The West Vancouver Police teamed up with the Integrated Road Safety Unit, Lower Mainland RCMP Traffic Services, Lower Mainland Traffic Safety Helicopter and Sea to Sky RCMP to target aggressive, high-risk drivers on Highway 99 over the Victoria Day long weekend.
Throughout the Sea to Sky corridor police handed out a total of 229 violation tickets with 175 of them for speeding. As well, 17 vehicles were impounded for seven days for excessive speeding, which is driving 40km/h or more over the posted speed limit.
Four drivers failed roadside sobriety checks and received 90-day driving prohibitions and 30-day vehicle impounds, and another eight drivers tested in the warn range to get three day prohibitions and impounds. Another six 24-hour driving prohibitions and three 12-hour driving prohibitions were handed down. Some drivers, stopped during the day, had not sobered up from the night before.
Long weekend full of fights
The Whistler RCMP, boosted by additional members and integrated teams from the Lower Mainland, had a busy weekend in Whistler. From Friday through early Monday morning, police arrested a dozen people for being intoxicated in public and handed out over 50 tickets, mostly for liquor violations. Young Lower Mainland males, generally between the ages of 17 and 23, accounted for all but three of those tickets.
As well, the RCMP responded to several calls regarding fights, weapons, attacks with bear and pepper spray, and vandalism to cars and properties.
On May 18 at 10:35 p.m. the Whistler RCMP responded to a hold-up alarm at a business in Creekside and discovered that three males had been beating up a lone male in the entryway to the establishment.
The problems started earlier in the night when an uninvited male showed up at a party where the police were called earlier in regards an unpermitted backyard fire.
The uninvited male left when the police arrived, then returned to the property with a prohibited weapon, martial arts nunchucks, and assaulted other males at the residence. The male then left and was tracked by the males to the business, where they attacked him to get even. A bystander tried to intervene on the uninvited guest's behalf, but the uninvited guest turned on him instead.
As the police were arriving the uninvited male headed back to the residence again and engaged in another altercation with a male who had armed himself with a shovel. There was a struggle and the uninvited male, who was described as intoxicated, was hit on the head with the shovel.
The RCMP are filing assault charges against the residents that tracked the male to the business and the male with the shovel, and plan to recommend charges against the uninvited guest — a man known to police — as well. All of the males are described as Whistler residents in their 20s.
At 11:15 p.m. on May 18, the RCMP were conducting a patrol of a local nightclub when they witnessed a male punch another male in the face while standing at the bar, knocking out a tooth and rendering him unconscious. The attacker was arrested while the injured male was taken to the Whistler Health Care Centre and on to a hospital in Vancouver. A 20-year-old from Surrey faces charges of assault causing bodily harm.
At 12:30 a.m. the police attended a fight in the taxi loop. They found another officer assisting a male who had been punched in the face, losing a tooth. The male was uncooperative and drove off with his girlfriend, while his attacker had left the area.
At 2:10 a.m. an RCMP patrol came across a shirtless male and another male about to get into a fight with a group of four or five males on Blackcomb Way. The police got between the groups and held them apart until more assistance arrived. Some of the males ran from the scene as the police arrived. The police discovered that the men who were outnumbered had earlier been attacked by a group of four or five South Asian males.
A little later the RCMP were flagged down by hotel staff on Whistler way after a fight erupted in the lobby between two groups. A group of six white and South Asian males in their mid-20s was preparing to fight a group of roughly 15 South Asian males in their late teens when one of the males with the younger group used bear or pepper spray.
One of the most serious calls of the weekend came in at 3:35 a.m. on May 20. A female reported that she had been sexually assaulted by two South Asian males in an unknown Whistler hotel. She met the males in the village earlier and accompanied them to their room, where she said she was assaulted before fleeing. The RCMP investigation is continuing.
