2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot

Previous riots Violence has occasionally occurred in the wake of sporting events in North America and Europe, including multiple riots in Canada since the 1980s. Edmonton Oilers fans set fires and looted in the Whyte Avenue ("Blue Mile") area of Edmonton when the team qualified for the 2006 finals, Montreal was vandalized by Montreal Canadiens fans after the 1986 and 1993 titles and during the 2008 and 2010 playoffs, and Vancouver itself had riots following the Canucks' defeat in 1994. The riot led to over 190 injuries, $1.1 million in damages, and charges being brought against over 100 people. Temporary fences and gates were set up to provide checkpoints where police could control access to the area and check for alcohol (which police generally poured out when found). Following recommendations stemming from the 1994 riot, all liquor stores in the area were closed earlier in the day. Crowds had been generally well-behaved in the fan zone for the previous six games, with roughly 70,000 attending each event. Similar though smaller events had been very successful during the 2010 Winter Olympics. For the final game, an estimated 100,000 people crowded into the area, and people found ways to enter the zone without being checked for alcohol. Planned corridors to allow movement of emergency vehicles became impassable. Game The Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins participated in the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, which was the culmination of the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs. The series was played over seven matches, with the winner being the team that won four games. After the conclusion of the sixth game on June 13, 2011, the series was tied 3–3. The seventh game was played at the Canucks' home arena, Rogers Arena, as they had the better regular season record. The game was played on Wednesday, June 15, 2011, and the puck dropped just after 5 pm PDT. Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas made 37 saves as Boston shut out Vancouver, 4–0, to win the Stanley Cup. Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand each scored two goals for Boston. Bergeron scored first at 14:37 in the first period, then had a shorthanded goal at 17:35 in the second. Marchand's first goal came at 12:13 of the second period; he then scored on an empty net late in the third. The Bruins outscored the Canucks 23–8 over the series. The series also marked both the Canucks' third appearance and loss in the Stanley Cup finals. ==Riot==

jersey cheers while a car burns, surrounded by a large crowd. Trouble at the watch party began before the game had started. One of the entrances to the fan zone was removed, as the barricades were being breached. At 5:55, a five-man fight occurred in the fan zone. Thirty-five young people climbed onto the roof of a Budget Rent a Car building. These individuals started throwing bottles after Marchand's second goal for the Bruins, at which point the police department decided to remove them. Some porta-potties collapsed after people stood on top of them. People began jumping on the car that had been overturned, and sometime before 8:00, the car was on fire. The police began using smoke bombs at 8:48. The SkyTrain system began displaying messages on electronic screens reading: "Due to the unstable situation in downtown Vancouver, we strongly advise customers NOT to travel downtown until further notice." Various stores began to be looted, including The Bay, London Drugs, Sears, and Sport Chek. At 10:30, the performance of Wicked ended, and patrons were asked to stay inside the theatre to avoid the riot. The riot ended around midnight, with the police using a helicopter to confirm that there were no outstanding areas of activity. The BC Ambulance Service reported that they had transported a man who had jumped or fallen off of the Dunsmuir Viaduct, and that this man was in critical condition in the hospital. ==Aftermath==

