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Using Crowdsourcing To Identify Vancouver Rioters
Fudge Factor 3000 writes "The Canucks' loss in the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals resulted in complete mayhem in downtown Vancouver. Everything from upturned cars set alight to looting was commonplace. Unfortunately, most of the perpetrators were able to maintain their anonymity by disappearing into the crowds. Fortunately, bystanders took several pictures and videos of the carnage. Now, websites (including both Facebook and Tumblr) have set up pages to use crowdsourcing to identify the hooligans."
People care about hockey? And enough to riot?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Now websites (in both Facebook and have been set up to use crowdsourcing to identify the hooligans.
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It's a good idea, but it appears that the photos section on the facebook page has already been vandalized. More than 80% of the photos are multiple copies of photos taken by the media, and another 10-15% are random unrelated photos. I hope they're accepting photos and videos from an email address too.
Facebook's greatest value to humanity may be as a honeypot to stupid people who post their misdeeds for all the public (and law enforcement agencies) to see.
859
Absolutely shocking - I thought Canadians were more civilised than this. I hope they catch the bastards involved.
Well you obviously didn't hear about the riots after Montreal beat Boston in game 7 in 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jU56NA0yf8&feature=related [youtube.com]. Worse yet, it was only round one.
It's kind of a shame. I thought this sort of crap would stay in Europe. Soccer Game riots are relatively frequent here in Europe, were as sports events in the U.S. and Canada have always seemed notably non-violent and family friendly.
It's one of the few things that actually work way better across the pond than over here. Massive sport event riots is one thing the U.S. and Canada really shouldn't copy from Europe.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Your car wasn't totaled in Vancouver, was it?
Really? Really?! Did you even see a single picture from the mayhem? There was so much property damage only because the police was too busy saving people from mob beat downs!
Drop your stupid dogmatic devotion to your specific "ism", get your head out of your ass and actually look at the world around you as it is once in a while.
As someone who lives in Vancouver, I disagree. These people were not rioting for a reason. Many just used it as a reason to break into stores. If people committed crimes, even "isolated property crimes", they should be charged with their crimes. I don't see how using facebook to figure out who these people are is a bad thing.
These people came into Vancouver to cause trouble. I'm all for charging them.
Those "isolated property crimes" you speak of will cost Vancouver residents and businesses millions of dollars, damages that aren't covered for riots. Not to mention the black eye Vancouver gets now on the world stage.
You must be just willfully blind or just plain stupid not see the violence going on last night.
In short, you are a fucking moron who has tried to inject your naive and childlike political views into a serious, actual issue.
Hey guess what. Fuck you. No seriously fuck you. In Canada we generally have a well ordered, and well behaved society. Lets see we got one guy who got the shit beat of him by 15-20 people because he was trying to protect property. And we have idiots who have this idea that public mischief, rioting, and in general being a danger to everyone else is not worthy of your time?
It wasn't a few cars, it wasn't a few businesses, and it sure the fuck wasn't a few people who got stomped in the face because they tried to stop the fuckers from ruining businesses and looting. And if you are a Canadian. Get the fuck out of the country and go somewhere else. Maybe europe, where they let you destroy someone elses property because your "sensibilities" can be offended, because a sports team lost.
Om, nomnomnom...
This is not a case of CCTV. Rather, these images have been submitted from mobile devices and cameras.
This is not a case of privacy invasion. People have committed criminal acts out in public, fully knowing that people are filming. They're begging to be identified.
Furthermore, the police did not set up these facebook pages; these are set up by concerned citizens who are appalled by the behaviour seen last night. The police have set up a system for submitting evidence, but they have not started a "crowd-sourced" identification initiative as of yet. So maybe the police is doing crowd-sourced evidence gathering, but certainly not analysis.
I want to point out how the police behaved in this riot. They stood their ground, but did not use an unnecessary force. They rarely engaged directly with the rioters; they just held a line, and occasionally fired tear gas, flashbangs, and pepperspray into the crowd. This is one recent case of police in the news NOT confiscating/breaking everyone's recording devices.
I think the Vancouver police and the RCMP deserve some commendation for how they handled this riot. They did not prevent as much property damage as they could have, but on the otherhand, they took a far more measured approach to interaction with the rioters than has been taken in the past and they are seemingly embracing social media, rather than raging in fear of it.
Before you comment, perhaps you'd like to do some research and educate yourself. Here: http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=369127
Coles Notes: 150 people injured, some quite seriously. Millions of dollars in damage, which tax payers and insurance payers (translation: the populace - you know, the people who are working together now to help find the criminals) will have to pay for. Perpetrated not by a crowd going insane over the angst of a lost hockey game but by anarchists and professional criminals taking advantage of a large crowd of people which could provide cover for their activities while blame was placed on the hockey fans rather than the criminals perpetrating the crimes.
Forgive me if I disagree with you, strongly, and am very happy to see initiatives like this to catch the criminals and happier still to know that the hockey fans often stepped in to try to hold back the criminals from their desired goals.
It's just you, and they're not. They've crowdsourced evidence gathering, but this is no different from working with crimestoppers to hunt vandals. Instead of calling in tips, they're asking the public to submit video evidence, not to analyze it. The facebook pages are not police initiatives.
No one has the right to destroy someone elses property just because they think they can get away with it. these are not people trying to make a point or protesting some injustice these are just hooligans that are obviously more then willing to make someones elses life worse if they can get away with it and I do not understand why anyone would want them to get away with it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It's not worth setting a precedent that we'll all analyze video for the police merely to get justice for a few totaled cars.
What would be next... going after perpetrators ourselves, arresting them, incarcerating them somewhere in our homes and feed them for years? (we're already paying for all of these in taxes... are they saying/admitting we are paying them for nothing?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
But a sports team LOST! What is the suffering of a few people in the face of such injustice!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Insightful? Seriously? I think if your store were looted and trashed, you might be singing a different tune. Or if you lived across the street from a car that was set on fire. Or if one of your family needed emergency medical service and ambulances were held off because of the rioting.
