Police have recommended 60 people be charged with 163 charges total after their alleged participation in what is known as “the Stanley Cup riot” on June 15.
Charges include participating in a riot, mischief, assault, and break-and-enter.
“This is just the beginning,” said Vancouver police chief Jim Chu.
The youngest charged is a 16-year-old boy, with the oldest being a 52-year-old man. The youngest woman charged is 17-years-old, with the oldest being 22.
Of the 60 charged, 35 per cent are from Surrey.
The most charges recommended against one person is 10.
Chu said every day they receive more tips and more charges are expected.
Using three cases, police described how they arrived at recommending some of these charges.
The first involves a 21-year-old man from Vancouver Island. A few days after June 15 he saw his picture posted on Facebook, and he contacted police and wanted to apologize for damaging a car. Now, armed with the data in the video files, investigators were able to search for other instances for the man, and exposed new charges including inflicting damage to other vehicles and break-and-entering.
The second case involves a 21-year-old man from Burnaby. “His fate was sealed by DNA at the scene,” said Chu. The man is known to police and has a previous criminal history. Police were able to arrest this man at his home, and were able to arrest the man for other charges including assault after seeing photos and videos of him on the night of June 15.
The third case involves what Chu called the ‘white-belt rioter’. Police saw a man reaching through a window, but that is not a crime in itself. When police looked further into the case using the man’s white belt as a marker they were able to discover he not only stole a dress, but was later seen running down the street with it and then throwing it into a fire.
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Chu said More than 15,000 criminal acts were tagged in the video database.
Where do the recommendations go from here?
Five experienced prosecutors have been selected to handle the riot-related files, according to Crown spokesperson Neil MacKenzie.
“We’ve cooperated closely with police since the riot, and Crown has received material over the last couple of weeks,” he said.
He said Crown will proceed with the charge assessments as quickly as possible, and said they will follow the steps as in any other case.
“We anticipate, given the abundance of video and photographic evidence… that some of the evidence used will be quite compelling,” he added.
They have looked at dividing files by key locations, such as near London Drugs on Georgia, or near the live site, however with some people allegedly committing offences in multiple locations, prosecutors will work closely together to make sure they know what the others are doing.
More photos will continue to be added to the riot website.
Police have faced a lot of criticism in the last few months for not recommending any charges to the Crown following the riot.
They have maintained that they wanted to complete their investigation and then recommend charges, rather than rush the decision only to have the case thrown out in court.
“The people who rampaged that night must be held accountable for their actions, as the VPD will be held accountable by the courts for how we investigated their crimes,” said Chu.
“We wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Our reporter Ted Field took this video at the press conference on Monday:
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