" The complainant was KF Media Inc., of Vancouver B.C. KF Media Inc. who was the producer of the program, and it generally used media in ride-alongs when the police were doing their jobs of apprehending a suspect. The media would be invited, with the co-operation of certain Police Departments in British Columbia, to join the police, and film the entire action on video. The purpose, as stated by the police, was to allow camera crews to capture police action on camera, live, so that the very reality of the work that the police officers do during the course of their jobs would be made apparent to the public, who watch the program on television, and the way in which the police manage the wide range of both criminal as well as non-criminal activities during the course of their daily lives would be shot and captured on the cameras brought by the ride-alongs, the media. (Investigation Report, Investigation, P 95-004)
When the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia received the complaint from KF Media, and also form various members of the public, it decided to conduct a thorough investigation on why exactly the police were taking media ride alongs with them while performing their duties. The reason why this investigation became even more important was because it raised the issues of the 'Right to Privacy' of an individual, and also the 'access to Information', when seen in the context of the 'Freedom of Information and the Protection of Privacy Act'. The actual complaint was this: that the Vancouver Police Department was no longer allowing KF Media to reveal the faces of those persons who had been caught on camera during the media ride-alongs that the Police Department had allowed, during the course of performing their duties. KF media claimed that if it were not allowed to reveal faces, then the entire popularity and uniqueness of their show would be lost, and this would result in huge losses for their company.
In addition, claimed the company, when they went on media ride alongs with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, they were not required to hide the identities and faces of those being shown on their videotapes, so, therefore, why would the Vancouver Police disallow them from revealing identities and faces? Yet another complaint made by KF Media was that the new ride along policy of the Vancouver Police department was both inconsistent as well as contradictory: the British Columbia Television, or the BCTV, had filmed and broadcast a scene where the Vancouver Narcotics Squad issued an arrest warrant for a suspect, and the identities and faces of the suspects were not hidden at all. The Vancouver Police Department responded to all the above complaints by stating that from the time of the implementation of the 'Freedom of Information and the Protection of Privacy Act in 1994, it had decided that more often than not it was the disadvantaged people who were filmed in media ride alongs, and that the decision to cover the identities of these people was consistent with the Freedom of Information and the Protection of Privacy Act. (Investigation Report, Investigation, P 95-004)
The Police department concluded that even if the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner thought that the police Department was more stringent than normal while following the Act, it was still not breaching or breaking any rules by hiding the identities of suspects during an arrest. The Police Department's Information and Privacy Coordinator also said that the decision to hide the faces of suspect shad been taken for numerous reasons, some of them being: allowing a video camera to collect footage on suspects, and air them on television, was in fact an unauthorized disclosure of information by the Department, and that the Department would thereafter set certain policies about the protection of the privacy of its citizens, the basic rule being that one cannot release information of a personal nature, to the public, without the specific consent or written permission of the person whose privacy has been invaded, or if it is actually and truly legitimately necessary for law enforcement purposes.
Thereafter, certain regulations were also quoted, and these were: the suspect's face must be...
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