Riot 2011

This is just a quick post the morning after with my gut impressions.

• Yay for the City of Vancouver for having the fanzones. They clearly needed better security (IE: don’t let drunk people in), but it was good to give people a place to congregate and celebrate.

• That said, the rioting broke out in the Georgia fanzone. It’s pretty clear that the police didn’t have enough people to keep the peace.

• They really should have had volunteers to help keep things orderly. There wasn’t nearly enough police there to manage things by themselves.

• Likewise, all those people just hanging around and taking pictures and videos? They should’ve put down their phones and done something, even just boo-ing the troublemakers.

• I ain’t got no proof for this, but I strongly suspect the troublemakers would’ve gone downtown last night anyway, even if there weren’t a fanzone.

• Also, if you’re going to have 100 000 people downtown, make it easier to get home afterwards. Running frequent skytrain was good, but the line-ups must’ve been crazy long. There should’ve been buses parked along Georgia to get people out of downtown after the game.

• The cops really should’ve radioed for more support once the third period started. They really should’ve seen this coming and been better prepared to cope.

• Boo, people smashed the windows at Chapters. :(

• I feel bad that I joked about looting a Nintendo 3DS yesterday. :(

It should be interesting to see what information comes out and what the repercussions are going to be. I really hope the police arrested or will arrest some of the instigators.

Wark.