Pressure-cooker emergency crises get high-tech solution from Vancouver startup
VANCOUVER — When Stanley Cup rioters rained chaos onto Vancouver’s downtown core in June 2011, holes were exposed in the capabilities of police trying to stop looting and arsons.
Communication between police was so bad that teams deploying tear gas accidentally dispersed crowds into streets being cleared by other squads. Radios were so faint in the din that many officers relayed messages on foot.
It took police over four hours to curb the destruction, which spurred more than three years of investigations and prompted about 1,260 criminal charges. Detectives collected 5,000 hours of digital video that was examined by 50 forensic analysts over two weeks at an Indianapolis laboratory.
But the effort, cost and injuries suffered that night could have been minimized had a high-tech solution been available.