VPD learns from police in the UK to keep Celebration of Light safe

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – With hundreds of thousands of people cramming on to the shore of English Bay and along popular beaches downtown, police in Vancouver have had their hands full trying to keep the large crowds safe at the annual Celebration of Light competition. Officers here say they’ve had some help thanks to their counterparts across the pond.

Once known as the Celebration of Fights, many years ago the event used to be chaotic and violent but that’s changed to be a more family-friendly night out.

Vancouver Police Sergeant Jason Robillard says learning from officers in the UK has been a big help.

“We’re always looking at what other cities do to keep everybody safe. We have learned crowd management techniques from other police agencies, particularly those with extensive experience in policing these large scale events, such as our colleagues in the UK. I can’t get into specific examples, I can just say the whole model and how we do business. It’s not like we were doing anything wrong before but we needed to hone in our skills, maybe be a little bit more organized and a little more streamlined. [The UK has] quite large soccer events and so they have things down to quite a good science. And it’s not just the UK, we’re looking at other departments whether it be in North America or nationally here in Canada, but we have learned a lot.”

Robillard adds it helps when a handful of VPD members used to work in England. “We’re able to get as many techniques as we can. Every year, how we deploy and the crowd management model that we use, are getting better and better and better and it’s almost like a seamless transition for our officers to go into policing the Celebration of Light. We have a very good system of how we get our officers out there, where they’re deployed, what time they’re deployed and how, where, when, and what we do. It’s all worked out in a very concise operations plan.”

He explains they do an internal review to figure out what needs to improve the next time Vancouver hosts a big event.

“We always continue to look at new and emerging crowd management models and we continually review and assess our responses to any large events. The Celebration of Light is just one of those marquee events we provide policing to every year, so we do look back. We do evaluate all of our operational plans and not just for the [Celebration of Light.] Our current model for the Celebration of Light is it’s very coordinated and I would describe it as a well orchestrated police response but it’s not just us. We work closely with City of Vancouver staff, the Park Board, our emergency services partners — it’s all hands on deck for this.”

So far this year there haven’t been any major issues at the event, outside from the usual liquor pour-outs and reminders not to smoke cigarettes or weed in the park or on the beaches, otherwise it’s a $250 fine. It’s also illegal to fly a drone before, during or after the show.

Robillard says they have no information of any issues that could arise this weekend when Croatia wraps up the event. “We do have a section of the department called our Emergency Operational Planning Section and they look at all these events and monitor intelligence and look at models that worked and ones that didn’t work and they do quite a hard job. For those officers working in that section to get these models and get the officers the resources we need, depending on what type of event it is, so we’re constantly looking at our operational plans.”

India performed last Saturday and Canada performed on Wednesday.

This year’s winner won’t be announced until next week.