IIO missing the obvious, again
On Thursday afternoon a robbery was attempted at the Canadian Tire store on Grandview Highway at Rupert in east Vancouver. The suspect, Daniel Peter Rintoul, 38, a large white male, 6’1”, 380 llbs., allegedly stabbed a clerk in his 50’s then broke into a long rifle cabinet. Whether he retrieved one or more rifles and ammunition depends on which reports you read.
What I do know is that on Friday I was contacted by Global TV reporter Rumina Daya to review five minutes of citizen journalism video and to comment on it. Snippets of the video were broadcast on Global’s six o’clock news hour broadcast that evening. You can watch those reports here.
On the video you can see two VPD plainclothes officers attempt to arrest the large man as he exits the store. In the ensuing ground fight, the sort of wrestling match police officers everywhere get in on a regular basis, one of the officers clearly gets stabbed multiple times. He jumps up holding his abdomen, points his weapon at the big man and fires. His partner is extricating himself and in the video it’s not clear if he fired his weapon as well.
The stabbed officer then falls backward. A uniformed officer carrying a long-barrelled weapon trains his weapon on the downed suspect outside the kill zone of 20 feet.
The stabbed officer’s partner moves quickly to check on his downed partner, sees the wounds, quickly gloves up and begins first aid. The suspect can be clearly heard screaming numerous times, “Finish me off.” The officer with the long-barrelled weapon, keeps trained on the suspect and keeps his distance.
As the suspect is yelling and starts getting to his feet he lets off a blast of bear spray. You can clearly see the spray being released as he is yelling at the police to kill him. When he gets to his feet with an arm extended, likely with the knife used to stab two people so far, more shots are fired. Judging by the sounds I heard, it sounds like a short volley of C8 and 9mm suggesting another officer is present and fired but is not apparent from the viewpoint of the video shooter.
As the second volley of shots is being fired, the partner who was applying first aid to the stabbed partner, grabs the downed officer by his collar and drags him from the fray. The second volley of shots killed Rintoul.
The following day, VPD Chief Constable Adam Palmer told the assembled media that an elderly male hostage was taken by the suspect prior to exiting the store. Fortunately, that man managed to get away and wasn’t harmed. How isn’t entirely clear at this point. Perhaps that’s where the VPD injected themselves into the fray. On the video I viewed, that wasn’t clear.
But Palmer also said the following, “The actions of our officers were absolutely heroic. I’m very proud of the way they performed yesterday.” Good for the Chief because that is exactly what I saw on the video.
Palmer continued, “We tried to use the least amount of force possible to take him into custody, and when that was not possible, lethal force was used.”
And good on the Chief I say. It happens far too rarely that a senior police executive takes a stand backing his people at the sharp end of things. So far, I have seen that several times from this Chief.
As is the norm, the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) was called in to investigate the actions of the police. While I harbour no illusions about the competence of the IIO, I was a little surprised to see a communication come from the IIO Monday, four days after the shooting, asking for anyone who had video of the events to please come forward.
Well, I saw five minutes of raw video on Friday, the day after the shooting provided to Global BC. Several days later the IIO is asking folks to voluntarily come forward with video?
They already know Global has video which has been broadcast. Gee, I don’t know, maybe their crack investigators should write an Information to Obtain a Search Warrant to get a judge or JP to issue a warrant they could produce to Global.
News organizations won’t simply provide evidence like that to police when asked, but they will when instructed by court order. The media expect that. They have to maintain a separation from authorities and they probably already have a DVD cut awaiting the IIO. That’s just a guess, but I bet I am not far from the truth.
The video was broadcast on the six o’clock news on Friday. A competent investigator should have been standing in their newsroom before the credits were rolling. Or at the very least within a couple of hours. But to issue that sort of vanilla plea for information and video from the public four days later, followed up by a press conference in the hopes citizen journalists who provided video to newsrooms might come forward just speaks to their level of competence.
The initial Chief Civilian Director may have been pushed out the door and a career bureaucrat meekly put in his stead. But, if I were one of the VPD officers designated ‘subject officers’ having been involved in this “heroic” incident, I’m not sure how much confidence I would have in those holding me in judgment.
