Andrew Loku inquest hears tampering with video of police shooting would be 'almost impossible'

The inquest into the police shooting of Andrew Loku continued Tuesday with questions about why some key pieces of security video appeared to be missing from that night.

The 45-year-old man was shot and killed by a Toronto police officer responding to a 911 call from inside Loku's apartment building on July 5, 2015.  The caller reported a man with a hammer was threatening to kill someone. Within two minutes after police arrived, one of the two officers fired two shots. 

The actual shooting was not captured by the security cameras in the building near Eglinton Avenue West and Caledonia Road, though Inquest counsel Michael Blain has said there is video that shows Loku walking towards the two officers with a hammer in his hand.

The province's police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), concluded Loku, a father of five who came to Canada as a refugee in 2004 and hoped to bring his family to live with him here,.was shot when he refused a command from the officers to drop the hammer, and the SIU decided not to press charges.

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The inquest has heard he suffered from PTSD, after being kidnapped and tortured in Sudan. He was also a recovering alcoholic and a toxicologist testified his body was found with more than three times the amount of alcohol legally allowed for driving. The coroner's jury also heard Monday that one hour before the shooting, other police officers had stopped a confused Loku, smelling of alcohol, driving his e-bike on the Don Valley Parkway.

The gap in footage has led to criticism and questions from community activists and critics of the police about what may have happened. An SIU report raised concerns after a police officer viewed and downloaded the security video, an action that potentially "threatened to publicly compromise the investigation." 

'It didn't look like it was tampered with'

Two witnesses testified at the inquest on Tuesday it's highly unlikely someone could have tampered with the video from that night.

Jack Zhang, a technical support supervisor from a company that sells the cameras, blamed old technology for the recording issues. He explained that the cameras are always on but are only triggered to record if there's movement. In poor lighting, as there was in the apartment building hallway, they may not turn on. 

Zhang noted another issue was that the camera had been set to a low sensitivity, meaning not all movements would set off the recording.

"It didn't look like it was tampered with," he said. He called the choppy footage typical for apartment buildings using older cameras.

"You see this person [who] suddenly appears halfway down the hallway."

Andrew VanOosten, a computer forensic investigator who assisted the SIU in its investigation, also took the stand.

"To take out a 10 second clip, I would say it's almost impossible," he told the inquest. "It may be possible but I can't do it."

Jonathan Shime, the lawyer representing Loku's family, questioned VanOosten, who only retrieved the footage for the SIU on July 9, 2015, four days after the shooting occurred.

VanOosten, who usually works for the Ontario Department of Finance, responded that that's when the agency contacted him.

He also said he never did his own forensic investigation of the video for the SIU report, instead relying on the explanation from Zhang about the gaps in recording. He said the SIU had only contracted him to retrieve the footage.

Only in April, 2017, preparing for the inquest, did he investigate independently and came to the same conclusion, that no one had tampered with or deleted anything on the video.

The security footage is expected to be released during the inquest. It continues on Wednesday.