No talk of possible riot at game-day police board meeting thousands, possible, violence, members, monthly

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No talk of possible riot at game-day police board meeting



Vancouver’s last police board meeting was held on the same day as Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, yet there was no discussion of possible violence or riots.

As Mayor Gregor Robertson and the six other members of the police board convened for their monthly meeting, tens of thousands of people were descending on the city centre via SkyTrain, buses, ferries and roads.

Yet no one at that meeting asked Police Chief Jim Chu about the possibility of violence or a repeat of the 1994 Stanley Cup riot, Robertson said Wednesday in an interview.

Nor did Chu offer any comments about whether his department was ready to deal with the estimated 100,000 people who were congregating downtown, he added.

A department that had spent years planning for similar crowds for the Olympics didn’t raise the words “riot” or “trouble” once during the afternoon meeting. By night’s end, the single biggest police operation in the city since the Olympics had turned into a riot that caused millions of dollars of damage, resulted in looting and widespread arrests and gave the city an international black eye.

Earlier this year, Chu had suggested it would cost more than $900,000 to police all the games of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but in an April report to city council, he had pared that down to $648,000. He told council that Calgary and Edmonton used about 300 officers for their Stanley Cup runs in 2004 and 2006, and said he was fine with the same number.

The police board’s seeming nonchalance followed signals by the police department in March that it didn’t believe it needed to plan for a “worst-case scenario” around the Stanley Cup because of a “decrease in momentum and the spreading out of celebrations” over Metro Vancouver in recent years.

That attitude was reinforced in an April 20 report by Acting Insp. Mike Purdy, head of Emergency and Operational Planning for the VPD. It was the last time the board officially discussed the playoff plans.

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Vancouver’s last police board meeting was held on the same day as Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, yet there was no discussion of possible violence or riots. As Mayor Gregor Robertson and the six other members of the police board convened for their monthly meeting, tens of thousands of people were descending on the city centre via SkyTrain, buses, ferries and roads.

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Purdy said the department’s crowd-management strategies “were very similar to those used during the 2010 Olympics: high visibility and ‘meet and greet.’”

At the April 20 meeting, board members asked about the policy of pouring out contraband liquor and the “possibility of large screens being set up downtown.” The minutes of the April meeting made no mention of recommendations.

The large screens and fan zones went up during the playoffs and became a focal point for the tens of thousands of spectators, who were crammed into temporary fencing that security staff abandoned when the flood of people coming off SkyTrain failed to ease.

Thanks to encouragement from Vancouver officials, crowds far beyond the 70,000 originally expected began to show up in the latter games of the Stanley Cup Final. But as those crowds began to swell, no one at the police board appeared to be concerned that the chief’s friendly “meet and greet” strategy might be inadequate.

Mayor Robertson said Wednesday he didn’t see any point in raising questions about police plans for the final game at the board meeting on game day because he’d been in regular contact with Chu during other games and was assured everything was fine.

In fact, the board meeting dealt with relatively routine matters of finance and policy and never even strayed into casual discussions about the Stanley Cup game, Robertson said.

“It wasn’t on the agenda. In that meeting we didn’t have a conversation on that subject. We literally ended that meeting an hour before the game started.”

Asked why Chu didn’t feel the need to address the board about being prepared, Robertson said: “That was assumed. All of the celebrations had gone remarkably well and there was nothing to indicate it was going to go sideways. The board felt confident the operational details were looked after.”

Chu has refused to say publicly how many officers he deployed during the game. Robertson said the chief has not told him the number. But the mayor said he believes the city had far more officers on the street than the 300 Chu cited in the April report. “My understanding is there were a lot more, that it was comparable to the gold medal [hockey] game [of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics].”