-30-
Leo Knight
@primetimecrime
Crime & Punishment 
This won’t take long.
Leo, you’re doing it again. Any competent investigator familiar with major crime would know that an action would be generated that would require an investigator to collect all available video evidence. That would include an appeal to the public since the incident happened in public, in the event that video was taken by a witness which the investigation has not yet collected.
To fail to make such a request would leave the integrity of the investigation open to allegations that it was incomplete. There is an obligation when conducting oversight investigations to collect ALL the evidence, not just pick what supports your theory of what happened. Makes sense right?
Also i strongly suspect you wouldn’t know one end of a warrant from another and if you did, you’d know they take time to write. Again, you’re revealing in your analysis your bias and that you don’t know your subject.
3/10. Try harder!
Paul Blart
November 17, 2016 at 6:06 pm
You assume much that is wrong and you missed the point. I am not critical of the IIO for issuing a public appeal. I am critical because they did not react to where they knew there actually was video. There is a pattern with them as I reported on in the Jordan MacWilliams case.
And for the record, I have written many ITO’s and am more than aware of what is needed to prepare one.
Leo Knight
November 17, 2016 at 6:41 pm
You both make good points….a plea to gather all evidence, and secure known evidence (media), …..Perhaps the timeliness of the plea would satisfy competence issues. It has the appearance of someone doing an “Oh by the way….” Or “Hey I was just reviewing this and don’t forget to…..” which then leads to speculations on competence or hidden agendas as in the past.
Everyone wants the right thing to be done, but it needs to be done quickly and accurately. This can’t drag on like all their other files……the mental health of the involved officers takes a beating when these things stall……they question their own judgement, beat themselves up to see if if there was some, any other way…..in the end, the right thing was done at the time and hopefully they know that and the sooner the report is released the better off the system will be.
Putting the mental health of officers on the back burner while someone learns to cut their teeth on a critical investigation, I believe is what the underlying complaint that is revolving around the IIO is. The “system”……. IIO included, needs to find balance!
Let’s get through the witch hunt era, move past the over cautious era to the efficient and competent era…..and hope the pendulum of Justice is balanced in the middle and not a metronome on an eight note/bar beat going back and forth with both sides out of step to the real beat of Justice!
The public deserves this, the police officers who protect the public deserve this, the lawyers who apply the law deserve this, and last of all, the accused or deceased’s family deserve this….then everybody needs to move on. No more assumptions.
Doug Bain
November 18, 2016 at 5:33 pm
I couldn’t agree more Doug. I have been calling for exactly this all along.
Leo Knight
November 18, 2016 at 7:32 pm
It only leads to speculation amongst people who don’t know better.
If you’re investigating an incident like that you have to prioritize; the incident happened Friday and a witness appeal went out Monday. Pretty quickly if you ask me. There is no rush to gain news footage because, guess what, its on the news and the website so can be viewed anytime. Can just imagine if they got to court and the defense produced video evidence that hadn’t been collected.
Again the problem here is that the chief witch hunter doesn’t know the process so just picks holes in it based on his investigation experience and complete lack of oversight experience.
Be nice to see some analysis of the incident. On first appearance it looks straightforward but these things never are.
A Sutton
November 19, 2016 at 12:35 am
What was on the news was a few seconds of the raw footage which lasted over five minutes. The station will keep what was broadcast and are under no obligation to keep raw footage and typically don’t for any length of time. That’s why it’s time critical.
Leo Knight
November 19, 2016 at 4:56 pm
Of course these investigations would be made far easier all round if there was always video. That could be the case if police simply wore cameras. But the heel-dragging continues. It would save anxiety for police and victims families, speed many investigations, save millions of dollars in the process, and above all provide an independent narrative that can’t be easily subverted by either public or police driven by their own bias or worse. The IIO’s job is made far harder the longer this pointless deficiency goes on.
Peter
November 19, 2016 at 7:06 am
How about some of the biased public releasing video that doesn’t’ capture an incident in its entirety ….. But then going on public venue soapboxes and claiming that the police abused some poor law abiding serial criminal ……cameras, audio, sure, what’s next? A car full of citizens riding around with the officer, why..? Well the cameras might not capture the wide angle so a car load would be civilian over site, right?
