In what has become a media battle between the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) who shot a suspected car thief in the Strathcona parking lot across from our film set, and a photographer for The Province, Jason Payne, who was subsequently beat up by police in front of our best boy for photographing the “clean up” operation, we have been looking and finally found a photo of our truck in the midst of it all.

The VPD is spinning articles to try to rationalize the controversial shooting and the Province paper is trying to play up the assault on their photographer who’s rights were violated. Rather then confine their investigation to the parking lot where the shooting took place, the the Vancouver police (VPD) taped off the entire Strathcona neighborhood, including our 5-ton lighting and grip package truck, preventing us from completing our shooting day. They were investigating each house trying to get a handle on who had witnessed the incident in order to best spin their media story of what happened.

In case you missed the published media stories, here’s ours:

On Sunday April 5 in broad daylight an unmarked gray police cruiser carrying 4 officers in civilian clothes pinned a stolen black Ford F-350 pickup truck in a Strathcona parking lot across from our set by ramming into it. The driver spun the wheels on the F-350 trying to push free of the cruiser, but was not able to gain traction, and the rubber on his wheels started smoking. A cop shot the suspect at close proximity through the passenger window and hit him in the neck. Photographer Jason Payne of the Province arrived as they were pulling the body out of the car as did our best boy, nicholas-kandie; who then witnessed the cops physically restraining Jason and confiscating his camera.

The Ford F-350 was apparently wanted by the police already in connection with a recent hit and run incident in which a hooker was dragged down hastings street 400 block with her jacket caught in the side door.

This is the second police shooting to happen in three weeks. On March 20, Vancouver police shot and killed Michael Vann Hubbard, 58, in downtown Vancouver. Approached by two officers, he was shot after he pulled out a small x-acto blade. A witness, Adam Smolcic, who videotaped the shooting on his cell phone said  ‘he was very shaky, but he wasn’t making any moves toward the police at all.’ His phone was confiscated and the video was erased by the Vancouver police prior to them returning it.

Threatened by The Province, the Vancouver Police spokesperson Constable Jana McGuinness released a diagram of what happened in the parking lot which caused the police to shoot the car thief…The scale was accurate about the size difference between the F-350 and the Police Cruiser, but we weren’t so sure about the pigmy sized cops and the gigantic protruding wheels. Even so, we decided to add our own modification to better understand the scale in terms of TALCO technicians who can single-handedly carry 18K HMI and C+stands on their shoulders, and who’s 5-ton lighting and grip package truck is larger then an F-350, a Crown-Vic Police Cruiser, and a parked car combined!

We like the scaling on ours better!