Canucks Central

[Overground]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Frankly, I'm getting quite annoyed at the Mayor and Chief Chu for trying to shift the blame onto proefessional anarchists. Its simply not true. Great column in the National Post about it:

Good article. That's been frustrating me too when I hear people say that these aren't true Canucks fans doing violence. Umm....no, they are. They're true Canucks fans who also happen to be assholes.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Classic missunderstanding here, everyone blames the police for lack of pushment or convictions. The key to the problem is out judicial system. For it is the judges who hand down these extremely light sentences. The police have no true power, that is why they often become complacent because they arrest the same punks all the time committing property crimes, theft, etc.. but they receive little to no punishment. So why bother arresting them again and going through all that paper work if nothing is going to happen to them?

Also i love how much social media has been able to track these thugs / idiots down. Social media is essentially open media, if they are dumb enough to post pics and brag about their crimes on such websites, then i have no problem at all with people re posting their shit and hanging them out to dry. There are only so many police, and the public helps out in a big way here identifying the core culprits.

Now if people started going after them physically or damaging their property, then I would agree that would be going too far and then we would have a true vigilantly problem on our hands.

And I agree as well, no special treatment, it does not matter how nice of a boy / girl people say they are or how affluent their family is, everyone should serve the same punishment for the same acts.

I'm not an idiot. If you read the sentence I wrote right after the one you highlight, I do shift some blame onto the court system. But it starts with the police. The police need to track down the worst of the worst, identify them, and recommend charges before anything happens. But if the police after today just go, yep, we did everything we could and stop investigating, then dozens of the scummiest citizens of this city will get away with contributing to one of the worst events in city history of the last 15 years. There were people who committed serious assaults on innocent people and those are the people I want found the most. But if the police don't investigate the assaults and robberies, the court system doesn't even have a chance to dish out justice.

Why do all the work if the court system just keeps releasing the same people over and over? Because it is their job! It's why we pay them. I would rather live with the revolving door justice system we have now than have the police give up on policing and just let criminals stalk the streets unchecked.

[allan_kuan]

Just to merge the two thoughts together... both need work, plain and simple. One needs to be more visible and possibly proactive (without risking provoking more reaction), and the other has to process cases well and hand down good sentences depending on what those rioters did that night.

If everything works in tandem then it all gets better... in theory... certainly budget troubles will probably leave a hole somewhere, but meh...

[SpikePhanta]

Originally Posted by allan_kuan

Interesting you mention that image with the tough-acting Chinese kid. Apparently from FB rumors and observations:

- this high school student who lives in Richmond has since been caught
- he just got arrested and expelled from school after friends noticed the match
- seems to be well-known; friends are surprised at his actions
- was part of Cadets (not sure when or where)
- FB profile pic of him smiling in biology lab certainly doesn't fit this image

(This post has been edited from before. The following is a summary of the 15+ lines that were written earlier, to ensure completeness with the reply below.)

The latter point makes me wonder... certainly he should know right and wrong (especially being a Cadet), and we have the history to prove that these actions will not be tolerated... But then again, the profile pic is distracting me... criminal records + tarnished reputation will already hurt lots, and I'm not a fan of creating hardened and "better criminals" with longer sentences aka US prison system. So should the sentence be longer or shorter? I dunno. =O

The police interviewed him and let him go and he is not expelled.

The water polo guy seen lighting the police car was expelled from his private school, scholarship revoked.

btw go to notable alumni here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McRoberts_Secondary_School

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Let's hope you are not employed by the Fire Department in any way, for your grasp of the basic physics of fire and how it spreads is both laughable and frightening.

You just don't know what the word "almost" means.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

So, as any rational person can see, we were very lucky not to have had major fires throughout the downtown core, no thanks to the authorities who dithered and hesitated.

In all likelihood the authorities who hesitated probably saved a life or two. The police in Boston took a more aggressive stance with rioters in 2004 after a Redsox playoff game and predictably the violence escalated and in a panic a police officer shot a projectile into the face of a 21 year old girl who was killed by that projectile. And there have been two other deaths in Boston riots, which were much smaller in comparison.

So I ask you this. Is it possible that the police taking a more patient stance saved a life or two?

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

You just don't know what the word "almost" means.

Groan.

Look, you obviously don't grasp the Law of Causality. But since it's patently clear that you are not a member of the Vancouver Fire Department, that's fine with me.

Move on.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Groan.

