Sir Purrcival wrote:KIA, I have to disagree with your assessment of the police. They handled this issue much better than last time IMO. If they had gone in with guns blazing, then that would have escalated the situation. Again and again, we saw a systematic approach that over time made it less and less likely that there was going to be an all out confrontation. The morons lost steam pretty quickly. 3 hours to quell a riot seems pretty well handled to me. Especially when there were no deaths and little in the way of heavy handed allegations that are often hurled at the police when they do decide to play hardball. For the most part, it was all property damage (not counting the damage to our psyche). In the end, they didn't really care about that, all they wanted was to wear down the crowds, keep from being a focus for escalation and that is exactly what they did. There were more people at this event than in 94 and yet it took far less time for it to disperse. We are going to have some fun over the next few weeks as rioters are outed. We saw one of the first tonight. A Maple Ridge youth, athlete and "Olympic" hopeful. They got him torching one the police cars. His parents say "he didn't do it" but the CBC footage clearly shows him in the thick of it. He is going to pay big time for his stupidity and he is but one of the first. Some have already been fingered trying to sell ill gotten gains on CraigsList too. Should be some interesting stories coming.
Yes, the police were greatly outnumbered and probably would have been ineffective in actively attempting to intervene.
However, there should have been a lot more of them.
Also, some radical thinking here but, if they had not been so stupid as to not expect things to go as they did, they could have been prepared with creative crowd control methods. Such a blocking certain streets with firetrucks and with police protecting the firemen, using the hoses on the crowd. Or even more radical, but possibly more effective, how quickly could firefighting planes dropping water disperse the crowd, not to mention putting out fires. At least it might have influence most of the "watchers" to hurry up and get out of there.
I just feel they should have done something other than what they did. Vancouver is my home town. I grew up there. I lived in the west end for a few yrs. I was often downtown. I hung out there during my late teens and early 20's. I was really emotional watching it unfold with the police appearing to do nothing. Specially when it came to the bay building. 50 years ago, my great aunt used to take me downtown for various reasons and we would always stop at the bay in the basement to have a malt. That bay building is special to me, stupid as that may sound. That it seemed like it was under threat of fire, serious fire was heartbreaking and frustrating. And the police just let it happen. or almost happen. It moved me to tears out of saddness, frustration and anger.
