Publishing the words of a dying police officer as he lay trapped under an overturned minivan was an appalling breach of ethics and trust and could jeopardize the investigation into the death, the officer's chief said Thursday.
In a letter of complaint, York Regional Police Chief Eric Jolliffe called on media outlets to apologize to Const. Garrett Styles' family and remove the radio transmissions from their websites.
"The transmissions depict Const. Styles in obvious pain and distress," Jolliffe writes in his letter to the Ontario Press Council and Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
"I am, quite frankly, appalled that the media would post these audio recordings in such a callous fashion."
Just before dawn on Tuesday, police say Styles was dragged 300 metres before being pinned under a minivan he had stopped.
Several media outlets, including The Canadian Press, published or broadcast parts of Styles' call over his police radio.
In the transmission, the married father of two young children pleads for someone to get the minivan off him, while the dispatcher urges him to keep talking and tells him help is on the way.
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