Police criticised over showing pictures of youths

A report by the human rights committee of the body that holds Northern Ireland's police force to account has said printing the pictures should only happen if there is a serious risk to the public or the young person concerned.

Last year, the police published photos to try and identify young people suspected of being involved in crime.

In Londonderry, 133 images, including 50 of juveniles, have been released to the press-with 24 juveniles identified by members of the public.

The policing board said such action was difficult to justify.

Last July, the Sentinel asked police in Londonderry about the effectiveness of 'Operation Exposure'-the name for the plan of publishing the pictures in the local press.

The questions came after a protracted bout of interface violence at Bishop Street/Fountain in the city. A resident of the Fountain contacted the paper to label the operation little more than a "public relations exercise."

Fountain resident, Alex McClements, whose home close to the interface has been beleaguered by sectarian attacks over the years, queried the reasoning for and the actual dates of a batch of pictures purporting to be from incidents in and around July 12, 2010.

The batch of CCTV still images released by the PSNI in Londonderry at that time was accompanied by a statement which said: "The PSNI have released new CCTV images of young people they are keen to identify in relation to sectarian violence at the Fountain interface over the Twelfth period."

But Alex McClements claimed that those images released did not relate to July 12, but from May, 2010, when a month long outbreak of trouble besieged the area on both sides of the religious divide.

Mr McClements told the Sentinel last July: "There was one sectarian incident at the interface during the Twelfth and that was around 3am on the morning of the Twelfth. There have been no major incidents since. I think that none of those pictures are from the 12th of July. I believe all those pictures relate to the violence around May time.

"I am directly challenging the police as to why these pictures are appearing now. Why say these pictures are from the Twelfth when there was only one incident in the early hours of the morning of the Twelfth?

"Why are they putting out statements like this? If the police are doing this to gain confidence from the people of the area they are barking up the wrong tree."

However, the police officer responsible for spearheading Operation Exposure in Londonderry, Inspector John Burrows defended the publication of the pictures of youths, although he did state that "there were no incidents at the Fountain on July 12 that were reported to the police."

Mr Burrows told the Sentinel:The photographs relate to interface violence through May and June. The overall enquiry is into interface violence in May and June and violence over July 12."

However, recorded incidents of violence in Londonderry on July 12, 2010, were solely confined to the Bogside area when rioters conflicted with the PSNI.

In defence of allegations that the pictures published in July 2010, were not actually from that period, the police inspector told the Londonderry Sentinel that images of the violence in the Bogside on July 12, 2010, would be released within a ten day period of that date.

Hitting back at accusations from Fountain resident Alex McClements that the publication of the pictures was a purely cosmetic act, John Burrows said: "There have been a total of 15 arrests, 12 of those have been charged with around 50 offences-currently three persons have been reported to the Public Prosecution Service."

Civil and human rights groups as well as child protection organisations have since expressed grave concerns over the publication of images of youths in media outlets.

In July last year, the Sentinel also asked the PSNI inspector if he believed it was effective in relation to arrests to release images in which so-called alleged suspects did not appear to be committing any offences.

Mr Burrows replied: "Whilst the persons are doing nothing in the image, this is simply the clearest image we have."

We also asked if any of the images published at that point have been previously published. Mr Burrows said:"None of the images released to date have been previously released, however that is one avenue we are considering."

The Sentinel also asked Inspector John Burrows where the PSNI stood legally in terms of human rights and the publication of pictures of juveniles?

The senior policeman told the Sentinel that human rights issues were taken into consideration and dictated that all avenues of internal police investigation into alleged offenders were "exhausted" before any images were published.

He said: "Operation Exposure is compliant with human rights, a procedure must be followed and juveniles are only included as a last resort."

But today, the report by human rights committee of the Policing Board said the PSNI should never release images of any person under the age of 18 into the public domain, except where the release is necessary for the purpose of protecting the general public or the young person from serious injury, only after all reasonable methods have been tried and failed.