Some Dziekanski Tapes Erased?
By 250 News
Friday, April 11, 2008 05:35 PM
A Vancouver Sun report says some of the Vancouver Airport security camera videos taken the night in mid October when Robert Dziekanski was tasered and died, have been erased.
According to the report by reporter Chad Skelton, several hours of footage were "inadvertantly erased by the Canada Border Services Agency a week after his death."
Dziekanski spent several hours in the customs area after arriving from Poland.
Skelton's report says "a CBSA officer reviewed all the agency's surveillance footage from that night to see if it provided any indication of what Dziekanski did for several hours in the customs hall.
That review found Dziekanski was picked up by CBSA cameras only about a dozen times, and just for a few minutes each time.
Between 4:15 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. -- a five-hour stretch -- the officer couldn't find Dziekanski on any of the footage, something the agency later said may have been due to construction in the area blocking camera angles.
The officer who reviewed the footage copied all the clips he found of Dziekanski onto a video disk.
However, weeks later, the CBSA decided it should take another look at all the footage to make sure it didn't miss anything.
"This is a significant undertaking, but close review may provide some additional information," John Dyck, head of the CBSA's Pacific Region Program and Communications division, wrote in a Nov. 1 e-mail to regional director Blake Delgaty. "We have requested that the full time period from all cameras be loaded to DVD for further review."
Unfortunately, by that point the original footage had all been erased.
In an e-mail to Dyck the same day, Binder Kooner, head of CBSA passenger operations at the airport, explained that there had been some confusion over how long the footage would be stored before being erased.
"I'm advised that footage was originally available for 16 days but due to subsequent modifications to the surveillance system, the footage is now only available for 7 days after which it automatically erases," Kooner wrote.
"The footage is no longer available."
Kooner added that the CBSA officer who viewed all of the footage would write a declaration stating any clips of Dziekanski were included on the DVD.
Still, Dyck wrote back that "this is an unfortunate turn of events; we were under the impression that steps had been taken to preserve the video."
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which is investigating Dziekanski's death, said Thursday it wasn't aware the CBSA's original footage had been erased.
However, IHIT spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said the team is not worried because one of its investigators reviewed the complete footage before it was erased and was confident all clips of Dziekanski are on the DVD."
Critics say the news of the erasure of the tapes does little to reassure the public the investigation of the events leading up to Dziekanski's death is complete.
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Posted by: owl on April 11 2008 10:34 PM
Well, that's okay then.