Five years later, Stanley Cup Riot report breaks down charges

(by Jill Drews)  The total dollar amount of damage caused during the 2011 Stanley Cup riot was eclipsed by the amount spent prosecuting the accused. Crown Counsel has released its final report on the incident.

In all, 366 people were charged with a total of 912 offences. Almost everyone got slapped with a participating in a riot charge. Charges of mischief and break and enter make up the majority of the rest.

Neil MacKenzie with the Crown says about 85 per cent of the people charged had never been in trouble with the law before. “That’s to minimize the seriousness of what they did and what took place and that’s obviously reflected in the fact that the vast majority of them were charged with taking part in a riot.”

Most of those charged were adults. Just under half of them received jail sentences. All but ten of those charged pleaded guilty.

The prosecution cost about $4.9-million spread out over the last five years. Most of the money was spent on staffing, but also on travel, transcripts, witnesses and cell phone bills.

This was a first of its kind prosecution according to the Crown and took an extraordinary amount of time and man power. Neil MacKenzie says in the first week alone, they received over 3,600 email tips from the public with video, pictures, links to social media and more. “So many people now have cameras in their phones and through social media and through police investigation, a great many people who participated in the riot were identified.”

So with it costing more to go after the rioters than it did to fix the damage they caused, was it worth the trouble? It was if you ask the chief operation officer of London Drugs. The location at Georgia and Granville was looted by hundreds of people, traumatizing staff working at the time. Damage at that store alone cost $675,000.

COO Clint Mahlman says the rioters needed to face the consequences. “Like any civil society, if we do not send a strong message that those behaviors are unacceptable to the community, there’s just a very short term cost to a long spiral in a community none of us would be proud of.”

Justice Minister Suzanne Anton agrees it was money well spent. She was a Vancouver city councillor at the time and was downtown during the riot. “If you were down there that night, you would not question prosecution. It was a terrible night in Vancouver. The sight of all those buildings smashed in, the lootings that had gone on, was unbelievable that had taken place in our city. On top of that, there were people who were so badly traumatized. I was approached by people who were trapped inside the London Drugs and they were shaking.”