Blame Surrey?

[GMasterAres]

Blaming people from 1 city is just ignorant. There were thousands of people from Surrey in central Surrey who after game 7 just left and went home. I didn't hear any riots in Surrey or Delta or anywhere else around the lower mainland.

The truth is so far the people IDed, arrested, and/or charged have come from all over the lower mainland. There have been some from Vancouver, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Burnaby, etc. And as someone pointed out above, 3/4 of the population of Metro Vancouver lives outside Vancouver so you're just stating the obvious that probably 3/4 of the crowd were from outside Vancouver.

Still blaming other cities is not only ignorant but way off base. If people in Vancouver want to blame anyone it should be your Mayor. It could also possibly be the Police chief but given the mayor of Vancouver, I'd put some money down that budget approval or lack-thereof probably tied the hands of the VPD chief. The fact they had to call in police from other cities such as Surrey, Delta, Burnaby, and Abbotsford, tells me the city of Vancouver didn't give them enough money or resources.

The VPD has over 1300 officers. It certainly didn't look like there were anywhere near that number downtown at any point even well into the riot, even AFTER police from other cities showed up to help. I'd be surprised if the VPD had more than 300 officers on the street downtown even though some numbers have the count at around 700 (I think that way too high).

So you should blame your own city just as much as the idiots who caused trouble, but certainly not Surrey or the many citizens from Surrey who went and helped clean up.

And I hope people I know stop talking about how the Olympics went so well (especially Mayor Gregor!). That's because 1) the RCMP were in charge with a near unlimitted budget and 2) there were 6,000 officers and 4,500 military on the streets.

A whole different ball game.