Police in Kingston, Ont., say they’re just trying to “get with the times.”
They recently shut down what they describe as an antiquated public alert system for police calls that led to a breach of privacy.
“We’re trying to have a healthy balance and do what others are doing,” said Scott Fraser, acting chief for Kingston Police.
Until recently, you could know almost instantly in Kingston if police were called to action, including where and why. Now, those days are gone.
Last month Kingston Police shut down the media portal and will rely only on news releases and social media moving forward.
Fraser said a recent complaint helped spur the closure.
“When we received the complaint in late January, that identified a location and a specific offence, it was pretty identifiable,” he said.
Fraser said that this person was unhappy, and felt that their privacy was infringed upon as a direct result of the media portal, when they were contacted by the media not long after.
“Obviously the people who the media contacted were not happy and they were contacting us to find out why we notified the media. It was then that we really did a deeper dive into the media portal,” he added.
Fraser said this wasn’t the only complaint over the years.
This, paired with a spike in officers killed in the line of duty in Canada, helped lead to the decision to shut down the portal.
“For us, at this point, you could look at it and say ‘Look how many officers have been killed this year’. Not saying the media are responsible for that, but we have to be very careful in what we release,” he said.
Fraser doesn’t think that it removes a layer of police transparency, because the Kingston Police are well behind many other Ontario police forces that have long since eliminated similar programs.
“Privacy concerns have changed immensely, and we’re often criticized about breaching peoples’ privacy and in this particular case the complaint was warranted because we did breach their privacy, and we shouldn’t have,” he added.
Moving forward, Fraser says it will be status quo, with police releases coming out regularly and social media channels being updated as well.
As for the future, it remains to be seen what advancement will come next.