Response In the immediate aftermath, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson initially attributed the situation to "a small group of troublemakers". The idea that anarchists were involved in the violence was rejected by UBC political science professor Glen Coulthard and others in a Vancouver Sun article on June 24. "That this gets tagged as anarchist activity is just more of an assumption or bias that has been around for a long time," said Coulthard. "[A]narchists are a convenient scapegoat for the police to deflect responsibility for what happened," said another commentator. One critic indicated that authorities had made several mistakes in the planning for the crowd—among them allowing parked cars near the screens and leaving newspaper boxes nearby which could be used as projectiles. On June 20, Chu said "While we are still standing by that observation about the instigators, we are learning that most of the people that joined in the riot and that have now been charged represent a wider spectrum of young people, many of whom do not have criminal records." Goaltender Roberto Luongo expressed a similar sentiment, stating that "those were not the real Vancouver fans that were doing that... I think it was isolated groups. It was tough to watch that something like that happened to the city." An Angus Reid poll soon after the riot showed that 90% of British Columbia residents were disgusted by the events of the riot. Streets were reportedly clean by 10 am, with volunteers having shown up with brooms and dustpans to clean the city. Boarded up windows were covered in apologies and defences of the city's reputation. In response, the Hudson's Bay Company, a major retailer in the area, hosted a free pancake breakfast in thanks. Criminal prosecution As many as 70 officers from eight different police agencies formed the Integrated Riot Investigation Team, tasked with sifting through hundreds of hours of video and other evidence to identify rioters. Several participants in the riots turned themselves in to police after their faces were broadcast on TV, including the person responsible for setting the first car on fire. More than 1,000,000 photos and over 1,000 hours of video recorded by citizens were sent to the Vancouver Police Department as evidence. Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) offered their facial-recognition software to the police in an attempt to aid in their criminal investigation of the riot. In 2012, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia, Elizabeth Denham, ruled that police could not use the software without a warrant requesting the information. By July 2013, police had recommended 1,204 criminal charges against 352 suspected rioters. In July 2015, over four years after the riots, the last two suspects were charged. Experts have pushed back against the theory that social media was the cause of the riot. Christopher J. Schneider, a sociologist from the University of British Columbia said that the social media usage was "crowd-sourced policing or lateral surveillance, where citizens were surveilling other citizens". Many of the photos and videos taken of the riot were posted to social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. This led to an unprecedented community effort to identify and report rioters. The Vancouver Police department received more than one million photos and tips from civilians, The department issued a statement asking the public not to take justice into their own hands, saying that there was "a growing danger that the tools of social media will be used to mete out vigilante justice". Police encouraged those who were caught committing crimes on video to turn themselves in to avoid facing a public arrest. Additionally, the online effort to identify rioters sometimes identified minors, whose names cannot be made public in legal proceedings. An issue related to social media and the police investigation was that a number of people involved in the rioting were under the age of 18. Publishing the names of young offenders is forbidden by the British Columbia legal system. On social media, however, the sharing of images and videos and public online shaming can identify underage riot participants. Schneider concurred, saying that "Many of the comments are horrific, threatening things that these people might not normally say... There is a profound disconnect between who we are online and in life. We are still learning how to be cyber citizens". Financial losses branch remains open despite damages from the riots CBC News reported that the destruction caused by the rioters was worse than the 1994 riot, which cost around $1.1 million in damages. In 2016, the ICBC won a lawsuit against 82 rioters, in which the defendants were found jointly liable for damages inflicted to automobiles during the riot. Of the defendants, 37 settled with the insurer, 35 received default judgements, and 10 went to trial. Nine of those ten were found liable. Sean Yates was the only defendant represented by a lawyer, and was found to be not liable due to insufficient evidence against him. This was despite a video of him throwing a mannequin through the window of a burning car, which the judge compared to "kicking a dead horse" as the car was already destroyed. Independent review An independent review commissioned by the province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver released its 396-page report titled The Night the City Became a Stadium on August 31, 2011. This report labeled alcohol consumption as a primary cause of the riot. Additionally, the report concluded that the Vancouver Police Department's reinforcements arrived too late to control the crowd, although because the crowd had 155,000 people, it would be impossible for any sized police force to prevent the riot. == Media coverage ==

The riots sparked intense media coverage and attention on the local, national, and international level. Local media coverage of the riots began almost immediately after the game ended, with the local CBC, CTV and Global BC stations all running news coverage of the riots, with CTV and CBC doing so from studios located in downtown Vancouver itself. CBC News Network started running live coverage in conjunction with its nationally broadcast evening news show The National, with one reporter calling in her reports from inside the riot. Prominent publications such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New York Times and USA Today published editorials critical of the riots and its participants, as well as the city, noting the stark contrast between the Stanley Cup playoffs and the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Boston Herald provided coverage of the riots in addition to coverage of the Bruins' Stanley Cup celebrations, with other Boston media outlets providing their coverage of the riots. Kissing couple photograph During the riot, a photograph that depicted a young couple kissing while lying in the street during the riot, became an iconic image of the riots. This photograph, taken by Vancouver-based sports photographer Richard Lam, went viral on social media. Sports Illustrated called it "the most compelling sports image of the year". The photograph has been used worldwide in marketing campaigns, and is also used as the album cover of A Place for Us to Dream, a 2016 compilation album by the English alternative rock band Placebo. At first, many viewers suspected the scene had been staged. Lam pushed back on this suggestion: "What you don't see in the frame is that twenty feet beyond is the mounted [police] squad, on horseback. I don't think they were in any mood for people to be playing around setting something up like this." Video evidence posted on YouTube later backed up their claims. In June 2016, it was reported that Thomas and Jones live in Perth, where they sleep under a poster copy of the photograph. As of 2021, the couple has remained together and are raising a family. ==See also ==