Some important information about evidential helmet-cam footage.

racyrich wrote:

Can someone please explain why sharing a video of a crime reduces its effectiveness in court.

Mostly because it can prejudice a jury or in some way stop the defendant having a fair trial. Generally speaking UK courts love evidence and they'll take anything they can get even if it's a bit dodgy in how it was attained. Think that's supposed to be changing these days, but anyway, when it comes to prejudice it's so serious that you can have the whole case turfed out on that basis alone. So, best keeping it to yourself until it's been shown in court and you've been told you can publish it.

That said, you're always free to publish it. There's no penalty there, just you might give the CPS a headache.

This situation must be massively common these days with all the phone cams and GoPros etc around capturing crimes. Love to hear some recent case law on it to see how the courts are handling it in practise. They may simply advise the jury to avoid watching it.

racyrich wrote:

Can someone please explain why sharing a video of a crime reduces its effectiveness in court.

Video evidence is not completely objective - still very much open to interpretation. It is possible that a story may be constructed around the video (eg using what is not shown) to give an opposite interpretation of events. It is best to have expert thorough observation, and keep the discussion and analysis in court, rather than internet forums. 

Worst case is that a member of the jury sees discussion about it, unfairly influencing their verdict. 'Unsafe' convictions, collapse of trial, re-trial is rare. Local papers tend just to copy and paste police non-prejudicial press releases, without allowing public comment. See 'sub-judice'.

Another risk is that defence may ask for 'public shaming' to be taken into account, and the existing damage to reputation/business reduces the official sentence/fine. Then reduced punishment becomes the norm.

Or it may be seen as being or encouraging 'vigilante' action - taking the law into one's own hands. I think there have been cases where innocent company telephonists have endured verbal abuse!

On the wider topic:

"West Midlands Police was going to introduce a new way of “self-reporting” due care and attention type road traffic offences"
They're still talking about it.

Greater Manchester Police have a policy

Bradford Police are joining in themselves!

guyrwood wrote:

Hawkinspete, police forces have to be extremely vigilant about IT security issues because of the amount of confidential data they hold. I know my force will not allow officers access to online storage services such as OneDrive and Dropbox purely due to the tiny potential for something going wrong.

 

It is inconvenient but posting the officer a burned DVD or small capacity memory stick should only cost a quid or two.

I was able to chop the clip down to a relevant 5 seconds (watching the traffic light turn red, then turning round to catch the car trying to jump the light until I motioned to cross which forced him to stop) and emailed it to them. Thus, they could use whatever email solution they want to - I was not encouraging them to use any kind of cloud storage.

Now, I work in I.T. and am aware of issues with email attachments, but they are not insurmountable (a decent O.S. understands the difference between executables and data).

Redvee wrote:

I took footage into A&S Police of a deliberate close pass, the driver changed lanes to make the close pass. Despite the officer handling the case writing the registered keeper, nothing came of it though he did tell me to be wary of my actions as they were also on camera. As the driver drov off after passing close to me I put up my middle finger and said wanchor(sp), the officer said I shouldn't have reacted like I did. Given the way the driver drove to me how are you supposed to react?

I suggest that the close pass put you in a “state of immediate shock in fear of your life/well being, so instant flight or fight response manifested itself in your instant outburst”.

Yes?

I had a recent chap pull along side shouting out of his window about riding 2 abreast, this was after he was aggressively sounding his horn behind us.
My response wasn't normal behaviour but a reaction to my life being threatened.!

unconstituted wrote:

Yeah it's odd that there isn't a sophisticated portal to submit evidence to the police and report crimes. Bet their systems are mad dated.

Most government systems are dated before they're even delivered. But this week we learned that the US nuclear arsenal relies on computers with floppy drives. Après ça le déluge.