Your comparison to Farenheit 451 is ridiculous. The book had people looking for someone whose "crime" was to read, not for someone who stole and vandalized property.
Wait. So people who commit criminal acts, and happily post themselves on websites committing such. And the police using such a tool to find the people who've helped commit millions in damages, and contribute to the injury of several hundred people is ... state sanctioned surveillance of everyone?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Om, nomnomnom...
I agree entirely with your sentiments, except that I'm European, so I really am not sure what you're blathering on about at the end there. You seem to be under some misapprehension than rioting here is tolerated or legal, while it is obviously neither.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Obviously. Then again the people who committed crimes against others when they get caught are in for a rude awakening. Here we have a pretty high tolerance for damages against private property and loss of money. But hurt someone? Even the most liberal judges here will slam you with the highest sentences they can.
Om, nomnomnom...
Well I suppose I could have said Greece. I have been there more than a few times, and it's by far more tolerated there than anywhere else in Europe.
Om, nomnomnom...
In addition to what everyone else here has said, what message does it send out to just let it slide. Riots after every game? "Yeah, we can break open windows and steal stuff from stores and set cop cars on fire and they don't care!"
No dude Fuck you! Canada generally well ordered? LOL... I have lived in Canada for 18 years, and now I live in Switzerland. Now that is a country with order and well behaved people. Canada has the impression of being well behaved, but it really ain't. Just google Canadian riots and wow here is a list: http://ca.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment/top-10-canadian-riots.html Or how about the following list: http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=capress-hkn_stanley_cup_riots_list-7164094 Topping the list are HOCKEY riots. You would have figured that MAYBE just MAYBE the police would have been prepared...
So next time do some soul searching before saying that Canada is so good and the rest are bad!
Dumb Ass!
Oh wait... Dumb Ass Eh!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Charge the NHL with inciting riot and civil disorder, with co-defendents Vancouver and Boston.
Or maybe we should outlaw sports completely, seeing as they seem to cause insanity. :p
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As a vancouver citizen, I'd just like to say that anyone who gets into international news for burning a police car, shoplifting, stabbing, etc deserves to be identified. These people are being misrepresented as genuine vancouver canucks fans, rather than criminals who planned crimes in advance, eg bringing gas with them downtown. Since when has asking the public for help in identifying the the people responsible for a crime (in this case many crimes!) been a bad thing? After an amazing Olympics, how do you think we feel having our city shown in this spotlight? I don't know a single friend of mine who wasn't thoroughly disgusted by what they experienced in vancouver last night. If you try to convince anyone from vancouver that this was in any way, shape, or form okay, expect to get a very strong response from those of us in vancouver who love our city.
Saying "Europe" makes as much as saying "The Americas" - it is a collection of countries which are far from homogeneous. That's kind of a big flag highlighting that you might not know what you're talking about.
Lots of vandals have been caught in photos, but soon criminals like these will simply use an IR device to to activate new features patented by Apple to disable everyone's cameras.
That's great, but I've been here for over 30 years. Having lived here for the majority of them, and in other places in the world. But please, feel free to read next time it'll help. As I never said that everywhere else 'are bad'.
Nah the police aren't allowed to be prepared. Actually they're not allowed to take any action at all. I'll let you figure out why since you've obviously been here much longer than I have. And you're not even a born citizen. I'll wait.
Om, nomnomnom...
Wow, how do you mange to sound more like a dick with each word you write?
You realize this isn't some vigilante man hunt, right? It's just people looking at pics of crimes in progress and seeing if they recognize anyone. If they do, they report them to the police and let justice take its course.
As to this:
"At least rioters are just violent pricks and adrenaline-fueled idiots; you guys sound like the sort of vengeful, soulless libertarians who would shoot a man rather than let him walk away with your TV"
I don't even know what to say. People smashing property for no reason are worse than people trying to defend their own property. Go fuck yourself.
... just as it was in the case of the thugs that were caught on camera beating up Dorian Barton.
Would you like to live in a world where society sets the standards and cooperates with one another to ensure that everyone follows that standard, or would you like to live in a world where the government sets the standards and they are enforced by the police in opposition of society? Because your statement makes me think that you *prefer* a police state. For me, ideally police aren't necessary. People are respectful of each other and peer pressure is enough to dissuade people from stepping over the line (even if they are excited about something). Where you see people ratting on their peers, I see people taking a stand on what they will accept in their society. If you don't want to help the police, maybe you need *more* community involvement, not less.
What are you even talking about? First, these are all videos citizens recorded of crimes happening in front of their eyes in public streets. None of this is coming from the police. If someone is identified, a police expert will evaluate that. If it looks like a match, they'll press charges. If there's enough evidence to convince a judge, they'll be prosecuted. Do you think we run our justice system with some facebook/hot-or-not hybrid? Wow.
The fuck are you calling it "isolated" for? The rioting took place over a good stretch of downtown, they trashed several storefronts, looted London Drugs and Sears, tried to start a fire at one point in Sears, set multiple cars on fire, and injured 150 people, some quite seriously, most very innocent. Some of them even looked prepared for this, with face masks to keep the cameras from imaging them as they destroyed property.
This isn't just people standing around refusing to move. This is people causing chaos and injury in a usually civilized nation. You haven't presented any argument for shielding them from the law other than an implicit "I don't like the police".
Crowdsourcing? Sometimes you don't even need that, sometimes a muppet hands himself in because he LOVES FACEBOOK SO MUCH! Honestly. Read it and weep for humanity.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
People in Vancouver are standing up and saying this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Last night, they did this by taking pictures, creating forums to share evidence, and guarding businesses. Today they gathered downtown to help with the cleanup. For those of you searching for an Orwellian scenario in all of this, there's nothing to find.
No fucking shit. Parent is a pure lawlessness apologist. The cops are asking the public to help them identify potential perpetrators or witnesses. Whether it's Facebook, Youtube, a neighborhood watch or people who saw a criminal act by pure fucking accident, it's all the same thing.
