VANCOUVER -- The City of Vancouver opted not to stop Occupy Vancouver from setting up a tent city downtown during the initial protest march on Oct. 15 because it feared that police action could spark a riot, Mayor Gregor Robertson said Thursday.
A committee of senior city officials, including city manger Penny Ballem and police chief Jim Chu, concluded that intervention could backfire based on intelligence received in the lead-up to the protest attended by 4,000 people, added Robertson.
“They made the choice in that immediate 24-hour period before the protest that an intervention would be high-risk and could provoke a conflict as serious as a riot,” the mayor told The Vancouver Sun.
Robertson said he was not on the committee but was briefed on the assessment.
Earlier in the week before the Oct. 15 mass demonstration, the city had intended to dismantle an Occupy tent city as quickly as possible, the mayor added. Indeed, the city’s fledgling Large Events Oversight Committee (LEOC) was told by Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston on Oct. 11 that the city would not allow an encampment to be erected on the lawn of the Vancouver Art Galley — four days before the protest began.
“But the management team was following the (Occupy Vancouver) organizing in the days leading up, basically hour by hour, and their assessment shifted through that week,” recalled Robertson.
“In the few days before Oct. 15, the scale of (Occupy Vancouver) organizing was very significant and we realized that thousands of people would rally and that, as with other cities, it would be much more difficult to intervene than anticipated.”
On Thursday Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton dismissed Robertson’s insistence that it was a senior management team analyzing the latest information, which advised against intervention, as opposed to Robertson and his Vancouver Vision councillors.
“I don’t believe him. I think the direction came from Gregor and his political team. And if it didn’t, it should have,” said Anton.
“The mayor has to be in charge. And that will be the difference between Gregor and me.”
Anton said that staff were prepared to act on the city’s no-tents policy “but they were thwarted from the top by Gregor ... Obviously, this was direction from the top.
“Gregor and his councillors did not want to shut down the tent part of Occupy Vancouver ... That’s the fundamental problem, and now look at the pickle the city’s in.”
Robertson’s version of the city’s shift in strategy was partly backed up Thursday by Charles Gauthier, executive-director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, who was an observer at the LEOC meeting on Oct. 11 when the committee was told the city wouldn’t allow a tent city.
Gauthier said the city’s last-minute change of tactics was probably the correct decision.
“I went down on that first day (Oct. 15),” said Gauthier. “I think it would have been very difficult to stay with that original plan. There were a lot of people down there, and a lot of media.
“I don’t know how anyone could have stopped that from occurring. And no other city in North America has been able to stop the initial setup of a camp.”
Gauthier said he has weekly conference calls with officials from other North American downtown business groups and that no other North American city, other than London, Ont., has been able to successfully dismantle a tent city without chaos. “They are all struggling with it.”
Gauthier said the ongoing encampment at the VAG is “problematic,” but added that his group is pleased that there has been no property destruction and that downtown employees have not been traumatized by protesters.
“To us, what was paramount was to not have a mini-version ofof of the June 15 riot, occurring on Oct. 15, three months after the fact.”
Meanwhile, Anton said that city staff, including the police, could have stopped the tent city if they had acted quickly at the outset of the protest. “Now it’s become very complicated. People are very invested in the site.”
She said there is greater potential for violence now than there was in mid-October when “peaceful activists” dominated the camp before a “more random element of people” moved into the tents.
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