Riots in Vancouver over Stanley Cup Loss...

[Persephone]

How pathetic.

I am so ashamed to be a British Columbian tonight.

[sheena]

Totally agree with you, bunch of thugs.

[sheena]

Wow - forgot about the riot after the 7th Stanley cup game Vancouver vs New York Rangers in 1994. Seems like mostly young guys looking for trouble - causing damage and mayhem. Unbelievable - hooligans - good name for them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Il3UlV2ars

[sheena]

Fast forward to tonight punks causing damage - I really don't think these are hockey fans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGoQQdHR4Pk

[grommet]

I completely echo your sentiments. It's a total shame that these one-off hooligans are being focussed on. As well, it's too bad that such effort couldn't be put into such dastardly issues as the HST, violence against women, poverty or other such important themes. Get your priorities straight and seriously, lay off the booze! Tonight, I'm happy to be a Habs fan!

[riverrat]

I think most will agree, though, that this is not about "the Stanley Cup Loss".

It's true, what grommet says about that irony -- how all these young people can get so excited about the exhilaration of a mob situation (and free ipods/Pringles, sure) but they won't extend that enormous enthusiasm to volunteer for international relief efforts, or to protest corruption, or to develop campaigns to raise awareness....

[Persephone]

While it may not be directly due to the loss, I think its fair to say that it stems from the loss.... They wouldn't have been out and about like that causing trouble like this if it had not happened... And of coarse, with all the "spectators" egging them on, who wouldn't want to cause trouble!

oh baby's awake! gotta go.

[nza]

cocktail molotovs aren't that easily accesible. Instigators put some thought into making these improvised incendiary devices (pre-meditation?). Win or lose, they would've been deployed. IMHO anti-riot units presented considerable restraint.
Throw in "mob mentality", the "morbid curiosity", the innebriated, the beligerant...and you have a perfect storm.

Having provided Subject Matter Expertise on the tactical overwatch for Olympics, I am pretty sure, VPD enacted the same protocols and plans that were recommended. Divide and conquer, Sacrifice city assets to focus and identify instigators, crowd thinning...its all a tacticians dream come true.

[Persephone]

Sorry! I had to run so I kinda abruptly had to end my post...

What I meant was that obviously they knew what they were doing, and it was planned for the night of the stanley cup final...... that it wouldn't have happened on just any ordinary plain borning night..... The stanley cup final was a "good" event for them to wreak their havok...

Anyway, none-the-less, they are morons and so on and so forth.

[Nostradama]

and won't be the last. The first I personally remember was in Montreal, March 17, 1955. Clarence Campbell, NHL president, had suspended Maurice Richard, Montreal Canadiens, for the balance of the season, and during the playoffs. The riot began right in the Montreal Forum when Campbell and his group attended a Montreal game against the Red Wings and had things thrown at them during the game (OK, I checked Wiki--the "throwing" continued for several minutes.) It continued outside, with $100,000 in damages (you can probably multiply that amount by at least ten to even approach today's costs), including all the usual: cars being burned, store windows being broken, thirty-seven people injured, one hundred arrested. Others may have longer memories or know more about hockey history, but I remember it as the first major hockey riot. Considering the times, the more law-abiding 1950s, it was a huge news story and taken at least as seriously as last night's "Battle of Vancouver".

I'm disgusted, but I'm not ashamed. These brain-dead, mouth-breathing, knuckle-draggers aren't hockey fans. Never were, never will be. Some of these (mostly) guys showed up well in advance of game time wearing t-shirts that read "I'm here for the riot."

I'm a cranky old fart, and I'm tired of the way civilization is moving. It's not just Canada, it's not just North America--it's everywhere. But this is an opportunity to change some Canadian laws and put some teeth back in them.

While the London Drugs employees in the Georgia & Granville store hid in the back as the store was partly ransacked, the London Drugs cameras were still operating, providing very clear pix of who was taking electronics, cosmetics, etc. And out on the streets, people were taking pictures, with the police asking today for as many pictures as people will send in to track these morons down.

I'm spending part of the rest of the day blasting out e-mails asking provincial and federal politicians to tighten up Canadian laws, so that charges for offences like this really mean something--not one or two years' probation or a year of house arrest. If this had happened in some other North American cities, police would have waded in with riot batons much more than last night, and possibly firing into the crowds. I'm not recommending that, but judges and the courts in Canada need to have laws that do more than just give these goons a rap on the knuckles and that's it. As things are right now in our justice system, the sentences, if any, need to be much, much tougher than they are right now. The police and the judges need more than we're giving them right now to act on.

But I will never be ashamed to be a Canadian and a hockey fan--a hockey fan right back to 1948, with Foster Hewitt Sr., CBC radio Saturday night "Hockey Night in Canada", and the old "Hot Stove League" between periods. This is not what real hockey fans want, and it's not something they'd do.