It's a citizen's duty to help out the authorities when crimes are committed. Taxpayers are insurance policy holders are ultimately going to pay for this riot, and I don't think it's any kind of tyranny or thought control for the police to ask citizen's who may have evidence of crimes to provide them with evidence.
I suspect the parent has a few philosophical views aligned with the anarchists, and has at least some sense of common cause.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...you guys sound like the sort of vengeful, soulless libertarians who would shoot a man rather than let him walk away with your TV; the kind of people who want all crimes prosecuted to the 'fullest extent of the law', who cares the methods and damn the financial, social, or philosophical cost.
Sorry, but what part of my reply was anything along the lines of what you accuse me of?
This doesn't set any new precedents. If you are being wrongfully accused, you can defend yourself in court like you could in the past.
If there was just one photo of you standing in the background, it probably won't be enough evidence to convict you. If there are multiple pictures from multiple people including video, it can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed the crime. This is why the police is using crowdsourcing techniques to gather evidence.
Agreed 100%.
Our society gets its order and gets its freedoms NOT from police and laws. It gets its order and its freedoms because THE PEOPLE demand it.
It is time for all people that live in and near Vancouver to find and turn these assholes in. We don't need new laws. We don't need special police powers. We just need the will of the people to say "WE will not stand for this, eh!".
ALL these people need to be turned in and they need to pay up all the costs and penalties of the damage they have done. Period.
Sorry, I don't buy that at all. Some people scrape together everything to get their car. Just because it's property, doesn't mean it belongs to "the man" or that the guy owning it has insurance to cover the damage.
I was in a crowd plenty of times and when things turned ugly, I just went the other way. And not just looting. Once standing for tickets to something, the counter opened, and the line didn't maintain, some idiots rushed it and then everyone rushed and some woman got trampled and taken to the hospital.
What's the old saying: "No single raindrop thinks its responsible for the flood?" or something like that?
So yeah, I would love to see an obstacle put up that make people in a crowd stop and think: "Hey, just because I'm in a crowd doesn't mean I absolve my personal responsibility for my own actions."
If you had seen the reaction of the Japanese in the aftermath of the Tsunami vs LA residents to Katrina, perhaps you could appreciate my view.
I never understood why so many teams' hometowns would go and destroy their own towns after their team won the championship. Perhaps with even greater irony, my alma mater won a championship (twice, actually) when I wan in undergraduate, and some of my fellow students went and trashed our town in celebration.
Really, if you're going to trash something, shouldn't you go to sack and loot your opponents town? Sure, it would have been a long trip from Vancouver to Boston (or the other way if the winner is to sack the loser's town), but it would seem to make more sense.
Hence, if it had been Boston fans in Vancouver, destroying Vancouver after winning the cup, it would have made more sense (though that is extremely relative here) than the citizens destroying their own town.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It seems the media down under are more interested in the sideshow rather than the the riots themselves....
http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/5156730/Vancouver-hockey-riots-kiss-mystery
ACK NAK RST
Sports riots happen all the time in the US. Maybe you don't get news about them as much over there. Maybe the scale is less dramatic. I'm not certain. I just know that sports riots happen here. Note, the link is a UK source reporting on a California riot from several years ago, which argues against my theory that people outside the US don't get news about our riots.
Anyway, it's kind of nice to think that there's a myth about America that involves us not being violent.
Now, what would be the best objective statistical way to evaluate sports riots in a society?Is anybody keeping a sports riot rating for each country?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I was on the bus in Vancouver the day after the LAST Canucks riot. Overheard this "Did you have fun last night?" "Naw it was shitty I just managed to loot a couple shitty tshirts, how about you" "Oh yeah, totally, I fucking suckerpunched so-and-so and then smashed his head with a brick, I hope he died" "haha, awesome, hope there's another soon". So that's the "harmless fun" you're defending, assuming Vancouverites haven't become any more human since. But it's nice to know that even if you witnessed a murder, you would not only refuse to come forward, you'd turn the cops away even if they asked. I'd imagine if a friend or loved one of yours got murdered, you'd equally support the murderers right to privacy vis-a-vis no evil witness coming forward and narcing on the poor innocent murderer.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Sorry, but those "anarchists and professional criminals" aren't who you think they are.
[End Of Line]
Who the fuck called it "harmless fun"? Jesus Christ....
As for your insistence that I would "run" from police asking me to provide testimony of a murder I witnessed, it's not the same thing and you god damn well know it. I don't know just how everyone decided I'm an anarchist or that I find prosecution of *anything* objectionable; I merely find prosecuting things based solely on crowd-sourced identifications of people in photos and videos with a convoluted chain of custody a worse precedent than letting people get away with looting and even some serious assaults.
I get that apparently everything I say is wanton flamebait, so feel free to ignore this and tell me to go fuck myself some more.
>I don't know how it's in Canada, but here in Germany, recording someone without previously having his agreement, is still illegal, even when in public.
If I see you doing a crime in the US, Canada, Germany, wherever, and I have a camera, I'm going to record it, and fuck what you think or what the law says.
Because I'm going to skate since I'm on the right side of the spirit of the law. Nobody will prosecute.
And you're going to go to jail.
Leck mich am Arsch!
--
BMO
Why should the police have shown any restraint at all?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I question why the police were so controlled in this full blown riot and reacted far more aggressively with the protestors at the Toronto G20 protests last year. Both involved violent protests, but based on what I saw (web video and news sites, not in person) the crowds in Vancouver were more destructive and out of control than anything that occurred in Toronto. I guess rowdy crowds get a pass if the violence is inspired by alcohol and sports, two huge money makers for business and government.
The Vancouver Police and RCMP (Abbotsford, Surrey, Maple Ridge, and probably most of the cops in the metro area) knew that if they pushed too hard it would get bad.
