news, crime

A police officer in the city adopted a heavy-handed approach to seizing evidence after an onlooker used his mobile phone to film a public arrest in the city on Thursday. The incident on Barry Drive shows a man attempting to evade police on his bicycle. He is caught by several officers, tackled to the ground, and handcuffed. It appears to be a textbook albeit clumsy arrest until one of the officers sees the person filming and tells him to stop filming and back away. The person filming complied and turned to go away but the Traffic Operations officer then chased after him, seized the phone, and according to the new victim in this incident's online comments, would not return it until he could record the person's details and get him to send any recorded footage to police. Legal advice provided to The Canberra Times says that while police have the power to seize evidence, the more pressing issue in this case was whether the police "genuinely had grounds to suspect the footage could be important evidence in court". On the face of the limited public footage shown on social media, the evidence would appear to be to the contrary. The ACT Law Society goes on to suggest that the person was well within their rights to film the incident. The more likely reason the phone footage was seized was that "[the police] were more concerned about PR given it was a less than glamorous arrest". ACT Police media are continually requesting via their media interactions that anyone holding CCTV or dash cam footage to assist in their investigations. Police released a statement on Friday about the incident in which they identified the offender as in breach of his bail conditions. "The man was placed under arrest, and was subsequently charged with breach of bail, fail to appear, possess knife without reasonable excuse, and unlawful possession of stolen property," police said. "The video was provided to police. "As this matter is now before the courts, we are unable to comment further. However, in general terms police have the power to seize footage from members of the public as evidence."

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