A dispute has broken out between Scotland Yard and the police complaints watchdog over whether officers involved in fatal shootings should be able to view footage from their body- worn cameras before giving evidence to investigators.
Currently, the Independent Police Complaints Commission will only let officers watch the film before completing statements if they have given “sufficient detail” in their initial notes.
Rank-and-file officers claim this is unfair because “memory can make mistakes” about split-second actions and leave officers “in a difficult position” during a subsequent probe.
Scotland Yard is also concerned and wants the rules, which also cover “serious injury” incidents, to be relaxed. It fears an officer could be “tripped up” months or years later over differences between testimony given in good faith at the time of a shooting and what the camera shows.
It believes this is unjust and wants officers to have the right to see footage soon after the encounter.
The dispute was highlighted recently by Sue Palmer, head of the Met Police Federation’s constables branch, at a conference on the future of policing in London.
She said body-worn cameras could “greatly assist” any investigation into alleged misconduct but that officers “must be allowed to view the footage prior to making their notes”.
“It is a fact that if an officer is involved in a serious incident their memory can be impaired by the stress of the situation,” she said. “Should their account in any way differ from what is recorded by the camera, that officer is left in a difficult position should any subsequent investigation take place.”
She added: “The footage is fact and cannot be changed. So for an officer to be deprived of an opportunity to view that footage cannot be fair.
“Officers frequently have to make split-second decisions, based on what the officer sees, hears and believes [in] the moment. A camera will not record peripheral vision [or] how that officer was feeling or thinking.”
Existing IPCC rules mean that there could be a lengthy delay before an officer under investigation is allowed to watch the film from their camera.
But Scotland Yard believes that viewing the film can assist officers to give a more accurate account by jogging their memory. Police concern about the rules has been heightened by the decision to equip all 22,000 frontline officers with body-worn cameras.
The IPCC said it kept its rules “under review” but had “no current plans” to amend them.
A spokeswoman added: “Footage should not be viewed by the officers involved until after they have given their first accounts... to avoid the risk of accounts being influenced.”
