NEW POLICE RULES: No more showing of suspects or victims

BANGKOK: -- Journalists claim new code flies in face of fair and complete reporting. There will be no more pictures in the news of crime suspects covering their faces or of victims.The Royal Thai Police yesterday issued a new regulation on giving information and photo opportunities to the media, in a bid to protect suspects’ and victims’ rights.

The Crime Photographers’ Association of Thailand asked police in an open letter yesterday evening to review the regulation as hampering complete and fair crime reporting, which depends on the police and suspects as well as other sources.

The regulation generally prohibits police from taking victims or suspects to a press conference or letting reporters or photographers take ictures of them inside or outside a police station, on pain of disciplinary action, national police chief General Kowit Wattana said.

It brings the release of information by the police into line with the law, especially the Constitution, while letting officers explain the circumstances more briefly to the media, he added.

Assistant national police chief Lt-General Nawin Singhapalin said his team had been detailed to draft rules in line with the new hierarchy as some police regulations in this area were out of date.

Nawin said the parading of witnesses and victims, especially women and children, before press conferences had been a matter for concern, as had the possibility of media personnel embedding with police blowing confidential operations, given that criminals too follow the news.

“There will be no more pictures of a girl wearing a ski mask at a press conference or a suspect being beaten by onlookers during a crime reenactment, because the court says there is no need for such things,” Nawin said, though he conceded that taking a suspect to a scene to detect evidence such as hidden weapons would still be necessary, whereas a re-enactment would depend on the investigators’ judgement from case to case.

“We’ll see no more police on television programmes debating with viewers, because that tarnished the police’s image, though if the officers want to air personal views, they can with the permission of a superior,” he said.

Nawin dismissed speculation that the regulation was in response to Social Development and Human Security Minister Watana Muangsook’s recent request for a disciplinary probe of police officers who objected to his proposal for the searching of motels to detect sexual relations between youngsters.

“We’ve been working on the regulation since January; it’s only come out now because it took a lot of drafting,” he said.

He also said the regulations had nothing to do with the southern unrest and the suspicion in some quarters that the lack of press conferences after arrests there pointed to abductions by police.

--The Nation 2005-11-19

Good move IMO

Does this mean that there will be no more photos of accident victims, or shot suspects on the front covers of the paper?

No more man boobs?

No more man boobs?

you seem to be dissapointed at that one Brit

I thought the right to be considered Not Guilty until proved otherwise was enshrined in the Constitution.

Why has it taken the Police so long to catch up.

The matter has been raised in the English Press several times since the

constitution was enacted.

And about time too! So no more pictures of dead bodies being dragged out from underneath buses?

Good move - mistakes happend and innocents can be marked for life.

"No smoke without fire"-BS and so on.

Pattaya City News will now be empty...

Pattaya City News will now be empty...

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Perhaps, but this a move in the right direction.

Does this mean we will not see any more "reenactment" photos and vids?? I kinda got a kick out of them

Does this mean we will not see any more "reenactment" photos and vids??  I kinda got a kick out of them

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The TV companies know that - and probably got charged some tea-money for being allowed to film them.

Good thing if it happens, but I'll believe it when I don't see it...

No more man boobs?

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Wide angle lenses

Pang