I watched the news on CBC and CTV live, and CBC itself has enough video to catch the people who set the cars on fire, because 4 of those cars (the prius?, the truck, and the two copcars) were right outside the CBC's offices. CTV has video of people looting the HBC and London Drugs because Rob Brown was caught right in the thick of it.
As for the police breaking up the crowds, what they did was broke them up starting in front of the CBC and Canada Post area and whittled them down by barricading the streets using the riot gear and making the crowds smaller and smaller, eventually there was just one group of probably 100 people who continued to vandalize things, but the perps who started it were probably long gone by then.
And contrary to media reports, some of the people in the buildings were employees keeping looters out, they were plainclothed and had fire extuingishers.
The Coach store, was looted (you can tell from TV) and that's probably the only store that was actually carrying expensive items near the windows. London Drugs and HBC, the window/door areas tend to be where cosmetics and checkout tills are, so I imagine the dollar value in merchandise stolen was probably in the low thousands, and the actual glass and building damage might exceed the merchandise losses. The coach, LV, Hermes, Tiffany and Gucci stores are all located around the same Hotel, but the coach building is more visible. The LV store is actually located inside the Hotel, so if they smashed the windows they might have got away with the display items in the window, but not much else.
The Futureshop, people were trying to get into, but I can tell you that would have failed since it's on the second floor and has the same kind of barricade the London Drugs has. The London Drugs people actually kicked-in the barricade. My observation here is that the barricade failed because it wasn't designed to have 10 people kicking it for 20 minutes with no law enforcement around.
The Sears was broken into, as well. Again, the same as the London Drugs and the HBC, mostly cosmetics and checkout tills are near the entrances.
Photos and Video, everyone not looting had their camera out, the VPD has appealed to the public to send them all the photos and video.
Note that a lot of these were smartphones, did you know that the EXIF data will not only tell the cops where you were, but what time, so your photos can be triangulated with other peoples images to pinpoint the instigators.
On the other hand, also note that people came up from Seattle and Victoria. So 100,000 people downtown, and those people who came up to start things may have not even be from the Vancouver area.
Some fault of the riots happening can be pinned on how much checking they were not doing to prevent people from bringing bags and lighters/matches.
They did just that in Toronto last year, and public was all up in arms about "police brutality".
I should clarify; around slashdot, we're awfully big on civil liberties, personal privacy and libertarianism (Hey, government, stay out of my business!). That said, we don't spend nearly enough time on civic duty. Civic duty and civil liberties are inextricably linked: a society will remain well ordered if either, there are no civil liberties and no civic duty, or there are lots of civil liberties, but they come at a price: that of civic duty.
Consequently, if you want the government to stay out of your life, you owe your society the duty of reporting it if your neighbor steals from the convenience store while you're watching. The police will follow up on the allegations, do their own investigation, and they may ask you to testify. But that's the price of civic liberties.
As far as I'm aware, in Canada, your photons are public domain once they cross over into public property.
Why should the police have shown any restraint at all?
Because they professionals, not thugs, and are sworn to uphold the law?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You have a "well ordered, and well behaved society" and your entry into an earnest debate begins with "fuck you. No seriously fuck you"? Perhaps your society is civilized, but you fall well short. Forgive me for valuing proper police procedure more than I value a dozen assault convictions and a slew of larceny and vandalism arrests. It's been accepted for a very, very long time now that sometimes a civilized society has to let the criminal go rather than compromise its principles. Rioting is a serious problem and a PITA to prosecute, but I still I don't think a video from one guy containing a person identified by another guy constitutes sufficient evidence for a conviction given the normal chain of custody rules for evidence and the "shadow of a doubt" criterion used for criminal convictions (at least in the US). I guess that makes me an anarchist or an ACLU boot-licker or whatever else you want to call me, but I'm not going to apologize and despite the concerted campaign to mod me down this is absolutely not flamebait. I'm trying to have a serious discussion; if all you people can respond with is curses and systematic attempts to bury my words under digital red ink you're not going to have any luck changing my mind. Enjoy your apoplexy; it was a complete waste of your time.
I was just in downtown Vancouver today, and you should see how many people were down there wearing Canada/Canuck Jerseys, volunteering their time to clean this city up. People are writing apologies to the world for this embarrassing behavior by a few people, on the temporary plywood that's been put up in store windows.
Those are true hockey fans.
Those are true Canadians.
Two different police departments aren't necessarily going to handle things the same way.
Finally, it sets the precedent that all our public activity is subject to being recorded and publicized. You can argue that we don't have a right right to privacy on a public street, but if we only have privacy in lead-shielded basement, with no communication or anything else passing in or out, we really don't have privacy at all.
You can also argue that you have absolutely no right to privacy when you are blatantly committing serious crimes (e.g. assault & battery, destruction of property, etc.) in public streets.
"Sports fans" are pathetic. People who actually participate in sports are fine. I've spent lots of time in gyms and on horseback, and the jerk level is relatively low. The bar and club crowd, even when drunk, is seldom more than annoying.
But crowds of drunk oinkers leaving a stadium act like they're entitled to make trouble. Then they try to drive. I'm for running everybody leaving the stadium through a blood alcohol test and dumping the drunks into holding pens until they're fit to rejoin society.
And the reason you drag an article from 4 years ago and a different province is...?
Yes, but you could set up a subroutine and know who was spying on you.
>film a crime
>stalking little girls
Fuck you. Meet your new status.
--
BMO
At least one guy trying to fend off protesters was a restaurant owner who had his family in the restaurant. If my family were threatened, I'd kill to protect them. Wouldn't you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because he's an anarchist trying to finger the cops.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thing is, it's not just "a video from one guy". I was watching CBC, and they were showing crowds with enough camera flashes going off that I think if one of the rioters was epileptic, he would have gone into seizures by just looking over his shoulder. Many dozens of cameras and phones lifted up to catch what was going on. Someone higher up mentioned photoshopping in someone you don't like, which wouldn't work because of the twenty or thirty other pictures of the same scene without that person there. And other people have mentioned that the police are asking for their help. To address your initial point, the vandalism, and even assaults that resulted in the most minor of injuries, are all crimes. It's their job to try to catch, and prosecute, the perpetrators, whether or not it's a pain in the ass to do. Even arresting one person with evidence from multiple sources would be a win, as far as I'm concerned.
