Commentary on Sections Supplementary Section 41: Powers of law enforcement officers to retain documents
141.This section provides law enforcement officers with powers to take copies of and retain documents. This power is needed in light of the possibility that an order will contain a condition requiring a person to produce documents as set out in section 5(5). Subsection (1) provides that the officer may take and retain copies of, or extracts from, documents which are produced under the terms of an order, and that he may retain the documents themselves for as long as he considers necessary for the purposes for which they were obtained. Subsection (2) provides that a law enforcement officer may retain documents until the conclusion of any legal proceedings if he has reasonable grounds to believe that the documents may have to be produced in the proceedings, and that they might not be available for those proceedings if he did not retain them.