Video footage of a police shooting in Dagenham may have been lost after an American company refused to hand it over, a court has heard.
Camera company Ring rejected requests to access the victim’s doorbell footage, saying it would only supply it if a court ordered it to.
But British coroners do not have the power to serve court orders in other jurisdictions.
The potential loss of key evidence was revealed at a pre-inquest hearing over the death of Giedrius Vasiljevas, almost a year after he was shot dead by armed police.
Mr Vasiljevas, a 40-year-old Lithuanian man, was killed by police at his home in Weston Green, Dagenham, on November 23, 2023.
His shooting is under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
But IOPC lawyer Victoria Jackson told East London Coroner’s Court on Thursday, November 7, that at present, no wrongdoing has been found.
“No officer has been served with a misconduct notice and there is no criminal investigation,” she said.
An inquest into Mr Vasiljevas’s death was opened on December 13, 2023, where his medical cause of death was given as a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
Senior coroner Graeme Irvine said that after obtaining the deceased’s GP records, he had learned he was an intermittent patient of the North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) – Barking and Dagenham’s mental health trust.
NELFT’s records revealed Mr Vasiljevas was also known to a local drug and alcohol dependency service called Change Grow Live.
His family has filed a misconduct complaint against police – which was not detailed in court – and had also asked for his Ring doorbell footage to be downloaded and checked.
But Mrs Jackson told the court that strand of the investigation had been thwarted by Ring.
The Amazon-owned company manufactures doorbells with cameras inside them. The footage is often uploaded to the internet behind a password, so only the owner can see it.
“There was a suggestion that the footage may have been recording during the incident,” said Mrs Jackson.
“We made efforts to try and preserve that with Ring, but as they are an American company, we were really struggling.”
She claimed the company said it could not release footage without permission from Mr Vasiljevas or evidence that he had given a family member permission to access it.
“The family don’t have that evidence,” said Mrs Jackson, adding that permission to access doorbell camera footage is “not something that you would expect somebody to have written down.”
Ultimately, she said, Ring told the IOPC that “the only way they would comply was through, essentially, a court order.”
As a result, she concluded, “We weren’t able to access that footage.”
Mr Irvine said he had tried to help through “diplomatic channels”, including “liaising with a Californian judge”.
“I tried to be as helpful as I possibly could, recognising that this material could be of use to both the IOPC investigation and to the coroner’s investigation,” he said.
But still, the footage was never supplied.
It is the second time this year that Mr Irvine’s efforts to investigate a death have been hampered by his inability to order the release of evidence from overseas jurisdictions.
In June, an inquest into the death of Camden barrister Michaela Danso heard how the United Arab Emirates had failed to hand over a single piece of evidence about her death in a Dubai jet-ski accident.
“Not that long ago, the Foreign Office had quite significant sway in acquiring evidence,” he lamented at Mrs Danso’s inquest.
“Unfortunately, it seems that that has diminished considerably over the years.”
Mr Vasiljevas’s family have been declared interested persons in his inquest, entitling them to interrogate evidence and question witnesses.
The Metropolitan Police Service and the IOPC were also described as interested persons.
The court heard Mr Vasiljevas’s death will be considered by a jury under Article 2 of the Human Rights Act, as is typical in police shootings.
It will not take place until summer 2025 and is expected to last between three and four weeks.
“This is the loss of a family member and for that I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the family,” said Mr Irvine. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss… I don’t underestimate how difficult this process must be.”
Ring has been approached for comment.
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