South Yorkshire Police Federation calls for body camera footage to be shared

Chairman Steve Kent said he is ‘sick to death’ of videos being posted online which do not show police actions in context.

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Mr Kent believes making police body-worn video footage more widely available would help balance out coverage of arrests and assaults on officers.

He says edited videos and pictures only show one side of the story.

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“I’m sick to death of seeing media snippets of officers’ actions which don’t show the full picture and the full context of the incident,” he said.

“We keep hearing stories about officers allegedly stopping people based on their ethnicity where there doesn’t seem to be any grounds for those claims.

“We 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.

“There’s 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’re doing.”

Mr Kent said he has started discussions with South Yorkshire Police bosses about making video footage public.

“I have had these conversations with our senior leadership team, our chief and our deputy, and they are supportive of it,” he said.

“They quite rightly say that it would have to be taken on a case by case basis rather than just automatically releasing everything.

“But this is something that I’ll continue to push for because it’s 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.

“The public aren’t 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.”

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