All because “we” don’t trust the police?….what a load of crap that is, …..who is this “we”?
It is the white haired, pie throwing civil libertarians who don’t trust the police. It’s the criminal who doesn’t trust the police. It’s black lives matter (a movement of criminals) who don’t trust the police……it’s the group of people who don’t abide by the laws of the country who don’t trust the police……….it’s the organized criminal organizations who don’t trust the police.
It’s not the 90% of the population who have no interaction with the police….nope, it’s not them.
Well if all police have to camera up, then how about allowing cameras in the skids and high crime areas to catch the real killers selling bad dope and robbing the elderly. No that would be a breach of someone’s privacy……it offends the common person when these civil libertarians push only their agenda for their means. I say put cameras everywhere…who cares….what do you have to hide?
If you’ve got something to hide, then just sit at home, laying on the couch, eating cheesies and watch old porn movies while hacking into Government websites with your laptop.
Or maybe, just maybe…….. just learn to accept that some people screw up, and then lie to their counsel and the court about the facts, and won’t accept any responsibility for their actions even if there is film at eleven.
Pedestrians are walking in front of vehicles consumed with their I-Phone, drivers are texting while swerving lane to lane 40 Kmh slower than the flow of traffic, road rage suspects assaulting people at large……but let’s camera up all the police.
If you camera’ up all the citizens just think of the drastic reduction in crime we’d have? Crimes stopped before they begin, Family assaults would drop, robberies would drop, the list is endless. Why don’t we push that agenda?
No let’s just put cameras on the cops and bitch about them!
Doug Bain
November 19, 2016 at 9:09 am
Police officers lie too.
A Sutton
November 19, 2016 at 11:41 pm
Well said Doug.
greencar
November 20, 2016 at 12:11 am
So, after I destroyed your first specious argument, this is what you’ve got? Thanks for coming out.
Leo Knight
November 20, 2016 at 3:05 am
Specious? Leo don’t use big words you don’t understand.
You can’t be that obtuse so you still don’t actually understand do you?
You complained that investigators weren’t in the newsroom to seize video quick enough for Leo Knight, super sleuth. And then you complain that they ask the public for video.
The two actions are completely un-related. There is no connection between the schedule for collecting video from the newsroom and and a public appeal for video evidence; please read up on major crime management as you don’t have a clue do you. As much as you do about warrants i’d guess.
The newsroom, you say, likely have a dvd waiting. Well then, do they just hold it for a few hours and then put it in the garbage? No, they have it ready and waiting for when the investigators do the necessary paperwork. Perhaps, i dont know, an investigator called them and said, hi Global news, you showed some video, we’ll need a copy please save us one the necessary documentation will follow. Just a thought. One thing i know if you would decide to send an investigator to the newsroom to watch it then you CLEARLY have never been anywhere near a major incident. This isn’t CSI.
Then, guess what, they sit down and say. Oooh, do you think we better check to see if anyone else had video too. Yes, that’s a good idea lets ask the public because this happened in a public place.
This is like taking candy from a Leo.
A Sutton
November 20, 2016 at 3:38 am
My God you are an ass. I used the word because I do understand it. Then you insult me. Your logic is nearly as flawed as Richard Rosenthal. Wait! This isn’t RR writing under a pseudonym whining about all the butthurt?
FTR, prior to me writing the piece I spoke with the newsroom and clarified there had been no communication from the IIO. None. Not a phone call, email, text or carrier pidgeon. I don’t speculate. I deal with facts. And the fact is the IIO looks incompetent on this file…again.
Have a good day Richard or whoever you claim to be.
Now go away.
Leo Knight
November 20, 2016 at 4:35 am
So here we go again.
All you do is speculate. You’ve no experience to speak from as you worked in uniform security, now that is a fact.
