Did police Chief Jim Chu roll the dice by choosing a former Vancouver cop to analyze riot evidence?

“Every single DVR case is a research project to determine what the best method of processing is based on how the images were produced in the first place.”

In other words, they have to get it right during the analysis stage to stand up to any possible tough probing by merciless defence lawyers.

Police Chief Chu is on the record as saying, during an August 17 news conference, that without “a full examination of all the evidence” police would be risking “weak cases with acquittals, bad case law, and little or no penalties”.

Unfortunately for Fredericks, the Vancouver police, the Crown, and (two years ago) the RCMP—and even Christy Clark, in her current populist, get-tough-on-crime, cameras-in-the-courtroom stance—aspects of that technical prowess were pretty much dismissed during the two-year Braidwood Commissions of Inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of Taser-wielding RCMP members at the Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

Fredericks came in at the last minute to testify as an expert for the RCMP. He claimed that his extensive examination of the only available video of the events leading up to Dziekanski’s tasering and subsequent death showed that he took “three distinct steps forward towards [an RCMP officer]”.

This would support the RCMP’s contention that the Polish immigrant was combative or displayed threatening behaviour, thus justifying their use of multiple Taser shocks.

But the lawyer representing the Polish government, Don Rosenbloom, brought in an expert witness in photogrammetry, Mark Hird-Rutter, who testified—as related in Braidwoods final report, issued on May 20, 2010—that Fredericks’s conclusions were predicated on “flawed methodology”. He said “it would be wrong to use them to determine the movement of Mr. Dziekanski”, and he testified that Fredericks’s use of perspective geometry to determine distances is “mathematically very weak”.

He also criticized Fredericks for using only two sets of measurements “to determine the scale change between [video] images (when the industry standard is at least 10)”.

Another witness for the defence, Duane MacInnis, an expert in the field of incident reconstruction and with an applied specialty in forensic photogrammetry, dismissed Fredericks’s opinion about Dziekanski’s forward movement as “not technically supportable because of measurement errors”. (For more on this, see pages 194-200 in the Braidwood commission’s final report.)

And Commissioner Thomas Braidwood, a retired B.C. Court of Appeal justice, agreed wholeheartedly. In dismissing Frederick’s testimony in his final report (“I am not prepared to rely on Mr. Fredericks’ analysis”), Braidwood cited as reasons: “His verification methodology was flawed…I accept the opinions of Mr. Hird-Rutter and Mr. MacInnis on this issue”, and “He has no special expertise in determining steps from shoulder movements”.

Because of that, Braidwood wrote: “In the absence of such expertise, his opinion deserves no greater weight than the opinion of any other careful observer. I have watched this segment of the Pritchard [airport] video many dozens of times, and I have been unable to detect the three methodical step movements Mr. Fredericks described. Even if I am wrong and Mr. Dziekanski did take three distinct steps forward, Mr. Fredericks’ opinion is of questionable significance, since he repeatedly refused to estimate distance, even a distance as small as one inch.” (For more on this, see pages 244 and 245 here.)

Perhaps more embarrassing for Fredericks was the May 25, 2009, exchange during the inquiry between him and Rosenbloom at the start of the lawyer’s cross-examination of Fredericks.

Given the subject matter of the commission, Rosenbloom thought it natural to ask Fredericks if he was aware that TASER International, whose product safety was the principal focus of the first stage of the inquiry, was a major corporate donor to the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA). Although Fredericks has his own video-analysis company, he is also the senior instructor for LEVA, which set up the video-analysis lab and teaching facility at the University of Indianapolis where the Vancouver riot footage has been inspected.

Questioned by Rosenbloom, Fredericks testified under oath that he assisted in obtaining financial support for the LEVA program, but in answer to the TASER funding question, he replied: “I dont—no. I don’t think TASER even knows it exists and I’ve never had any involvement with TASER International—ever.”

Asked by Rosenbloom if he knew that “TASER has any involvement with the LEVA program”, Fredericks responded: “I can tell you that TASER has never ever, in any way at all, had any involvement in the lab that I’m involved in, in any way whatsoever.”

Queried as to whether or not TASER had any involvement with LEVA as an organization generally, Fredericks said he saw a TASER vendor table at a conference once, then reiterated: “And I do know that they have no financial involvement with LEVA and with the lab, and never have had.”

Asked yet again whether or not he knew of any TASER involvement with LEVA, Fredericks said: “No. I can tell you that I was intimately involved in the financial preparations of that lab, and TASER was never involved.”

Rosenbloom then produced a copy of a LEVA website page that showed TASER as a “featured sponsor”, in his words, and asked again, “speaking of LEVA, the organization, and their training program. Let’s forget the lab.…I have just presented to you a document that shows that the featured sponsor of the LEVA training program is TASER International, is it not?”

Fredericks’s reply: “No. That’s completely untrue.” The lawyer then showed another “document” that showed TASER as a “featured sponsor” of what Fredericks acknowledged was a LEVA training conference. A third document—supplied to Fredericks by Rosenbloom “just to nail this down”, as the lawyer put it, was from a LEVA web page entitled “To Become a Corporate Sponsor Member”.

Rosenbloom: “It lists the current corporate sponsors. TASER International is listed on page 2, and in fact is highlighted as the feature sponsor of the organization.”

A seemingly uncomfortable Fredericks talked about how TASER might have paid some money to show up on the page and rented a vendor's table at the conference but denied any knowledge of how much, if any, money went to LEVA.

The purpose of presenting this inquiry exchange is not to suggest in any way that Fredericks was untruthful under oath. The commissioner had nothing to say on the matter of TASER funding for LEVA. The point is that Rosenbloom wanted to paint a picture of Fredericks before he even started in on the technical aspect of his cross-examination. That and his own expert witnesses finished the job he set out to accomplish. (To read the entire entertaining transcript of the cross-examination, read pages 65 to 90 here.)

Photogrammetry may have little or nothing to do with the evidence presented in any possible future trials of Stanley Cup rioters. But the fact is that Fredericks presented himself as sufficient an authority to be considered an expert in that area (although that status was denied by the commissioner, who only granted him standing with “expertise in various aspects of photogrammetric measurement”) and testified that “a good number” of his expert-testimony cases in the past involved video measurements like the ones he performed for the RCMP in the Braidwood inquiry.

His methodology for those measurements was shot down by experts, with the final agreement of the commissioner.

That dismissal of his expert testimony, combined with his cozy relationship with the Vancouver police and his performance under questioning about the sponsorship by TASER International of the organization for whose University of Indianapolis lab he is lead instructor could have an effect on the weighing of evidence in future trials.

The Vancouver police are hoping trials won’t be necessary in the vast majority of the upcoming riot cases.

But their use of Fredericks and his LEVA-trained cops might give canny lawyers pause to reflect on the possibility of advising their clients to fight the riot charges.

Will those lawyers, perhaps with experts of their own—maybe even the same experts used to discredit the testimony of Fredericks during the Braidwood Inquiry—cause an enormous traffic jam in the court system and perhaps get their clients, guilty or not, off the hook when it comes their turn to face justice?

Wasn’t that just what Chief Chu was afraid of when he said he wanted full technical examination of all available evidence to avoid “weak cases with acquittals, bad case law, and little or no penalties”?