Exactly. If someone is committing a crime, you are bound as a member of a civilized society to report it to the police. It's part of the social contract.
It's hard to imagine the deluded mind that thinks some guy with video evidence of someone smashing into a store and stealing stuff or burning a car is somehow quashing someone else's civil liberties. If you're fucking stupid enough to commit crimes on a public street where just about everyone has a cell phone with a camera and video recorder, you've given up your rights to privacy, and hopefully, once the dust clears your liberty for a while.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
taking advantage of a large crowd of people containing a large contingent of drunken brats from the suburbs
The drunken brats deserve one night in the clink for not having the wits to disperse. The professional arsonists deserve a lot more.
I was in Vancouver for the first time a year ago. Lovely place. Friendly, welcoming people. The most "dangerous" people we encountered were the junkies in the alleys, but they were pretty much harmless.
The best view to survey the area is Top of Vancouver. It's a rotating restaurant. Don't pay the tourist fee of $15. Go straight to the restaurant and have a $15 drink instead.
Anyway, I was just discussing with my wife that there would have been some interesting view of the riots from that restaurant. Safe entertainment from afar.
If you go, visit the Salt Tasting Room. (It's in one of those alleys.)
I am a fan of many sports, hockey, not so much. I get that emotional rush of wanting a team to win and hating when they lose. But when it's over, it's over. Geez. Move on.
At least one guy trying to fend off protesters was a restaurant owner who had his family in the restaurant. If my family were threatened, I'd kill to protect them. Wouldn't you?
Killing to protect other human beings, whether or not my family, I would do, but that's not at all what was being talked about. I criticized killing purely for the sake of property, and I'm rather surprised to find that a controversial stance.
A cameraman filmed Hungarian revolt http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/11/local/me-miko11 "Miko was shocked to learn that the Soviets had found and confiscated the footage in his locker and were using it to identify people."
Take care where you post your pic and who sees you re this:
After reading http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/14/tearful-cop-apologizes-for-threatening-to-taser-suspects-testicles
"I’m Tasering you in the f---ing nuts"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The situation is identical to witnessing any other crime and reporting it. If you have evidence of a crime, the law requires you provide it. In this case, a bunch of mental retards committed acts of vandalism in violence in a crowd that probably had nearly as many recording devices as people deserve what they get. Your objection is, at best, spurious, and at worst a tacit nod towards the criminals.
Get over it. You're "objections" are rejected because they are nonsensical. You deserve the treatment you're getting.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
People willing to *kill* for the sake of their property are, in fact, much worse than people who would smash it for no reason.
The only time these people willing to kill for the sake of their property entered the picture was when you conjured them up as a strawman.
I simply believe that this manner of searching for suspects
Asking the public whether they have pictures of crimes being committed? I am hard pressed to think of a less intrusive method of investigating crimes.
So if there's a riot in Germany, a German court won't admit video and photographic evidence from citizens?
I don't buy it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Props to the rioters!
How about we crowdsource information about the scumbag violent police who make the lives of people a living hell on a daily basis?
The police are the problem, not a bunch of sports fans rioting.
What a load of crap.
LAST time there was a riot, we had tons of footage of police committing violent crimes and I would have loved to have seen them identified and prosecuted.
THIS time, the police did NOTHING to instigate any of this.
Also, do not mistake me for a fan of police in general: I'm usually extremely harsh on them. Having said that, the Vancouver Police are among the best anywhere. I give full credit to that to our current chief, Jim Chu.
Not sure if you live in Vancouver, but if you've got pic's of the police being bastards, please post them so we can identify them because we know that they're not perfect.
But I suspect you're not located in Vancouver.
Would you quit posting you, you dishonest immoral moron. It has nothing to do with what happened yesterday.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Very wise statement. Government is a two-way street. If intelligent people don't play a role, dumb, psychopathic/sociopathic people will take up the banner and run with it.
You'd think upholding the law would involve stopping people from overturning cars, burning them, smashing shop windows, and looting.
I think it is far too early to blame anarchists for the rioting. Sure the police are pushing that angle, but after the history of major police departments looking for quick easy scapegoats and at times even instigating the very events they seem to be stopping I'm less than eager to accept the official line. Until they come forward with some type of real evidence I'm sticking with the perfectly reasonable assumption that, as has happened all over the planet, a large crow, fueled by alcohol, got out of hand at a sporting event.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
The only time these people willing to kill for the sake of their property entered the picture was when you conjured them up as a strawman.
I didn't "conjure it up as a strawman", I said that people's responses to what I'd originally said reminded me of the sort of hard-core libertarians willing to do so. To my surprise, many responded that they would indeed rather kill than let their property walk away in a burglar's or looter's hands and it became a separate point of contention. In no way did I ever claim or in any way imply that someone had raised the idea of killing as property protection in the riots. If you can interpret a statement prefaced with "sound like" as conjuring a strawman and fiendishly conflating unlike issues rather than as making a comment on the side then you're just not reading very carefully.
Are you freakin serious?
Rodney King might disagree with your opinion.
You're entitled to your opinion, but the use of agent provocateurs has been verified by the police more than once.
Because they've been caught doing it more than once.
Once is an honest mistake, twice is not, doing it multiple times-and getting caught every time-is an established policy.
[End Of Line]
The police did the best thing they could. There is simply no good way to manage a mob of potentially tens of thousands of people.
