Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu said on Wednesday that officers have been told they don't have blanket authority to seize cameras from the media or the public. (CBC)

Vancouver's chief of police has apologized for the seizure of a newspaper photographer's camera following a police shooting on Sunday, and clarified his department's policy for seizing cameras and video equipment.

"I am here this morning to advise you that the Vancouver Police Department has formally apologized to the Province newspaper for retaining the camera belonging to their photographer Jason Payne for longer than we should have," Chief Jim Chu told reporters during a morning news briefing.

An officer seized the camera for about an hour because he believed it contained pictures of police shooting a man as he tried to ram a police car with a stolen truck. The man suffered leg wounds from the shooting.

Chu said the crime scene in East Vancouver was chaotic and officers could not tell that Payne was a member of the media.

Province newspaper photographer Jason Payne speaks with a police officer at the site of the shooting on Sunday afternoon. (CBC)

Payne said he was manhandled by police and forced to hand over his camera when he was threatened with arrest.

Chu said officers have since been told they don't have blanket authority to take cameras from the media or the public, unless they have made an arrest, have a warrant or believe important evidence may be destroyed.

Chu said that when seeking images of crime scenes captured by the media, police know they can track down images later. But with the general public, it may be necessary for police to seize images immediately or risk losing track of valuable evidence.

The officers were acting with the best of intentions, he said, adding that police were not trying to stop people recording events.

"If you want to go on YouTube and search Vancouver police there are tremendous amounts of video footage, right? And we know that.… We are not out there trying to stop people from doing that at all," he said.

The seizure of the camera after the shooting is now being investigated by the New Westminster Police Department, following a complaint from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Last month police seized the cellphone of a man who claimed to have recorded video of the fatal police shooting of a man on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver.

The man later said he believed the officer deleted his recording of the event, but attempts to recover any recording from the camera's memory yielded no results.