Johnny Lam - Manager, Infrastructure and Client Support, Vancouver Police Department
Vancouver, BC V5K 5J5
Johnny Lam is a civilian IT Manager for the Vancouver Police Department. He testified at that trial in 244069-10-BC.
During Lam's testimony on direct, he made admissions which completely destroyed the prosecution's case. So the prosecutors (Ryan Elias and Tara Laker) requested a recess, took him outside, and when we reconvened he completely changed his testimony. Then, when I cross-examined him he consistently responded he has no knowledge of whatever I was asking him about - even when I asked him the same questions he already answered for the prosecution, and even when they were questions which he, as the IT Manager for the VPD, would have to know as part of his job. Ultimately, the judge (Jennifer Oulton) accepted the parts of his testimony which worked against me, and ignored everything else.
The main purpose of Lam's testimony was regarding the VPD's network access logs Splunk network access logs, for 2022-05-16 - 2022-05-17, which I had obtained through disclosure. Those logs showed that on the dates the VPD claimed they were able to access the desicapuano.com website, no one from the VPD actually attempted to access anything from that domain. In other words, the Vancouver Police were lying about the website being online!
What Lam Lied About
In case you're wondering what it was that Lam lied about on the witness stand:
The Splunk network logs referenced above, are for the entire network, for all proxies, routers, gateways, et cetera, on the VPD's network. Not just for a particular proxy server. Splunk is software that consolidates the logs from the entire network so that the system administrator doesn't need to check each machine separately.
So, initially, on direct-examination the prosecutor asked him whether the Crime Data Analyst (Catherine Meiklejohn) goes through the proxy server when she accesses a website using the Hunchly software. Lam first correctly responded that she does. The prosecutor immediately realized this: a) completely destroys their case; and b) proves the VPD was lying about accessing the website on the stated dates. The prosecutor immediately requested a recess and took Lam outside. When they resumed their direct-examination, Lam claimed he was mistaken and that Meiklejohn doesn't go through the proxy server when she accesses the internet. That is, of course, completely 100% false (and I'll provide the proof of that in a little while)!
Then, later, when it was my turn to cross-examine Lam, he suddenly had complete memory loss and was not able to remember anything about VPD's network configuration - even though that is exactly his job! He literally responded to every one of my questions with some variation of "I have no knowledge of that" - even though "knowledge of that" was exactly his job as an IT Manager for the VPD!
Once I have the transcripts of Lam's testimony, I will provide them here.