After the Game 7 riots in Vancouver, police made one thing clear: By any means necessary, they were going to indentify those who took part in the riot.
That meant a massive social media effort in which people crowd-sourced the identities of alleged looters and arsonists; it also meant the Vancouver police scouring hours of footage themselves to find the perps.
As we near the 1-month anniversary of the June 15 riots (how will you celebrate?), it seems more than a few people who took part in them have owned up to their roles. From the Vancouver Sun:
A total of 34 rioters have come forward, but none has been charged. Nearly 50 investigators and civilian experts — up from 43 last week — are looking at about 600 gigabytes of data; they want email submissions to be sent to riot@vpd.ca.
That presumably includes photos from Facebook sites like this one, which has been publishing photographs with visible faces and continuing the debates about how and why these riots happened.
Of course, police want to ensure they won't happen again, so that could mean a few riot suspects becoming symbols of the repercussions for their actions. From the Sun:
After the riot, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu had a warning for rioters in hiding. "If you wait until we find you — and we will find you — we will arrest you in a public manner suitable to the public crimes you have committed."
Which hopefully means smashing in the windows of their house and burning their car. But probably not.
Meanwhile, remember this guy? He's offered an apology:
Finally and unrelated to the video above, photographer Rich Lam commented in this story on the aftermath of that iconic kissing riot couple photo he snapped.
About the accusations it was staged: "I took it as a personal attack on me, my ethics, my integrity as a newspaper photographer."