A special court should be
established to deal with those
who will be charged in connection with Vancouver’s June 15
Stanley Cup Final riot, according
to a review initiated by the province of B.C., the City of Vancouver
and the Vancouver Police Board.
“The Night the City Became a
Stadium” report says remorse,
apologies and convictions are not
enough for the actions rioters
engaged in as stores were vandalized and looted when more than
155,000 people gathered in Vancouver’s downtown core for the
game in which the Boston Bruins
beat the Vancouver Canucks 4-0.
The report, prepared by Vancouver 2010 Olympic CEO John
Furlong and former Nova Scotia
deputy attorney general Doug
Keefe, advocates restorative justice principles above and beyond
what can be obtained through the
regular court processes.
“A price must be paid,” the
report states. “There are strong
and widespread views in the
community that the criminal justice system is not up to the task
GEOFF HOWE / THE CANADIAN PRESS
A Sears store is damaged after the Vancouver Stanley Cup Final.
because it is too slow and too
weak…But another, more apt
reason is that it is too impersonal.
A guilty plea and imposition of a
fine teaches nothing of the harm
that has been done.”
Among the report’s 51 recom-
mendations is that the province’s
attorney general “establish a pro-
cedure or special court specific-
ally for dealing with the prosecu-
tion of people accused of a
riot-related criminal act that
provides crown counsel and
judges with a suitable range of
sentencing options.”
Those options, the authors
suggest, will allow prosecutors to
be able to respond to a wide
range of criminal acts and take
into account the community
harm done by the riot. To design
that process, the report suggests
drawing on the experiences of the
Centre for Restorative Justice at
Simon Fraser University, the
Vancouver Association for
Restorative Justice, the Com-
munity Justice Initiatives Associ-
ation and the dispute resolution
office of the Ministry of the Attor-
ney General. It also suggests
appointing one or more com-
munity advisory panels to fash-
ion extra-judicial sanctions or
community-based sentences.
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