Letters from the Front Lines: Vancouver Riot

From the perspective of a Live Site security guard…

Photo by emarone

I just want to write something about the riot. I was doing the security, we were the guys who were doing the gates: clearing the green carpet and doing searches. What happen that night is sad.

I have been working all 7 games at the FUNZONE, every night was a great night until that FINAL night. Let me explain about the gates, maybe you people won’t know what our deplyments are but our main focus on the gates were:

1. CROWD CONTROL
2. LIQUOR

We have done so many…tens of thousands of pat downs to most of the people and we have found alot of things inside alot of people’s pants. WHY?  We knew what was coming, and we did try our best until some of the people started jumping the fence and did stupid things.  After that, we felt it was no longer safe to have the fence up. 

At that time it was at the third period, we started to tell people with children to go home. We felt violence was coming as we saw bottles flying and people fighting.

The VPD reacted really fast, we were told by the VPD to retreat back to our base until further notice.  At that time, I asked my fellow security members to retreat as well. At the same moment, the first car went up in flames on fire and when I got back to our base we found out that we have a couple guys still missing or stuck at the gate.

Myself and one of my partners headed towards the gate to look for them — this is when the first flash bang and teargas was fired. 

We were locked in our base for 2 hours.

Riot police were helping us to protect the big screen television the city rented for the crowds. People were taunting the police, throwing bottles, burning garbage bins, etc. 

All of the police officers that night acted in the most professional manner.

Among those who taunted the police were teenagers. I even saw a kid, around 8-9 years old, who pushed a garbage bin into the fire. People cheered at him when he did this…it was a sad night.

At around 11:30 pm, we are told that the riot has left our street and we can leave at Beatty Street. At the same moment, when i walk down Robson Street, it was totally different from what I saw this morning.

I would like to Thank the VPD, RCMP, Vancouver City Engineers, VFD, and my fellow security team. We have done a great job. We did our best to protect our city and fellow citizens given the circumstances and resources, and I hope we will never ever see this thing happen again in our beautiful city.

— S.C., a proud Vancouverite and security guard stationed at the West Georgia Street Live Site