This image of a suspected burglar preying on vulnerable people can only be published today – three months after the crime - as council officers feared it would breach his rights.
Publication of the CCTV from Sanders House sheltered accommodation has also been delayed by police and broken equipment, The Argus can reveal.
Wait, what?
Beverley Weaver, who lives at the sheltered housing scheme in Ingram Crescent West, Hove, said the situation had been an “absolute nightmare”.
She added: “They are talking about data protection to protect a suspected criminal but what about the residents? We need security.”
Pah! There's apparently no corresponding human right not to be robbed blind.
...when councillors Robert Nemeth and Garry Pelzer Dunn pressed council officers to release them, they were warned that passing it on to the media might be a breach of data protection.
A council officer added she had been advised this was “because this person has not been convicted and it is not impossible that we would be distributing images of a person who is innocent”.
That doesn't seem to ever worry the police much, even when it leads to
stuff like this.
The council’s information team said “it would not necessarily be ‘fair and lawful’ to make this public, for “a relatively low impact crime” adding they needed to “be mindful of creating any kind of witch hunt or social media frenzy”.
Translation: "It's just old people, and they are up against savvy crims who might sue. Anyway, it's bloody Twitter's fault, or Facebook's, or...wait, we can't get sacked anyway, so what do we care?"
Whatever happened to common sense? A picture of the person could be followed by something like, "It is believed this person may have information relating to the offence." No accusation, no breach of data protection. The media does it all the time. But then we are talking about self-serving (local) politicians. Let's hope this incident is remembered at the next election.
ReplyDeletePenseivat
Affordable CCTV systems are available for the average Joe in the street to buy. I have an eight camera internal and external system at home that uploads to the cloud (£125) and a dashcam for the car (£18) both from China.
ReplyDeleteAs these things become more popular, human rights for crims will become irrelevant as if the police refuse to release images, all we need to do is post them on Twitter or Facebook.
The cops might not like it but ultimately it will be up to the courts to decide and I would fancy my chances in that situation.
Why are there Wanted posters then. Are those all convicted. What about the rights of criminals not to have their picture taken when they are arrested but before they are convicted.
ReplyDeleteIt is a farce.
Police issue cctv pix all the time. They always say that these are images of people they want to talk to 'in connection with' an incident. What we have here is an uninformed council being stupidly cautious.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when the precautionary principle meets stupid.
ReplyDelete"Whatever happened to common sense?"
ReplyDeleteIt's no longer common...
"As these things become more popular, human rights for crims will become irrelevant as if the police refuse to release images, all we need to do is post them on Twitter or Facebook."
And they'll start arresting us for it! :/
"They always say that these are images of people they want to talk to 'in connection with' an incident. What we have here is an uninformed council being stupidly cautious."
Or deliberately obstructive?
This is bad situation; the council are a law unto themselves and seem to
ReplyDeletehave the police in their pockets-I agree that their is deliberate obstruction
by the council and police- it would not surprise me if the council sold Sanders House
to a private concern to get money together to ease the cost of its long standing financial mis magagement and downright dishonesty. Beverly Weaver seems to have been running sanders house for far to long-hight time people woke up to what is reallly going on