A de­vel­op­ing trend among An­tigua po­lice is a point of se­ri­ous con­cern for any­one tak­ing im­ages or footage at crime scenes, in­clud­ing lo­cal jour­nal­ists try­ing to do their jobs.

Ac­cord­ing to a sto­ry in the An­tigua Ob­serv­er, a se­nior of­fi­ceris de­fend­ing po­lice­men who go to some lengths to stop cit­i­zens from record­ingvideos or tak­ing pho­tographs at the scene ofany ac­ci­dent or crime.

The Ob­serv­er quotes Su­per­in­ten­dent Nuffield Bur­net­teas say­ing,"We've seen a lot of sen­si­tive items be­ing put all over the uni­verse, on Face­book, on What­sapp for mat­ters po­lice may be in­ves­ti­gat­ing."

Mea­sures tak­en by the po­lice in­clude­the con­fis­ca­tion of de­vices and even the dele­tion ofcrime scene footage tak­en by civil­ians.

But for­mer pres­i­dent of the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Bar As­so­ci­a­tion­Hugh Mar­shall Jr said the po­lice have nei­ther the pow­er nor the au­thor­i­ty to take away any­one's de­vice and delete footage in the in­stances men­tioned by Bur­nette.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic and me­dia work­er­shave al­so com­plained that, in the process of en­forc­ing the­con­tro­ver­sial rule, po­lice haveusedex­ces­sive force. Bur­nette said that kind ofmis­con­duct­by of­fi­cer­swould be probed by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Unit.

"The ag­gres­sion com­ing from po­lice, noth­ing jus­ti­fies it, and if we have com­plaints of ag­gres­sion by po­lice of­fi­cers, where it is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing on me­dia per­son­nel or oth­er per­sons of the pub­lic, we have to ad­dress it be­cause we have to co-ex­ist."

He said­in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to sev­er­al such mat­ters were on­go­ing and once com­plet­ed,dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion couldbe tak­en or crim­i­nal charges filed against any of­fi­cer­found on the wrong side of the law.