Look, you obviously don't grasp the Law of Causality. But since it's patently clear that you are not a member of the Vancouver Fire Department, that's fine with me.

Move on.

Your over the top hyperbole doesn't help anyone. Move on.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by logan5

In all likelihood the authorities who hesitated probably saved a life or two.

So I ask you this. Is it possible that the police taking a more patient stance saved a life or two?

Bless your heart, logan5. When you commit yourself to a position, you really commit yourself.

The answer to your question is no.

As a result of Wednesday's riot, we had multiple stabbings and at least one critical head injury, not to mention 150 hospitalized. Even if the person with the head injury does not die, it is clear that we were very lucky that there were no deaths. These potentially fatal injuries could have been prevented in the first place had the riot itself been prevented.

Your problem stems from your insistence on maintaining this cockamamie notion that had the police acted proactively to detain the initial troublemakers engaging in the very first acts of crime, the crowd would have become enraged for some reason and a massacre would have ensued. This is absurd. The opposite is true. By acting in a timely and professional manner to stop the initially small number of criminals from overturning and burning the first car (i.e., the very event that ignited the riot), the police would have brought greater calm to the crowd and thus prevented the riot from happening at all, along with all the potentially fatal injuries the followed from it. Thus, it was police inaction that put lives at greater risk.

Not only is your argument with the facts, it's now with Bob Whitelaw, the man commissioned to investigate and write an analysis and more than 100 recommendations for British Columbia’s attorney-general and the British Columbia Police Commission after the 1994 riot:

The 2011 Stanley Cup riot will be remembered as much worse than the 1994 riot, the man who investigated the 1994 riot says.

“I am astounded and professionally very upset,” Whitelaw said. “Some of my findings were not adhered to last night, principally, the parked cars in the downtown area, when trouble began those cars were damaged, and they didn’t disperse the crowds quickly enough, or have enough exits going before the cover of dark.”

Whitelaw says the police were lulled into a sense of security because things went well in the first six games.

"The first six games set the police up in a complacency mode: everything is going well, everybody's having a good time, let's back off; apathy then came into the play: let's just let them have fun, and then denial that anything was going to happen, and boy, it sure unravelled last night," Whitelaw said.

He said police were too slow to intervene, and there may not have been enough of a police presence downtown.

"I saw more police standing around waiting for instruction," Whitelaw said. "What they could've done, was to be more proactive."

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/2...547/story.html

But, of course, you know more than Bob Whitelaw and will be commissioned anyday now to write an analysis of the 2011 riot.

Good Heaven's.

[logan5]

I provided an example of a more proactive response, but you completely ignored it.

And there are plenty of examples of police using more proactive responses in these situations, resulting in death.

[xd_1771]

Let's put the big picture on the stage, not just one lone example in a riot where thousands of people may be involved. Prometheus and Bob Whitelaw both do seem very right concerning the police response and lack of pro-activeness.

[Overground]

I walked to the leafy and placid West End after the game and the violence was not isolated to the downtown core. No one mentions other areas. There were fights right on the street down there and I saw a guy with half his head covered in blood from a random attack. There was ZERO police any where to be seen. A fire engine had to break up a large fight.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by logan5

I provided an example of a more proactive response, but you completely ignored it.

Your confusion never ceases to amaze. The example you gave was not of a more "proactive" response. Just the opposite. The example you gave was of a riot already in progress and how the police reacted to it. The issue we have been debating, by contrast, is what the police should have done before the riot began in order to prevent it from happening in the first place.

On Wednesday night, a proactive approach would have been to maintain a much greater police presence during the game and calmly detain the initially small number of agitators the moment they broke the law, not to mindlessly shoot cannisters of tear gas into a then-innocent crowd.

Now, speaking of completely ingoring something, what about the position of Bob Whitelaw, the very person commissioned to study the 1994 riot and write recommendations for police to follow in order to prevent or mitigate future riots? Your flimsy intuitions are explicitly contradicted by the expert who wrote the definitive, scholarly analysis of the 1994 riots and over 100 recommendations to the Attorney General and Police Commission on how to deal with future riots like the one we had on Wednesday. What do you say to that?

Nothing that makes sense, I am sure.

[WarrenC12]

Search youtube for the WTO riot in Seattle, 1999, and to a lesser extent the G20 summit in Toronto for "active police involvement" in a riot, and tell me which scenario you prefer. Honestly I'm not sure, but those are the examples we have.

