To the rest of the world, the riot following the Canucks/Bruins Stanley Cup Hockey game last night is an embarrassment, and many of us are extremely angry at the rioters (mainly young males) who caused so much damage to the city.
My heart broke to see the police cars on fire. I would have liked to have seen the army there to shut the situation down as fast as possible. I would have liked to see the police blast those who were in the downtown core with water or tear gas or what have you because those thousand individuals cost the rest of us in the province a lot of money that our taxes will have to make up - and we will have to pull money from education and healthcare, etc to pay for this horrific event.
Seeing looting of The Bay, London Drugs and other stores was very sad. Learning that the audience from The Queen Elizabeth Theatre who had come to watch the second night performance of Wicked were locked in the building and basically held captive was appalling. Watching innocent by-standers cars/trucks be destroyed was dreadful. I'm just so glad there weren't any children caught in it.
Don't blame the police they did the best they could, and for some reason society watches them more closely than anyone else. And perhaps with all the video that the crowd took and will most likely post all over the internet, I hope the cops can make multiple arrests. These people were fearless, disrespectful and ignorant and they all deserve to pay. I hope their parents are embarrassed but the reality is that the parents were probably just as drunk/stoned/whatever and cheering them on.
The police should have pushed them back into the ocean, like lemmings - if they're going to act like animals they should be treated by animals. I don't know if anyone died last night, but that would be a real shame to lose your life to such a meaningless event. And although I feel that we could have had more police a little sooner - I thank each and every emergency responder last night for doing at terrific job. There better not be any stories of police wrongdoings following this event because they did the best they could. I know I wouldn't have been able to face that crowd down, that's for sure.
We are embarrassed and angry at those 15-25 year old boys that ruined the city and tarnished our name in the eyes of the world. My faith in humanity is slowing being restored as I hear about all the wonderful volunteers that are in the downtown core today cleaning up the mess. I've even been told that the students at the Vancouver Culinary Institute is handing out treats to the volunteers - now that's a little more what Vancouver is known for.
4 comments:
It's a shame that that happened. I spent Monday to yesterday in Prince Rupert and the vibe was so positive. I was in Vancouver over the long weekend in May and the vibe was awesome!
It is an absolute shame, and we're all very upset by these jerks that took advantage of the situation. I hope the cops go through all the internet photos and Facebook posts and arrest as many as they can. Most seemed pretty proud of what they'd done and had no problem getting their pictures taken.
They're slowly getting payback now. Many of them are getting arrested and some even turning themselves in. Here's a little update about a few of them here -
http://blog.deliciousjuice.com/2011/06/16/only-human/
The list will be growing as the weeks pass. The VPD has so much video to go through now, they've got huge backlogs. It will take some time, but many will go to jail, I'm sure. There is even some talk of having the guilty parties make some kind of financial restitution as well. We can only hope.
The city was much more cheerful today and looking much better.
Thanks for the info Carol, I'm glad to see things are getting better.
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