As the result of a court order, half a dozen media outlets, including Global News, will be compelled to provide police with thousands of hours of video footage and photos taken during last June’s violent Stanley Cup riot. Chaos erupted in Vancouver on the evening of June 15, 2011 after the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final.
Global, CTV, CBC, The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun and the Province, fought a four-month battle to dissuade a judge from granting the Vancouver Police Department a production order to seize all visual images taken that night. The media group argued that the order was too broad and should only have been a last resort.
"The ability to operate independently is fundamental to the practice of journalism, and Global News will continue to vigorously defend this principle in the future. It is important for both the safety of our journalists, and the integrity of their investigative work, that they not be seen as gathering evidence for police,” said Troy Reeb, vice-president of Global News.
The video and photos will have to be turned over to the VPD on Monday.
Global News had about a dozen photographers on the ground that night. About 30 hours of video footage will be given to police.
Police say the images will help them identify criminal suspects. So far, they’ve recommended charges against about 100 people.
On Dec. 16, the B.C. Supreme Court denied an earlier application for a production order because it contained errors made by the Vancouver Police Department. A second, corrected application was accepted by the court on Dec. 21.
On Friday, the Vancouver Sun and the Province revealed to their readers all 5,481 images the newsrooms’ photographers took during the riot.
“Our readers know we are not in concert with the police. The courts have forced us to give police our images, so everything we give to the police, the readers will get to look at,” the Province editor-in-chief Wayne Moriarty said.
“It undermines our credibility to be seen in any way, shape or form to be working for the police,” he said. “We do not gather evidence for them.”
The Vancouver Sun also noted that many innocent people who came downtown to watch the game may be captured in the photos.
“The Sun and The Province are posting every photo online so readers can see whether their images are included in the massive police file assembled for the riot investigation,” the Sun wrote online.
The entire collection of images is posted online for the first time at http://www.pngphoto.com.
The photos document the destruction of millions of dollars in property in a matter of hours. Cars were torched, windows were smashed and dozens of businesses were looted.
Police estimate that a crowd of about 150,000 people took to the streets that night.
The media group has called on the VPD to return or destroy any legitimately relevant images after they are used in police investigations. The newspapers and TV networks asked that police respect the civil liberties of thousands of innocent citizens whose images they say should not be maintained forever in police archives.
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