*** No video evidence can be used in court, unless their forensics team have come to your property and seen the files downloaded on the physical media which they then take away ***

This is the latest alarming news received this morning of our seafood neighborhood police adopting ridiculous procedures which will get in the way of law enforcement. 

The new The Forensic Science Regulator Act 2021 is being interpreted by them incredibly badly as meaning no video evidence can be used in court, unless their forensics team have come to your property and seen the files downloaded on the physical media which they then take away, so they can later tell the Judge that what they are showing the court is 'true'.  

As they can't say that what was downloaded is 'true' - by definition it will be extracts from a video stream, and probably stored in the cloud, the process is pointless! I mean how do you define real? 

If the video stream goes from your camera, up to Amazon, and then you later download it to your phone, which part of that is original footage? What does "unedited" mean? If you add privacy shields, does that mean the video is edited? Strictly speaking, the answer is yes it is because that is not what the camera originally captured, the privacy shields on added to the video feed not captured in real time... 

And far more worryingly, this introduces a whole new layer of doubt they can now smear all over perfectly good video evidence of crime.

I have literally just been instructed that any video evidence I wish to submit in court must conform to this new, ill-defined, nebulous standard!

". .any original unedited footage that you wish to keep is downloaded to a memory stick or Disc, and in line with what I have been told this should be done via the Forensic Imagery team coming to your home address or have a police officer present when the download is done. This way a statement can be made for the evidential chain.

In regards to any further footage that you wish to send me it will have to be done by the above method to stay in line with the codes of the act."