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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Same video analyst (former Vancouver cop) worked on Robert Dziekanski and Spokane Otto Zehm police perjury deaths

Former Vancouver police officer Grant Fredericks has become an “expert” in analysing police videos.

His website description says:

“Grant is a former police officer and coordinator of the Vancouver Police Forensic Video Unit in Canada. He is an adjunct instructor of Forensic Video Analysis at the National Digital Multimedia Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis and is a contract instructor at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, VA..”  http://www.forensicvideoexpert.com/

In the Robert Dziekanski case, he was brought in by counsel for  Constable Bentley and testified in the Braidwood case that Dziekanski moved toward the officers. His qualification to make this conclusion was shown to be very weak and although he descibed it as “photogrammetry” he was merely counting pixels. He didn’t come out of the Braidwood testimony well:

http://www.braidwoodinquiry.ca/hearings_transcripts/BraidwoodHearingsMay25-09.pdf

Braidwood’s conclusions are listed in this Georgia Strait article:

http://www.straight.com/article-489316/vancouver/did-police-chief-jim-chu-roll-dice-choosing-former-vancouver-cop-analyze-riot-evidence

Otto Zehm:   Now he is shown under questionable circumstances in Spokane’s Otto Zehm killing in 2006:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/apr/08/transcripts-reveal-officers-were-given-three-days/

Video expert paid by city, working for feds

More arguments are expected April 16 as attorneys for Thompson continue to press U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle to grant the decorated former police officer a new trial.

Van Sickle indefinitely postponed Thompson’s Jan. 27 sentencing after the judge was contacted in December by forensic video expert Grant Fredericks, who claimed that federal prosecutors misrepresented the conclusions he would have expressed had he been called to testify at Thompson’s trial.

In response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aine Ahmed has filed reams of documents and grand jury transcripts that refute Fredericks’ claims. The documents also show Fredericks wasn’t truthful about how he was brought into the investigation.

Fredericks, as late as last month, said under oath that he was first contacted by a county prosecutor to analyze the convenience store’s surveillance video. But emails from 2006 show Fredericks first contacted a Spokane police officer and offered his services in “helping” show that Zehm was using a 2-liter Diet Pepsi bottle as a weapon.

The allegations against Fredericks, who did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment, include providing “patent inaccuracies or inconsistencies” in two previous cases where Fredericks – a former Vancouver, B.C., police officer – provided testimony in defense of other officers’ actions. In one of those cases, four Canadian officers now face perjury charges based on assertions put forth by Fredericks.

The documents also, for the first time, show Fredericks was billing Treppiedi, the assistant city attorney, even after Fredericks completed his work for the city and started meeting with federal officials.

Because of a backlog of cases at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., federal prosecutors hired Fredericks to do a second video analysis, where he changed many of the assertions he provided the city. Federal prosecutors later found out that much of the work Fredericks did for the FBI was being funneled back to Treppiedi.

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