On 15t of June 2011, the Vancouver Canuck and Boston Bruins played the last game of the Stanley Cup, thus creating circumstances that have never happened before. Due to huge interest I game, an enormous number of fans were present o the stadium, furthermore, even bigger number of people centered around screens located all over the city in order to watch the game and cheer for their favorite team.
The police was proven to successfully protect and suppress riots in all the previous games, but at the final one, the crowd outweighed all the estimates and thus police as not able to control it. Furthermore, some individuals came downtown with a purpose to start a fight and they managed to do it. In the last minutes of a game a fight started and due to commonly held belief riot started in the fan zone in Georgia Street. However, it is worth mentioning, that despite all coverage and media attention was devoted to the former, there was also another riot at the intersection of two streets Nelson and Granville. Both of riots caused significant property damages. What is more, as far as sport riots hardly ever have to sources of commotion, nobody expected this turn of events. Furthermore, due to the fact that there were approximately 155,000 people it was impossible for police to keep all of them under control.
It was highlighted that in preparation and in drawing the estimates of all 25 games police closely cooperated with political authorities of the city and people responsible for planning and organizing events in Vancouver. This cooperation has proven to be successful on number of occasions and the previous games were not an exception. Nevertheless it should be mentioned that all the decisions related to police distribution and relocate of forces were made only by the Vancouver Police Department. What is more, Vancouver Police Department created and presented a clear damages pay-out plan and policy for the board of the city.
It is reported that both Winter Olympics an Stanley Cup were conducted by police in tactic called “meet and greet”, which involves high visibility of police officers in the crowd of people and interaction with the spectator, thus creating a positive image of police officer and encouraging people to be law-abiding. And, even though this tactics has proven to be successful in numerous occasions, when people connected by the same believes have set out to break the law they will do it eventually, even when they are outnumbered. Furthermore, the Game 7 attracted a huge number of people, which turned out to be five times bigger than in the previous game. Moreover, most of the spectators were drunk young men, which made them impossible to control.
Due to advertising which connects alcohol drinking and sport, all sporting events are usually accompanied by a large group of people who are intoxicated, however police is not allowed to search their possessions in order t find alcohol, thus making it impossible to prevent their …