So you spoke to the newsroom (citizen journalist lol) and because the IIO hadn’t yet made arrangements to collect the video per Leo’s Schedule, the investigation is incompetent? Perhaps they were busy with a corpse and 2 injured cops? A crime scene. numerous scenes in hospital, civilian and officer witnesses, securing officer’s statements, seizing evidence, processing exhibits etc etc. All take priority over video. News footage is on the list for sure but it’s not going anywhere, it gets done when time allows. The team will have seen it and know where to get it. So much more to be done and all needs to be done now, but then you wouldn’t know would you?
Their press team maybe has already established an understanding with news that video will be secured and doesn’t have to do it every time an incident occurs for that very reason? Makes sense right?
Your skin is thinner than Trump’s…all you do is insult people on here without a clue as to what they are doing, based on your speculation about what they should be doing. And of course you just don’t know because you have never done this work, not even been close to it.
You think the IIO is incompetent? Take a look at your own logic. Its childlike at best. Ignorant but also arrogant that’s why you rant so freely because you don’t know any better and watch too much CSI.
You’re welcome to kiss my Ass by the way, my butt hurts from how much you make me laugh xx
Oh and don’t confuse me with Rosenthal. I’m much better looking.
A Sutton
November 20, 2016 at 7:00 am
Those who speak in generalities, with no credentials often are the dead weight on the coat tails of the real investigators. A Sutton to make a statement such as “Their press team maybe has already established an understanding…….? WTF Kind of a comment is that?
If there was any wrong doing discovered (and that is the sole purpose of the IIO) then an officer is getting dragged to court, that’s right, so be it, that’s the purpose, that’s the rules, but you’de better have more than a fucking understanding. If you think an understanding is going to stand up in court let me take you through a dry run…….”Your honour, we’re basing our entire case on an understanding we have with the press………they had a little snag and we were a tad busy with other equally important tasks, but a tape with some, but not all, video is on its way. We think…we hope….hey we had an understanding. May I suggest we take the morning break while we wait?”
You brought up MCM, did you read a paper about it once? Have you taken the training? Have you had the opertunity to work and apply the process or even run the file…….or have you worked an entire career and know the process in and out…..because that is what is expected here. Professionalism! I haven’t read any professionalism in your sniping from the sideline comments except to bitch at and mock Leo for a career you say is fabricated?
Rumour or innuendo?
If you in fact do hold a position in the IIO, you’de better pull up your pants and get to work. The collection of pertinent forensic evidence is crucial, there is absolutely NO ROOM for an understanding here! The police and the public expect complete and utter professionalism here at all times.
My first hand experience shows a true lack of what evidence to take and why its needed, here’s a true real life example…suspect’s throat slashed ( in the end by his own hands) in roll the IIO, “we’re now in charge here, you’ll have to back off”……..”Fair enough, how can we help?”…………. But to seize all and every firearm, weapon that could be used to disable or stop a suspect, all police cars and all computers that was at or near the scene leaving a department and a City critically low on resources is completely unnecessary, over the top, not required, not called for and clearly a rookie mistake……………..best part, ……….and then to leave each member at the call with their issued knife,…… when it was a knife that was the instrument of death? Seriously?
The Department and NCO’s have tried to guide and assist their investigators in the early days where it was obviously necessary to get the scene controlled, examined and cleaned up…….which are the same pressures an NCO is under to control the scene, gather evidence, and then let it go. Can you imagine holding the Lions Gate Bridge closed for 2 weeks while they plod along with their investigation.
Hell, Kevin Falcon (Minister of Transportation) had a bird when the 2nd narrows was closed for 4 hours while a team extricated a jumper from beneath the bridge. Sure from the top it all looked clear save for a few cops running around, but to the team underneath swinging uncontrolled as the harmonics of traffic caused the bridge to sway and bounce. Not cool! Again you need to have a clear understanding of a situation, the dangers and what’s required to control a situation. In that case Kevin should have asked prior to making a statement…………anyway I digress…….
That was the time frame for the release of the equipment listed above……. In the knife call………2weeks. And not 1 item was actually required as evidence.
