TORONTO – Non-functioning cameras and inefficient practices at community housing complexes may be hampering homicide investigations across Toronto, according to a Toronto Police Homicides Detective.
Just after 9 p.m. on July 20, police responded to a report of a possible shooting at 9 Driftwood Court, a Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) building. Thirty-year-old Donald Levy of Brampton was found on the scene with a gunshot to the head.
He was with his two-year-old child at the time of the shooting, police said. Levy was rushed to hospital, but later succumbed to his injuries.
Three of the cameras at the TCHC complex on Driftwood Court were not working according to Homicide Detective Paul Worden of Toronto Police. To obtain video from the functioning cameras, the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) device had to be taken to TCHC headquarters, leaving the complex without video surveillance for almost 24 hours, Worden said.
No TCHC official was available to speak at length with Global News, but they did note that a recent inventory review found just three per cent of the corporation’s video surveillance cameras were not working.
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Worden, though, says malfunctioning or damaged cameras are a problem across the city’s community housing complexes.
“When we attend the housing complexes to investigate murders, quite often the first thing we do is look for cameras or video surveillance in the area,” Worden said. “The cameras have been damaged, there’s various ways to do this, they can be spray painted over, they can be ripped out. Or in some cases, the lenses can be ripped off.”
The problems don’t end when the cameras are fixed, as the Toronto Police do not have the software to download the images. Worden says they are forced to wait for TCHC security officials to provide them with the images, and though the security officials are trained, they sometimes can’t keep up with the demands of the police investigation.
“The officers that come are doing a good job, they work very hard, but in a lot of cases we need extensive video from numerous cameras over a large area,” Worden said. “They just don’t have the expertise that’s required to accomplish what we need. Despite their best efforts, it’s just not done.”
In the days after the deadly shooting at a TCHC complex on Danzig Street in Scarborough that left two people dead and 23 people injured, it was revealed that the public-housing complex had no video surveillance.
Fourteen-year-old Shyanne Charles, and 23-year-old Joshua Yasay were killed during the shooting on Danzig – Toronto’s largest mass shooting.
Importance of Security Cameras
Video surveillance plays an important role in homicide investigations. Worden told Global News that quite often one of the first things police do during an investigation is to check video surveillance for evidence.
“Video surveillance is a very useful tool in investigating possible suspects, identifying witnesses, seeing direction of travel, where our suspects may have gone,” Worden said.
While witnesses are always helpful in a homicide investigation, Worden said they have their faults and witness testimony is often imperfect – surveillance video, though, can provide an “objective” view.
“There are frailties, and the courts have recognized the frailties of eye-witness testimony,” Worden said. “Video surveillance cameras are an objective observer of what’s going on. It accurately records what’s being done, in some cases, what’s being said.”
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