On 10Feb2015 an area activist was targeted by Wingham police and detained for approximately 45 minutes. Only 33 minutes of body camera footage allegedly exists of this incident. The Chief of Police has refused to release the video to victim, claiming they don’t have the ability to edit the video for privacy. Some people’s faces need to be blurred, and audio deleted.
Tim Poole, the current chief of police, stated he would release the video if he had the ability to do the editing. This is just one more example of how ill-equipped our Wingham police force is compared to the OPP. As of 17Mar2015 Mr. Poole still has not made progress researching video editing software, or likely even looked on his computer for software. NOTE: This is 35 days after the request was made, and they had to legally respond within 30 days. If Tim Poole did nothing, and simply rejected the request, then it absolutely meets the definition of a cover up.
It seems zero effort was made to honor this Freedom Of Information Request. If that is the case, Tim Poole should resign immediately. Mr. Poole didn’t even contact the company he bought the $600 body cameras from to see if they had software. Logic would dictate that the company that sells police cameras would be able to offer advice on editing, and likely would have software. Mr. Poole was aware when he bought the cameras that the video would need to be edited for Freedom Of Information Requests, and should have had the skills to edit the video before the cameras were deployed in the field.
Simple instructions on how to edit video for privacy issues: If you have Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 you probably have Movie Maker on your computer already. To edit out the audio for a section, simply split” the video at the points where the audio is to be muted. Click on that clip