A. Sutton if you’re going to snipe please have more than an understanding. If you do in fact work for the IIO, do me thus, acknowledge where your weaknesses are, address them, learn from others mistakes, ask for help until you are there…….and don’t stop learning. Don’t be that arrogant not to learn. The IIO is a professional agency investigating professionals. The need to be professional is far more than an understanding, at the least it’s an expectation!
And to your earlier comment that “police officers lie too”………. Again you show that you have no inner understanding…..When they do, yes it happens, but when it happens they’re gone! Period………by that comment you’ve lost all credibility, and show no professionalism or respect, which leads me to believe that you’re none of the above, not involved in the profession, never was and nothing more than a waste of air rant. Thanks for your thoughts, misguided and misrepresented as they are!
Have a nice day sir!
Doug Bain
November 20, 2016 at 10:40 am
A corpse? The video aired a day later. As in more than 24 hours. A corpse?
Au contraire Richard, it is exactly because I do understand major case management I have been able to write about the errors, foibles and incompetence of the IIO. My first investigation of a first degree murder occurred in 1978 BTW and we got a conviction the following year.
Yes, I think the IIO is incompetent. I think it has been wrongly formed and needs, desperately, to be re-thought. Just two days ago the CJB had to explain, yet again, why no charges were applicable in a file forwarded by the IIO. That file was forwarded because a crime MAY have been committed when it was just cops doing their job. The members involved did not report or give a statement. That was noted in the Clear Statement by CJB. Why was that? Because there’s not a cop in this province who thinks the IIO is competent. Think about that.
The government screwed up in the formation of the IIO. They screwed up in allowing Jay Chalke to bypass the hiring process to hire you. And, they screwed up in standing aside, despite the litany of evidence that was coming forward about the flawed leadership because they could not or would not admit they got it wrong. Well, they did. And badly. Richard Rosenthal is an accident of history created by the incompetence of government. And nothing you say about my critique of government or the IIO will change that.
If the IIO wants to stop the criticism, perhaps they could start acting as though they actually know what they are doing. So far, there’s been little evidence of that.
Have a nice day Richard.
Leo Knight
November 20, 2016 at 2:20 pm
My name is A Sutton not Richard. I’d suggest if you can’t get that straight you shouldn’t have been anywhere near a murder scene. You say you investigated a murder in 1978, that is 38 years ago. Just shows how out of date you and your knowledge is. So having moved from one force to another you ended up on homicide. Gets more unlikely by the minute.
What was the name of the victim and the name of the convicted murderer? Where did the murder occur? I strongly doubt that you were anywhere near it, ‘we’ got a conviction tells me everything, maybe you were on a cordon but you certainly weren’t chief investigator.
A Sutton
November 21, 2016 at 3:24 am
You know not of what you speak. I was the trigger in the first degree murder case against Ronald Louis Hebig in the murder of Louis Wannebo in Langley in 1978. Please go do some research.
Leo Knight
November 21, 2016 at 7:53 am
A. Sutton, your lack of police knowledge is quite evident. Your lack of understanding of police culture and how a person can transfer between forces is expected, talk about the dark ages. Get with it! …it happens and people’s careers do continue. Some stay put and others make life style changes for a variety of reasons……..it is not a negative thing…but if you had been in the policing community, you’de know that!
Hell, this happens in any career. Are you on your first job?
So instead, you go on the attack in such a vicious personal way? …….you lose credibility with this type of insulting talk. Instead, why don’t you explain how things have improved in the IIO and reassure the readers that the agency is a very credible investigative agency.
Please “Reassure” the thousands of working police officers in this Province that the IIO is unbiased, fair, knowledgable, competent and more than capable. You are doing nothing to promote the respect that you obviously yearn for. Respect is earned by actions, not words……
Trying to personnaly put down Leo does absolutely zero for the credibility of the IIO. Surely you’re not that immature that you don’t recognize this. If you are within the IIO, which I now doubt, you’re comments only galvanize the opinion of many that the IIO is not a harassment free work place. You’re actually supporting Leo’s opinions and confirming some of his past comments.
Your obsession is consuming you….
Doug Bain
November 21, 2016 at 7:15 am
[…] I have previously written about what happened that day. If you’re interested, you can read that piece here. […]
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