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Technology advances put police behavior in focus
Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:11pm EDT
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By Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) - For years police have filmed protesters at demonstrations to identify potential troublemakers and collect evidence for prosecutions.
Now, with advances in digital technology and mobile phones with cameras and videos, ordinary members of the public are turning the tables on the authorities.
The issue was brought into focus this week with the suspension of two London police officers after footage emerged of apparent excessive force being used during protests against this month's G20 summit in the British capital.
Video taken by a New York fund manager showed an officer shoving a man to the ground minutes before he died of a suspected heart attack. More film taken the next day captured an officer lashing out at a woman who was remonstrating with him.
"In the 21st century, everybody now has...a mobile phone that can record instantly exactly what is happening," Keith Vaz, chairman of the British parliament's Home Affairs Committee, told BBC TV.
"Therefore it is not possible for someone just to get away with unacceptable behavior. It is instantly captured on film. You can't in a sense hide anything these days."
The London incidents are the latest examples of how technology is being seized on to bring those in authority to account who might otherwise have escaped justice.
In December, a Greek court convicted eight police officers for beating up a Cypriot student in the northern city of Thessaloniki in 2006 after they were caught on camera by media.
A year later a Greek police officer was suspended after a mobile phone video showing two Albanian detainees being struck with a cane and forced to hit each other appeared on media and video sharing websites such as YouTube.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, one human rights group has begun distributing small video cameras to Palestinians to document attacks by Jewish settlers and abuses by Israeli soldiers and policemen.
The scheme has led to the Israeli military charging a unit commander and a soldier with "unworthy conduct" after a rubber bullet was fired at point-blank range at a bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainee during a protest in the West Bank.
POLICE "WILL HAVE TO ADJUST"
Professor Peter Waddington, from Britain's Wolverhampton University, said technology had previously driven changes in police tactics, and the proliferation of mobile phones with cameras was the latest innovator.
"This has been an incremental process. The reality is we are a surveillance society, but this is true as much for police officers as anyone else," he told Reuters.
"We are further up the slope of public surveillance of police actions now thanks to handheld mobile phones. The police will have to adjust to that." Continued...
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