I lay a good chunk of the blame at the feet of the City of Vancouver. When the Olympics were on, crowds were carefully managed. Yes there was a lot more good will, but there was also a good deal of control. In this case, the City basically let a hundred thousand people into the downtown area with no meaningful control of any kind and what happened seems almost inevitable. I would have been shocked if there hadn't been a riot, whether the Canucks won or lost.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Major League" spectator sports are nothing more than big business. Time to tone them down if they're leading to all this mayhem. Remember the origin of "fan" is fanatic.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I don't know about where you live, but (as far as I know) most cities in Canada have a Crimestoppers hotline if you witness a crime, and the occasional commercial or news spot asking for help identifying suspects. From what I gather, this is pretty much the same thing, only people started on facebook rather than waiting for the poorly reenacted commercials to start airing.
"I simply believe that this manner of searching for suspects could change the way we procure evidence..."
Actually, it's always been legal for citizens to volunteer information and help. Kind of the idea behind the wanted poster thing.
"I said that people's responses to what I'd originally said reminded me of the sort of hard-core libertarians willing to do so."
And then acted as if people had actually meant the same things. Rather classic straw.
Are you out of your mind? Sports riots are well established in the US and Canada prior to this. http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=capress-hkn_stanley_cup_riots_list-7164094
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
No kidding - if one of those had been one of my cars, I'd be calling for blood. I like my stuff way more than I like 99.999% of humanity, and if you're one of the rioting whackjobs that thinks damaging other people's stuff without any provocation is acceptable, then I personally think you should be removed from society or possibly existence. I've never understood why people think property crimes are somehow trivial. My stuff represents an investment of my time and effort to acquire, and a lot of it has a lot of sentimental value to me. I'd feel personally violated if somebody just destroyed it.
Tell you what, provide some evidence for that in what happened in Vancouver last night, and we'll talk. Until then, I stand my belief that you're an immoral piece of garbage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Caption on the image: "Riot police on horseback confront rioters in downtown Vancouver." The catch: no horses in the image.
Fuck Beta
It's not really the same. In Europe, the idea is to smash up the other team's city, not your own. That would be retarded.
People in Boston, upon hearing about the victory, said "eh." And then resumed shouting at each other in traffic.
My kingdom for some mod points.
you guys sound like the sort of vengeful, soulless libertarians who would shoot a man rather than let him walk away with your TV
Not a libertarian but if you have my TV then you're trespassing, and I probably will shoot you if you try to leave with it. Put it down and try to flee.. 50/50 chance I'll shoot you. Stay where you are while the friendly local police pay a visit, and you're safe.
Sounds like a reasonable deal to me.
Also not a vigilante. I'm only concerned if the TV is mine. If it belongs to somebody else I'll just let them shoot you. I'm not looking for reasons to shoot you. I just spent a lot of time doing work I'd prefer not to do to get that TV. If you're taking it then it shows a complete lack of respect for basic civility and, more importantly, for me. Therefore, I feel no need to respect simple things like your continued existence.
Oh, and you're safe in that dark alley with me (assuming you're not holding my TV).
Police take an oath to serve, protect and uphold the law. Citizens don't.
That's mostly something that goes on between fans, there's rarely much property damage (not counting thing that they use to bludgeon each other with, but my point is that 90% of that violence is just them beating each other, the last 10% being a mix of property damage, innocent bystanders getting beat up and cops getting attacked for trying to make them stop fighting).
Still is far from tolerated, especially since a lot of the "hardcore" firm members are also involved in a lot of other crime.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Been telling everyone this was gonna happen for weeks, even though there was not even the tenuous but believable claim of referee bias that there was in '94. Vancouver lost this time because Tim Thomas is a fracking God...
The police did the best thing they could. There is simply no good way to manage a mob of potentially tens of thousands of people.
Fully agree.
I lay a good chunk of the blame at the feet of the City of Vancouver. When the Olympics were on, crowds were carefully managed. Yes there was a lot more good will, but there was also a good deal of control.
There was also a great deal more funding during the Olympics.
In this case, the City basically let a hundred thousand people into the downtown area with no meaningful control of any kind and what happened seems almost inevitable. I would have been shocked if there hadn't been a riot, whether the Canucks won or lost.
In retrospect I agree, but I (and the police) might have been lulled into some complacency, post-Olympics. And it doesn't seem that unreasonable: 2 weeks of street parties, then this play-off run was flawless until game 7.
CBC Radio One was on and there was a surge at the live site at puck drop that left a couple reporters rattled. Some fencing was removed due to excessive climbers and to take pressure off the inside surge (or something).
Also of note, just after puck drop, Matthew Lazen-Rider of On The Coast, who was in the crowd, overheard a paramedic supervisor telling an ambulance crew that he didn't like the mood of the crowd and if there was trouble the ambulance was to get out of harms way.
And this was (reported on air) just after puck dropped...
Best line I've heard about the situation came from the Globe & Mail's comments section: "We won the riot!" (/humour)
Don't blame the victims, asshole.
Exactly. And for all the retards advocating anarchism on here (which is amazingly common for such a stupid idea), imagine Vancouver but with no police. Or no, Vancouver is still too polite. Imagine Detroit.
It's amazing how many people on here are anti-police (they're all fascists!), anti-military (imperialist dogs!) and anti-government (they're all fascists -- wait... did we use that one already?) There's serious problems with the police, and military, and government at times, especially when their power grows beyond the ability of the populace to limit it, but they're still good things to have in general.
The worst trend are the pacifists that are willing to reap the benefits of a peaceful society, but are unwilling to pick up arms in a time of crisis to defend it. I'm not saying you have to join the military - you could make a valid argument against the four wars we're fighting right now - but the philosophy of pacifism is nothing more than parasitism dressed up in pretty words.
>>I don't know how it's in Canada, but here in Germany, recording someone without previously having his agreement, is still illegal, even when in public.
In sane countries, there's no presumption of privacy in public spaces, and you can be recorded without your permission.
Does Germany really have no CCTVs facing the streets? (If so, that'd be kind of nice, actually.)
Better remind yourself what Canadian PM Harper did to Toronto when the G20 was there.
G20 arrests surpass 900, making Toronto site of largest mass arrests in Canadian history
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has denounced the sweeping arrests made by police at the G20 protests in Toronto.
