The Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Police Department threw statistics at reporters Monday morning, but the number of people charged for rioting and looting on June 15 remains zero.
Insp. Les Yeo claimed that would soon change. The head of the Integrated Riot Investigation Team said the force is "still on schedule" to recommend charges against 40 people from the Stanley Cup riot to Crown counsel on Oct. 31. Yeo said many of those charged will be accused of multiple offences.
Yeo said officers took 30 terabytes of data, equal to 7,500 DVDs, to the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association's Digital Media Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis and yielded 5,000 hours of footage.
"We knew the numbers would exceed our initial estimation of 1,600 hours," Yeo said. "However, to avoid corrupting and compromising files, we didn't want to delve deeper until we got down to the lab."
Yeo said there were 40 forensic analysts from 50 law enforcement agencies who worked around the clock to process images over two weeks. They examined 100 different video and photograph formats. The 1994 Stanley Cup riot involved only 100 hours of footage and VHS and Beta were the only formats. Mobile phone use was limited and none were equipped with cameras.
"We now have the ability to identify a rioter in a situation where we only had a camera shot of their leg kicking in a store window, by tagging him from another location," Yeo said. "We now have the ability to see video footage of a rioter committing multiple criminal offences, instead of just a single offence."
The University of Indianapolis website said the laboratory "is used to train investigators in analyzing video evidence. The lab does not process evidence from individual cases." A YouTube video released Monday by the VPD offers a look inside the classroom-like lab, which includes a sign on a wall reading "Digital Multimedia Evidence Processing Lab."
Spreadsheets cover part of the walls as people appear busy watching computer screens among several rows of desks. One investigator is seen viewing what appears to be video footage of looters flooding into a London Drugs store.
Yeo also showed off a new "two-four" on the Riot 2011 online rogues' gallery. Two dozen photographs of unidentified persons of interest from the riot were added Monday to riot2011.vpd.ca.
Yeo said 65 males and 14 females have turned themselves in. Of those, only 17 are Vancouverites. There are 20 from Surrey, eight from Burnaby, six from Maple Ridge, four from North Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»and three each from Abbotsford and Langley.
Meanwhile, charges were dropped last Thursday against Joshua Lyle Evans of Calgary, who was wrongly accused by Chief Jim Chu of possessing a weapon dangerous to the public peace on the night of the riot. Chu announced the allegation at a June 20 news conference. Witnesses claimed 27-year-old Evans actually disarmed a knife-wielding man who stabbed a friend in the 700-block of Hornby Street.
Aggravated assault charges against Edgar Ricardo Garcia, 20, of Burnaby were stayed.
