Hurray for the Chief

You've got to give it up for the Chief of Vancouver's PD. He gets it ...

"The urge to rush to justice is basic and visceral and it is easy to see why many people want speedy arrests for the Vancouver rioters. Despite these external pressures, the Vancouver Police Department-led Integrated Riot Investigation Team will not cut corners and rush cases to court in order to appease those who want fast “justice.”

Many have expressed frustration with the Canadian justice system especially in light of the swift prosecution of the British rioters. But Canadian police and Crown attorneys operate under our laws, not foreign laws. The Integrated Riot Investigation Team (IRIT) and our prosecutors have set out to do the best possible under the current Canadian laws and court precedents. We work within the system as it stands.

The main hurdle we have been dealing with during our investigation is the unprecedented quantity of multi-format video evidence. We received more than 1,600 hours of such video. It would take years to process using conventional methods. We have taken this huge volume of digital evidence to a special lab at the University of Indianapolis, the world’s leader in processing digital evidence. Video experts from around the world will create a single-format video stream. We will be able to catalogue each riot participant and locate each case of vandalism and looting that the person committed. And then we’ll present that evidence to the court ..."

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As it turns out, there were more than 5000 hours of video in this complex case. Reflecting back on my role in the IRIT, I was yet again the "Adobe guy." It seems that no one who was present in the opening days of work was proficient in performing batch rename functions on large volumes of data. Being the "Adobe guy," I knew that this task was easy using Adobe Bridge.

There are certainly other tools that could perform the function, but Adobe Bridge makes the job fast and easy. Using Adobe Bridge, I was able to append case and evidence ID information to the file names of the volumes of evidence we received for processing in an afternoon. In this way, those tasked with further processing did not have to perform this task manually, which often leads to mistakes.

I am very grateful to the VPD Chief for his sending a formal commendation and certificate to my chain of command for my work on the IRIT. 

Enjoy.