More than 500 people have been taken into police custody.
In a statement on its Web site, the CCLA said today (June 27) it appears that "the presumption of innocence has been suspended during the G20".
http://ccla.org/2010/06/27/ccla-denounces-the-sweeping-arrests-at-g20/
Largest mass arrest in Canadian history at the Toronto G20 is good place to look for a reason.
More bystanders arrested by police than protesters.
I know it's de rigeur to use trendy buzzwords and shit, but isn't this just the same as those awful TV shows like "Crimewatch" and "Most Wanted", except using an interwibble?
It's not crowdsourcing, it's massgrassing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Let me get this straight.
You're glorifying and condoning destruction of property, violence and cheering for more violence and senseless destruction. You're also using "mob energy" and "excitement" as justification for said senseless destruction and violence.
All because you think the city you're living in is a bit dull. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Eat the rich.
...you go to a riot and occasionally a soccer match breaks out!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
That's assuming the police and justice system works fairly, a fairly controversial issue. If it doesn't, your participation in it is immoral. And, if anything, your civic duty would be to work on improving the system. Most will agree that this is true for very unliberal systems as in former Eastern Germany or China. Whether or not it's true for Western nations (and to what degree) is a matter of opinion or debate.
You can also be selective about what kinds of things you report. In China, I might report a thief to the police, but I wouldn't report a political dissenter, even though both may be illegal (and the latter may, in fact, be considered worse). In Germany, I'd probably report a thief, but I might not report a graffiti artist. Of course you also need to consider the punishment: I'd have moral qualms about testifying in certain situations in Japan, China, Iran, the USA, etc., because you still murder your prisoners. I don't want their blood on my hands.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
There's no excuse to riot because of a sports game. We all know it was just an excuse, and anyone who rioted wanted to riot whether the game had been played or not. Police should have simply shot anyone causing damage to property or harm to others.
Yes, this people are dumb for rioting. Yes, I don't mind if they spend some time in jail or pay some fines. But this might be a good time to remove the facial recognition profile data from your facebook account.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/how-disable-facebooks-facial-recognition-feature
Reportedly a few members of the local anarchist crowd brought flammable materials, gasoline, fire extinguishers (to be used to smash windows or as weapons) , gas masks, bandanas etc, and came *prepared* to start a riot. The majority of the trouble there was caused by a few individuals (apparently the police arrested around 100 people, when its in a crowd of 100,000 people that's not a high percentage. They will be arresting more).
In short, the embarrassing riot we saw was propagated by a small number of people who were actively intent on doing so, and apparently brought tools to aid them in that process. I am sure a few people joined in when they saw the mayhem, but if it hadn't have been for the inciters they might not have.
Apparently one guy brought his truck downtown and parked it on CBC plaza so that it could be lit on fire. It was apparently set up to do so and burnt far harder and more violently than a normal truck might have (the description I heard was someone saying the truck blew up like it was in a Hollywood movie).
I sincerely hope they nail the fuckers who were inciting the riot, and nail them hard - perhaps 20 years in prison would make them reconsider the error of their ways, or at least keep them off our streets for the next few hockey seasons.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I hope it's just you. Whether or not the vast majority of them have a criminal record they now deserve one. Go poke through the public Facebook albums of rioters. Heaven forbid we persecute the scum in our society who took this opportunity to rob stores, commit arson, and assault bystanders. Your comment about "almost nobody" being violent is robbed of most of its weight as you peruse the album and see alongside the flipped cars and broken windows several instances of men and women on the ground being beaten and kicked, while rioters carrying mannequin limbs with blood spattered on them.
You've dreamed up these vigilantes willing to kill for property to try and make a point, So just to make me the eleventh person in the thread, please go fuck yourself.
You know, if that was really the problem, maybe the riot mob shoulda hopped some Greyhound Buses and gone to Boston... where their rioting could have worked in favor of vengeance ^w justice. And, as an extra bonus, served as civic renovation for ol' Beantown.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
One of the perps has already been positively identified. Apprehension may be difficult, however.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If you're a dickhead, you generally get treated like one. Go fuck yourself troll.
Yeah I agree 100% we shoudl replace it with Communism, becasue then everyone will be equal, I think communism is great, everyone has a job and no one ever goes hungry, The problem with what has been tried in the Soviet Union and China is that the evil capitalists in the rest of the world were making things unfair for the emerging communist countries. In order for communism to be truly sucessful it needs to be tried all at once in every country around the world simultainously.
We can't just half ass our implementation of communism it must be done on a global scale, otherwise it just won't work. Communism will not work preoperly and will be poisoned unfairly as long as there is even just one evil capitalist country in existsence even if it is a small country on a samll island in the south pacific. It is a pretty much all or nothing.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Sports is nothing more than tribal warfare by proxy.
And sometimes after a proxy victory the victors feel like doing some pillaging.....
This is of course if the culture allows for such behavior, some cultures like the "sports culture" should be forced into extinction.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I'm not a hockey fan, but had checked in on the game from time to time to see how it was going, and when I saw Boston up 4-0 in the 3rd period I knew Vancouver had lost, again.
A little later I looked out my window - I live in Burnaby, but have a panoramic view from Mount Seymour to Metrotown - saw the column of smoke rising from downtown Vancouver, and knew something had happened. I can't add to what the news has reported, or what others have said. I was disappointed, disgusted.
Yes, there is lots of excellent imagery that will make it relatively easy to identify and apprehend lots of the morons who were responsible. But the problem is deeper. Yes, we can try them, get payment for damages, and so on. The real problem, though, is a social one: how do we have so many people who thought it was cool (some clearly did) to riot, to loot stores, to destroy the property of others? That's the problem, and you can't solve it overnight.
...laura
*sigh*
I support justice.
I don't support sociopaths who believe in your little mantra and like to "fuck shit up" just because your twisted logic supports it. There's not even anything remotely close to a "childish" government involved in this story. Wtf, man - are you trolling or something?
