As Piotr Słowinski, a journalist with Polskie Radio Wrocław, wrote, the basis for introducing the ban “is a classified document that cannot be seen. Łukasz Dudzic, who investigates irregularities in the police, believes that the ban is unlawful, and that the police station is a public facility serving citizens, not private property.”

We have written about Łukasz Dudzic many times in our pages. In 2009, he told us that he had never yet encountered an official in Poland admitting to a mistake. In 2012, he sent several letters to the Ministry of the Interior and Administration in which he pointed out mistakes by officers of the Bolesławiec District Police Headquarters.

Now, as PRW reports, Dudzic decided to record the entire process of submitting a complaint about the officers’ actions at the station’s secretariat. And the problems began. “The duty officer would not let me enter with a camera,” he told the Wrocław outlet. “I informed the provincial headquarters that the officers were preventing me from filing a report.”

Although police officers in uniform may be recorded without asking their permission, the aforementioned ban is in force at the Bolesławiec station. “Permission to film can be obtained,” Anna Kublik-Rościszewska, spokesperson for the Bolesławiec police, explains in an interview with “ii”. “For example, when I bring a journalistic crew into the station, it automatically receives permission to film. However, we do not want an outsider to know where every department is located. We have a confidential office and move various documents around. Moreover, injured parties sit in the corridors, and such a camera could record them too. They surely would not want to be recorded in such circumstances. If someone comes to the station, it is for a specific purpose, not to film the corridors of our headquarters.

There used to be a reception desk at the station, but it was closed for technical reasons. The police now want to restore it. This is supposed to solve the problem.

Details on the PRW website. We will return to the subject. What do you think?

PRW/ii