Four Cops with Guns Drawn at Main & Hastings

Just after 3:30 p.m. today, Vancouver Police apprehended a guy in front of Carnegie Center who apparently was "flashing knives around". A man told me, "I heard yelling, 'Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Then I saw four cops with guns out."

A male police officer reportedly asked underclass men standing around in front of Carnegie if they had witnessed anything. They said they hadn't. But they had of course seen something because they were chatting with one another about the incident. One guy later said, chuckling and shaking his head, that one of the knives the guy had been flashing was large.

There was blood on the sidewalk. In addition to the blood in this photo, there was a smaller area of blood nearby on the sidewalk. The blur on the right of this photos is someone's pant leg as they walked by. I asked a witness if the guy on the steps had been stabbed and he said, "No."

Police sat the suspect on the steps of Carnegie Centre in handcuffs. Paramedics arrived and put a white bandage around his head. He was apparently bleeding.




A person with a camera offered to take some photos and send them to me. Comments late made by the photographer via email left me with the impression that it's time Chief Chu had a talk with his constables about respecting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When the photographer went to take a photo, a female police officer with dark hair apparently made a point of stepping in front of the camera to block the shot. Photographers have as much right to work on a public sidewalk as police do. There is no expectation of privacy on a sidewalk and taxpayers have a right to see photos of police at work.

"End of the Line Cowboy", says Cop

A plain-clothed Vancouver cop in short pants was putting his gun away as he climbed off of a suspect lying on the ground at the corner of Cordova and Columbia after dark on Sunday. "End of the line cowboy", he said.

As the handcuffed male suspect was being put in the police paddy wagon, a cop opened the trunk of what a witness described as the suspect's "small compact car" and said, "Ohhhh, look's like the Easter bunny's been here." The witness couldn't remember if this plain-clothed cop was the same one who had made the "cowboy" comment. "There were so many cops there," he said. "They were taking duffle bags out of the trunk." There were both plain-clothed and uniformed cops and both marked and unmarked police car at the scene. The witness had the impression that the cops had been following the suspect as he moved north on Columbia but he wasn't certain.