Well the story that was actually posted with the summary doesn't mention or even allude to any violence against people, and the others I'd originally read said less than a dozen serious injuries were incurred. Not to diminish a serious injury, but just a dozen of them in a riot encompassing 10,000 people or more hardly sounds like it was a mob war or as if attacking other people was anyone's focus. I understand now that it was worse than I originally perceived, but I don't think my comments are invalidated. Also, forgive my indignation, but I try to rely on hard journalism rather than let myself get swept up in the emotions evoked by Time magazine-style photo essays. I understand it was a very serious riot; I also believe that keeping vengeful and fearful emotions in check matters greatly in responding correctly to it.
Although I'm sure I'm wasting my time responding to you. This particular comment of yours sounds basically reasonable, but I see above that another comment of yours calls me a "dickhead" for daring to disagree with the popular opinion and ends with "go fuck yourself troll".
There's a difference between expressing and standing by an unpopular opinion and deliberately trolling. If you can't understand that you have no place whatsoever in civilized debate.
That's assuming the police and justice system works fairly, a fairly controversial issue. If it doesn't, your participation in it is immoral. And, if anything, your civic duty would be to work on improving the system.
While I'll grant that you are mostly correct, this is what I meant by the balance of civic liberties and civic duty. The places you have referenced were NOT high on civic liberties and, therefore, the civic duty is reduced.
You're arguing for what I just said. =)
Come here, I have a brick just waiting for your face imprint.
how is babby formed?
Even in Vancouver, the sports event was non-violent and family friendly. It was the after-game party hosted by the city that got out of hand. From what I saw, the city was prepared to deal with mobs of hockey fans, but not prepared as well for the small group that was intentionally stirring things up -- people who were spread out and hiding in mobs of regular drunk hockey fans. The police were spread too thin to go chasing after these guys, so instead concentrated on damping the results of their antics, preventing further escalation, and did that quite well. There appeared to be very little rioting that didn't have premeditated intentional rioters at the core of it.
If you have evidence of a crime, the law requires you provide it.
Strange. Like how most police officers at the G20 attacks had taken their badge number off their riot uniforms in order to remain anonymous and now not a single officer "remembers" doing it or seeing another officer do it?
In this case, a bunch of mental retards committed acts of vandalism in violence in a crowd that probably had nearly as many recording devices as people deserve what they get.
You mean like how the G20 cops (and most of Vancouver's cops were shipped off to the G20...) went wild beating innocent people on camera and unlawfully incarcerating them and thus warrant charges?
No, of course not. It's amazing how the police (and their union) don't think this even warrants an investigation let alone charges when it's officers accused of misusing lethal force but suddenly call for tough treatment of a few looters. By any rational measure corrupt police officers are far worse than rioters, but from the police themselves and law-and-order types like yourself there's like zero push to actually investigate the serious crimes.
The police keep claiming there's a serious conspiracy of anarchists who all get dressed up in their black leather and motorcycle helmets and start riots, but always melt away before getting caught. This is ridiculous - anarchists are as interested in following orders as atheists are in church. And you'd think if these rioters were real, not agent provocateurs, they'd have managed to catch a couple by now and prove it.
Absolutely true. I guess I didn't make that clear.
I've been told rock salt works quite well also. And hurts like a #^$3& when you try to wash it out :P
Many of us don't view based on mods.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
So you're suggesting that local businesses board up their windows anytime they think there might be a riot? Really?
You don't seem to understand how police procedures have worked in the past. The police always have been, and likely will for some time, dependent upon tips and IDs from the general populace. In many areas where residents know they will face retribution from gang members if they work with the police, the police make very little headway with a lot of cases because they NEED tips. No witnesses come forth? There's no smoking gun, no DNA evidence to use? Then it's a cold case.
Exactly. And for all the retards advocating anarchism on here (which is amazingly common for such a stupid idea), imagine Vancouver but with no police. Or no, Vancouver is still too polite. Imagine Detroit.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Robocop's future criminal dystopia was set in Detroit. It already approaches anarchy + no police.
While I'm not going to try to justify the actions of criminals, if you leave your car parked in a bad area of town with the keys in the ignition and it gets stolen, you only have yourself to blame.
Incorrect. The blame falls upon the car thief. Yes, the owner made a mistake, but it still takes a criminal action to exploit that mistake. We -should- be able to live in a society where we can leave the doors to our houses unlocked. We -should- be able to live in a society where accidentally leaving the car unlocked doesn't mean it gets stolen. That those acts happen are the fault of the thieves, not the naive or forgetful. They are the ones taking the actions.
When I walk past a car and notice it's unlocked do I hop in, searching for spare keys or try to hotwire it because hey, free car! No, I keep walking, because it's NOT FUCKING MINE. The criminal is always at fault, regardless of whether the victim protected himself 'enough.'
It's not worth setting a precedent that we'll all analyze video for the police merely to get justice for a few totaled cars
Actually, what's wrong with that precedent?
I would call it 'civic duty' on the part of the non-officer.
Bostonians tend to riot when our teams WIN. Like, say, now.
I thought that was just a Los Angeles thing.
First, first of all Rodney King needed a beating he was acting crazy and resisting arrest
"Acting crazy and resisting arrest" does not condone a brutal beating well after the suspect has been cuffed and subdued. The Rodney King affair was not about how the officers treated him while subduing him, but how they treated him after subduing him.
No, the parent is right and doesn't need to "get over himself." It's a totally reasonable reaction to a freakshow mob mentality.
and fuck you if you support snitching, you are perpetuating a childish government
Ah yes, the refrain of the mentally immature anarchist.
You misunderstood. It's not the trespassing that deserves the fatal response. It's the theft.. it's just that trespassing is likely the most available legal excuse. It conveniently covers a whole lot of potential ways someone else can fuck with you. It works as a sort of blanket license to provide incentive not to fuck with people.
A friend just corrected me. It's not trespassing laws that count here. It's castle laws. Being inside someones house without their consent is what will put you in an especially dangerous situation.