Vancouver papers, forced to hand over riot photos, instead make them public

Vancouver Newspapers, Forced to Hand Over Riot Photos, Instead Make Them Public

Vancouver’s two biggest daily newspapers pulled a classic you-can’t-fire-me-because-I-quit move Thursday. After a judge ordered them to turn over their photos of the post-Stanley Cup Finals riot to the Vancouver police, the papers posted the 5,481 images online in advance of formally turning them over to the cops on Monday.

The papers did so as a heads-up to everyone who happened to be in the streets last June. Rioting or not, the Vancouver police now have photos of thousands of sports fans. Some of them were turning over cars and smashing windows and stealing random crap from Sears and doing Canadian water polo proud. Others were just standing about, and are now, ostensibly, included in this massive trove of images that the Vancouver Sun and the Province have petitioned police to destroy once the investigations conclude.

The Sun’s deputy editor was quoted in the paper’s coverage of the photo deluge: “We will reluctantly turn over the photos and videos to police, but remain concerned that the production order turns journalists into evidence gatherers for police. Police should only make such demands on the media as a last resort. In this case, they have many thousands of photos and videos from the public that are still being reviewed.”

The riot (and a certain well-traveled photo) ignited after the Vancouver Canucks, a team that has never won a Stanley Cup, got manhandled by the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Finals. The streets were clogged with British Columbians who had gathered to watch the game on large outdoor screens, and once the game ended, they ran rather amok. Overall it turned into quite the year for rioters. Around the same time that citizens in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Yemen, Syria and Libya were flooding the streets to protest and even overturn some of the worst governments in the world, at the risk of their lives, and those of their families, the crowd in Vancouver elected to burn and break a bunch of bystanding objects because of a 40-year case of hockey blue balls.

(Still, any voyeurs to violence out there will get a kick out of this video, which depicts the minutes between the end of the game and the beginning of the riot. Note the baby steps the crowd makes on the way to becoming a mob. The echoes of escalating soccer hooliganism Bill Buford chronicles in Among the Thugs are hard to miss.)

Kudos to the Vancouver papers for giving the public access to the same information they had to turn over to the cops, and also for taking advantage of the moment. “Never-before-seen Stanley Cup riot images” the Sun calls them. Never miss a chance to turn an unfavorable court order into page views.

Previously: Vancouver Riots 2011: Craziest Port-o-Potty Video You’ve Ever Seen, Flashbang Hits Man in the Groin & Pacifist Gets 1-Punched
Previously: Vancouver Riots 2011: Unruly Mob Attacks Man Who Tried to Prevent Looting

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14 Responses to “Vancouver Newspapers, Forced to Hand Over Riot Photos, Instead Make Them Public”

Cowboy Mike's Red Hot Ricochet Barbecue Sauce Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:43 AM

A lot of it was actually completely unrelated to the hockey, there were lots of disillusioned young jackasses who just wanted an excuse to fuck stuff up.

KC Resident Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:44 AM

Vancouver Newspapers, Forced to Hand Over Riot Photos, Instead Make Them Public

That headline is wrong. The newspapers did both.

kaiserwilhelmreems Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:44 AM

nothing will be more iconic to the riots than the photo of the asian canucks fan wielding a hockey stick, roaring with aggression, in front of a smashed out store front.

arkbadger Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:45 AM

ICONIC.

KC Resident Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:45 AM

A lot of it was actually completely unrelated to the hockey, there were lots of disillusioned young jackasses who just wanted an excuse to fuck stuff up.

Yep.

cracker jack Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:46 AM

Any photos of Robin Sparkles in there?

Cowboy Mike's Red Hot Ricochet Barbecue Sauce Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 9:57 AM

This just makes me miss Vancouver. I was there right after this for the first week of July and it was just the most perfect weather possible. Plus, weed and sushi everywhere.

WWoS Stayed At a Holiday Inn Express Last Night Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 10:25 AM

Rioting or not, the Vancouver police now have photos of thousands of sports fans.

So they’ve already got the Marlins beat…

bstr0142 Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 10:57 AM

A lot of it was actually completely unrelated to the hockey, there were lots of disillusioned young jackasses who just wanted an excuse to fuck stuff up.

Exactly. And I don’t think the public is too unhappy with these pictures being released. There has been an outcry to speed the process up in terms of charging people, and this is another step.

And Among the Thugs is a ridiculously bad book to use as the basis of any study of sports riots.

Cowboy Mike's Red Hot Ricochet Barbecue Sauce Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 11:28 AM

There has been an outcry to speed the process up in terms of charging people, and this is another step.

I really liked reading the apologies on the boarded up storefronts from Canucks fans who had nothing to do with it. It was weirdly touching. Think I’ll rock my ‘I Love Vancouver’ police fund shirt tomorrow.

Sam Eifling Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 12:38 PM

Among the Thugs is a ridiculously bad book to use as the basis of any study of sports riots.

We’re not authoring a study of sports riots here, so much as simply discussing them. But I am interested to hear what makes Thugs “ridiculously bad” for either pursuit.

bstr0142 Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 2:39 PM

We’re not authoring a study of sports riots here, so much as simply discussing them. But I am interested to hear what makes Thugs “ridiculously bad” for either pursuit

Study might be the wrong word, but my point is towards using it as the basis for discussing how a sports riot escalates. Especially the one in Vancouver, where the background was much different than the hooliganism you see in Europe.

In terms of Among the Thugs, my criticism (without being too academic) of it is based on the fact it is quite sensationalistic, and in many places inaccurate, and yet seems to be the ‘default’ book for soccer hooliganism. It feeds stereotypes rather than trying to understand them. It does have some merit (though I personally did not like it), but I’ve had the opportunity to discuss it with people from Manchester (Mancunians?) who say what he describes is – from a logistic standpoint even – pretty impossible. His explanations – in their minds at least – don’t add up, nor do they really explore any socio-cultural background or context. Maybe ‘ridiculously bad’ is a bit harsh, but its usefulness in understanding sport culture is very limited in my mind.

To me, Fever Pitch is much better at getting into the minds of English – and European – football fans and why they turn to violence. In my teaching days this is the one I would use with students.

Sam Eifling Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 5:07 PM

Interesting critique of Thugs. What made me think of it, in this case, is its depictions of violence as a series of tiered actions that get repeated. Without using the phrase (or maybe he did) Buford was talking about tipping points and, of a sort, phase transitions. Watching rabble roll a car downtown makes me wonder if any of what followed would have been possible if the police had stopped that particular group from getting too smash-happy at the outset.

bstr0142 Says:
January 20th, 2012 at 7:22 PM

Buford was talking about tipping points and, of a sort, phase transitions. Watching rabble roll a car downtown makes me wonder if any of what followed would have been possible if the police had stopped that particular group from getting too smash-happy at the outset.

Very true – the issue of where the cops step in is in particular a sore spot with Vancouverites. But what the police in the UK learned is that they had to better understand why these riots were taking place, and why those tipping points (an important concept, I agree) were happening, and that led to more socio-cultural analysis (and confiscating passports!). To me Buford glosses right over this and discusses the sensational part of it (I remember the eyeball sucking story; only thing I fully remember about the book!). Plus, he is never more than an observer, and it shows in his attempts to describe what he’s seen. He never fully immerses himself in it.

To go back to Hornby, he discusses this type of thing in relation to the two major soccer disasters – Heysel and Hillsborough – and why it came to that. It’s pretty interesting and provides far more insight.

I could go on (it’s an intriguing topic) but I’ve probably written too much about it here already!