Granted there was a much more organized anarchist element involved in those riots.

Jim Chu said today that the Vancouver city council never denied a request for funding. I don't know if he's taking a hit for the Mayor or what, as I've seen the opposite reported as well.

[mr.x]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You can never win.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Search youtube for the WTO riot in Seattle, 1999, and to a lesser extent the G20 summit in Toronto for "active police involvement" in a riot, and tell me which scenario you prefer. Honestly I'm not sure, but those are the examples we have.

Granted there was a much more organized anarchist element involved in those riots.

Jim Chu said today that the Vancouver city council never denied a request for funding. I don't know if he's taking a hit for the Mayor or what, as I've seen the opposite reported as well.

There is a difference between organized riots and mob mentality.

The WTO in Seattle was a staged event by the protesters and they used very organized tactics to incite riot days before the event even happened. They had a large group and went down there and caused shit. The Seattle police also were late to react, thinking that the peaceful protesters would block the Black Bloc protesters. The Seattle downtown was filled with people who were looking to cause trouble.

In Vancouver, we had a crowd that was mostly upset hockey fans with a few agitators sprinkled around. When the agitators started smashing the car and flipping it, and nothing happened, other people joined in while everyone else just watched. It's like when I was a kid, and someone was being picked on in the school yard, everyone else would gather around and start picking on them too, until a teacher showed up when everyone would run. When there is no authority, people behave very strangely.

Most people were not there to be in a riot, but by the time the police did anything, there was one. Had the police shown force, most people would have fled early on or not joined in. Yes, by showing force there would have been some people who would retaliate, but anyone stupid enough to fight the police would have done it then, or like what happened done it later by the Bay or Sears.

The police took a long time to react, which encouraged people to move towards the violence (to gawk at it) instead of away, which in the end made it hard for police to react when they finally did. By taking time to react it only made the crowd feel safe in their behavior, which encouraged them to do what they did.

[invisibleairwaves]

There's been a couple of articles now in the Vancouver Sun and (of course) the Georgia Straight saying the riots were the outcome of a capitalist, consumerist society.

I give up on this city.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Your confusion never ceases to amaze. The example you gave was not of a more "proactive" response. Just the opposite. The example you gave was of a riot already in progress and how the police reacted to it. The issue we have been debating, by contrast, is what the police should have done before the riot began in order to prevent it from happening in the first place.

On Wednesday night, a proactive approach would have been to clamly detain the initially small number of agitators the moment they broke the law, not to shoot cannisters of tear gas into an innocent crowd.

The Vancouver Sun story, which you endorse enthusiastically by saying "that's a damning read!" has the head of the police union Tom Stamatakis saying that there was only a fraction of the officers needed to prevent a riot and that the city needed probably 5000 officers instead of the 6 or 700 that they had in order to deal with a crowd of 100 000 and keep a lid on things.

Would it be wise to initiate a more proactive response when you are severely undermanned, even in the first stages of the riot, as you would have liked to have seen? I think maybe you mean a more preemptive approach.

And your expert, Bob Whitelaw contradicts himself when on one hand he says there may not have been enough police presence and then goes on to say that the police should have been more proactive. This guy's an expert and he wants an undermanned police to be more proactive in a crowd of 100 000?

[freeweed]

Disinterested observer only reading to get a local perspective here...

Wow, there sure is a pompous, arrogant windbag on this thread, absolutely and utterly 100% convinced of his position and unwilling to even budge a millimeter. Funny too, because his beliefs stand in direct contrast against more than a century of law enforcement experience with crowd control and minimization of human casualties.

Thanks for the rest of you being able to at least have actual discussion on the issues. It's been interesting.

[BCPhil]

Instead of police enforcing our laws we had this:

• Video Link

The guy that got decked was trying to light a car on fire.

At this point the crowd hadn't fully turned (and it never really did, most people were just spectators) and if the police were able to move a bit faster and disperse the crowd, perhaps this wouldn't be needed and less violence on the street would have taken place.

Many people were just standing around taking pictures because they didn't feel the need to get out of there because of the slow response from police. If more people had been scared away and discouraged early on in the riot, perhaps we wouldn't have people almost dead in the streets at the hands of each other.

I don't feel bad for the guy that got clocked at all, but we are a city of laws and people shouldn't have to resort to protecting their own city like this. These city defenders in this video are much more lucky than some others that were sent to the hospital.