Hordes of angry people darting among clouds of gas as overturned cars burn and beer bottles and smoke fill the air. One police officer described Vancouver’s riot as like something from the set of a Hollywood movie.
“When we turned onto Nelson Street, it was like a scene from Universal Studios,” said Const. Laura Jacquet, one of three Vancouver police officers who spoke yesterday about the June 15 riot as the department prepared to release an internal riot review.
“There was a line of police dogs. There were cars upside down and people were just going crazy everywhere.”
Jacquet was on routine patrol that night and was called into the city’s downtown core as the riot erupted in the wake of the Vancouver Canucks loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.
“I think that in those three hours, I’ve never felt like more of a target,” said Jacquet, who was moved to join an RCMP riot squad and began pushing the crowd down Granville.
She described waiting with the other officers as bottles whizzed by their heads and people emerged through clouds of gas to attack them.
“We’re the police. We’re always kind of a target, but that night it was us against them. If you didn’t have your buddies at your back to protect you, you were vulnerable.”
Sgt. Howard Chow, who was part of the crowd control unit during the 1994 Stanley Cup, described the June 15 riot as “surreal,” and admits the overwhelming number of people (an estimated 155,000 people were on the street that night) made him anxious.
Insp. Steve Rai, one of the commanders on scene the night of the riot, displayed the heavy metal links that were stripped from construction fencing and hurled through the air at officers.
“If that hits a helmet, it’ll cause a dent,” Rai said. “But if it hits you in the head … it could cause serious injury or worse.”
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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