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“Riots” in Vancouver.
Very good live radio, helicopter and on the ground reporting tonight, when the Vancouver team played for the Stanley Cup.
Tens of thousands who came to view outdoor screens of the game were caught up in a scene of a few square blocks of chaos.
Vancouver lost the game and as that became clear, protests began. A teddy bear was set on fire, a police car was overturned and set on fire and over the next three hours four or five prominent buildings had their windows broken and some bold souls, mostly twenty year old males, entered and looted boxes of makeup.
As of now they have not gained entry to the Future Shop where the stereos and TVs are.
I think it is finished, the people who came into town to celebrate the Canuck victory tonight, hyped by the excellent marketing of hockey in Vancouver have hopefully found somewhere to spend the night. The drunk ones might have a more difficult time.
This police confrontation with the people turns my thoughts to why this is the chosen outlet for those hockey fans — is it simply that the system allows no other form of expression?
It will be a difficult morning for people who work in the downtown core, but again that is four square blocks. They will see broken windows and vomit on the street.
I hope that they will also see that this is a successful use of police to keep the peace, and that things did not get out of hand.
Successful deployment of hundreds of police, a dozen mounted police, a few police dogs and perhaps twenty riot cops with shields, and some smoke bombs, flash-bangs and pepper spray bombs were able to turn away the crowd of some thousand or so onlookers and photo opportunists and vandals.
So there should be no call for police escalation.
Posted by: jonku | Jun 16, 2011 4:10:13 AM | 67
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Now compare that with what I heard Don Cherry tell the puffmaster flash, Rick Cluff, this morning on the local CBC, which was that it was all the fault of left-wing pinko governments and their left-wing pinko media enablers that won’t let the police break heads and take care of everything. Cluff, of course, let it all go and instead extolled the virtues of Cherry’s suit jacket from last night which just gave the latter an excuse to take a shot at gays…. Seriously.
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