The trial of the civil cases brought by four Vancouver residents against the Vancouver Police Department in respect of the so-called “Riot at the Hyatt” has been adjourned generally. The trial was to have commenced September 22, 2003 and was expected to last some eight to ten weeks, since the Defendants planned to call about 70 police officers as witnesses. All of the plaintiffs claimed that they were unlawfully assaulted by members of the VPD’s Crowd Control Unit outside the Hyatt Hotel on December 8, 1998.

Meanwhile, an ‘external’ investigation by the New Westminster Police Department into the affair, at the direction of the Office of the Police Complaint Commission, is set to wrap up no later than November 27, 2003. It has taken the OPCC almost five years to deal with the complaints of police brutality filed after the Hyatt incident. Our clients are cooperating fully with the investigation.