permits, restaurant inspections, graffiti clean-ups, etc.) to maps of those cities.

For example, the San Francisco Police Department releases daily information about its daily calls and EveryBlock lists that information “whether they’re made by citizens or police officers and whether they involve criminal or non-criminal activity. Each report says where the incident was reported, when police were called and when the report was entered into the system. Also included is the incident’s type (homicide, noise nuisance, fight without weapons, etc.).

Finally, each report includes the incident’s result, which essentially tells you what responding officers found or did in response to the call. This might be an arrest, the issuance of a citation or a report’s cancellation while the officer was en route.”

But what Vancouver is doing will really expand what EveryBlock has already illustrated with limited and sparse information. Vancouver’s City Manager has already been charged with digitizing archival records, indexing, publishing and syndicating all data using “prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats” – all to be unlicensed.

Reimer suggested that City Council meeting videos will be on YouTube within months.

“They’re tiny little things, but they have so much ripple effect in the community,” she said. “There’s probably a few more thousand people that we could be talking to out there if we could send them videos [instead of written material.]“

The issue of whether the police have the right to seize your camera is an increasing concern. Canadians were reminded of this last week when a camera belonging to a photographer for The Province was confiscated by Vancouver police.

Jason Payne said that police kept his camera for more than an hour before returning it.

“The gist of it is they were going to seize my camera as evidence in this situation, and that if I didn’t give it up I would be arrested and charged with obstructing justice,” Payne told CBC News.

Mack Pettigrew, a sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police Department, runs a blog called “A Cop’s View”. In this recent post, he says that the police do not have the right to take your camera equipment or film.

In most cases if you ask someone for their help and request the camera or memory card they will hand it over but it does have to be returned. If the person refuses and does not give their name and starts taking off down the street then it is thought that this is evidence and can be legally taken before a judge with the explanation that there was no time to get a search warrant.

The rationale is simply if the police officers know who you are and where to find you, they can get the necessary paperwork (and approval) from the courts to seize the film (or data). Vancouver police spokeswoman Jana McGuinness echoed this viewpoint, that they do not make it a practice of taking reporters’ cameras because they know where to find them later.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s executive director David Eby said his group will file a complaint against the department following the incident in Vancouver.

“In our opinion, there are only three circumstances where police can seize a camera: One is if a person consents to the seizure; one is if they have an order from a judge; and one is if they are taking the camera in a search incidental to an arrest — if they are arresting someone with a camera, and they are taking that camera from a person during the arrest process.”

Pettigrew agrees, and puts it quite reasonably and I encourage you to check out his blog.

Officers must be sure of their powers, you can not just go and take a camera from someone because they are going to put the video on youtube or sell it to the media.

I was listening to the so called experts on the radio show and found it interesting how they talked about how officers are uncomfortable with the knowledge that their actions are being video taped or pictures taken of them. I for one have no problem with this as it works both ways. We use video tape evidence all the time and as long as you doing your job professionally out on the streets then officers have nothing to fear.

Unfortunately we are human and have lapses in judgement at times and these seem to get caught on video and plastered all over the internet and media. One bad action can paint a bad picture for all of us. So be aware be professional and as a police officer know your powers when it comes to photos and video.

Both sides need to understand their respective powers. There are people – in all professions, on all sides – who go about dealing with situations like this in a very heavy handed way which only creates a greater division in the relationship of co-operation and trust.

I have many friends who work in media and unfortunately because enough police officers have tried to deal with them in a heavy handed way, often with a vague explanation that “it’s against the law” (it isn’t) that many of these people in the media don’t trust the police and that bias is obvious in their reporting, which in turn affects the image of the police to the public at large.

It’s not just a worrisome trend, it’s a cycle that can be prevented if photographers respect a crime scene just as police officers know the limitations of their duty.

Co-operation is a two way street.

I love the photos (especially this week’s front cover), the articles and the new web site looks sharp!

Check out this great article about dumpster diving.