GUJRAT: Neither the personnel of the law enforcement agencies nor the media persons have training on how to carry out their duties at the crime scene since the police often appear busy according protocol to their seniors and VIPs arriving there while the media persons look for information to feed their news hungry viewers and readers.
This was a consensus among speakers at the one-day training workshop of police investigating officers (IOs) and Station House Officers (SHOs) belonging to all the police stations of the district at Police Lines on Monday. An interactive session between the police officials and senior journalists on “effective media management at crime scene” was also held during the workshop which was attended by District Police Officer Jahanzeb Nazeer Khan, Zaigham Sana Warraich and journalists Basharat Lodhi and Waseem Ashraf Butt as resource persons.
The police officials and journalists shared their experiences on evidence collection and reporting at the crime scene, stressing better coordination between police and the media through focal persons at the police station level.
“The untrained staff in the media would often create fuss through undisciplined movement at the crime scene which may damage important evidence and make themselves vulnerable to the possibility of another violent incident at the site,” the participants opined and added that both the media houses and LEAs should adopt code of ethics for work at the crime scene.
They suggested to organise a one-day joint training workshop of police officers and local journalists with the help of the mass communication department of the University of Gujrat (UoG), saying that such interactive sessions should also be arranged at the police lines or at the press club.
( DAILY DAWN)
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