News organizations should be forced to hand over footage of illegal activity, like the Vancouver riots, to help police catch those responsible.

     
Just like journalists , the police need the facts to be able to do their job. The police have a very important job that entails keeping the public and the community safe from possible threats. That is why it is important that the police have all the facts and every bit of information that can help them ultimately keep people like me and you safe. The police have every right to demand that news organizations hand over crucial evidence such as footage of any illegal activity because at the end of the day handing over that information could be the difference between putting a dangerous criminal behind bars or allowing them to freely roam the streets and be a threat to the public. In this case the Vancouver Riots that occurred directly afterward game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011 in which the Vancouver Canucks were defeated by a score of four to zero in the deciding game of the series. Hundreds of Canucks fans were downtown that day as the city was playing the game on a large screen outside.

Although the news organizations have a very solid argument to not provide the police with the footage from the riots, which includes challenging the integrity of the hundreds of innocent people who were just there to watch the game on the outdoor screen, but now the police will be including them in their investigation. But with all of that, the news organizations ultimately handing over the footage played a huge role in the police eventually laying out charges. Hundreds of rioters were expected to be charged after sifting through the footage provided by the news organizations. From a direct quote from Vancouver's chief of police he mentions that the number of charges will exceed the amount from Toronto's G2O riots. "Chu said the goal is to lay the most charges for a single event in Canadian history, estimating the final tally will be in the hundreds, eventually exceeding the number of charges laid in connection to Toronto's G20 riot. "In Toronto they laid 317 charges after the G20. Our goal is to surpass that," said Chu."

From this result it will be clear as day that the news organizations helping out the police by handing over the video footage of the Vancouver riots played a huge rule in the police serving justice to those who participated in the devastating riot in downtown Vancouver. At the end of the day we need to give the police the opportunity to protect the public from criminals and if that means compromising some of the privileges that the news organizations hold then so be it. The police and the media should embrace each other. They can both help each other. The police can help the media by giving the news organization credit for providing them with the extremely essential information and using there platform to speak out to the public on the particular event and how they are planning on dealing with a certain event that involves the public. It is very important that police and the media have a working relationship. A situation like this where the news organizations such as The Vancouver Sun and The Province declined the opportunity to provide the police with the footage from the Vancouver riots needs to be avoided. News organizations and anyone else with any evidence that helps the police protect the community and serve justice to criminals should be inclined to provide it to the police so they have the every bit of information needed for them to do their jobs to the best ability that they can. Vice versa , the police should provide the media with certain facts that can help them and also the public be aware of what happened and what the facts are. In today's age many media outlets are more worried about being first on reporting the incidents rather than reporting then doing their homework reporting completely factual information. Some ways the media and the police department could work together in improving that include , the police being more inclined to provide the facts , and realizing that there is no harm in working with the media and actually taking advantage of the opportunity to get certain information out in the public by using the bigger platform that the news organization could provide.