Razor blades, switch blades, metal bars, aluminum knuckles, pepper spray, bear spray, fireplace pokers, baseball bats, slingshots, field hockey sticks, crowbars, socket wrenches...
Thats just a partial list of the weapons or potential weapons that were seized by the RCMP in Whistler over the past two weekends through roadblocks, foot patrols and the usual arrests.
During the same period the police responded to over a dozen fights in progress, and twice as many noise complaints and disturbances. More than 40 people were so drunk that they were arrested and taken into custody for their protection as well as ours. Furious parents were called in the middle of the night to pick up their still underage charges.
Things got even more serious. Two weekends ago an innocent bystander was cut in the neck by a piece of flying glass when a fight erupted in a local nightclub. Last weekend a man was stabbed in the neck by an unidentified assailant. Although the man is now in stable condition it was treated as a "life-threatening" injury. In other words, it was nearly a murder.
Welcome to Whistler in the off-season. The world famous playground for the rich and famous becomes a regionally notorious battleground for the young and destructive.
It happens every year when winter vacationers leave and were forced to cut prices to fill rooms. Nobody seems to have any better ideas to keep our businesses in business through the shoulder seasons, which add up to about four months a year. Lets face it without snow or sunshine, theres almost four months a year where our appeal is pretty limited.
At the same time Whistlers enduring reputation as a party town which is as much a part of our overall success as a root cause of our current problems is a large part of the reason that things get so out of hand. A road trip to Whistler has become a kind of rite of passage for rowdy grad classes and groups from the Lower Mainland.
I think by now most people in Whistler can recognize trouble when they see it arriving on a Friday night. Trouble dresses and cuts its hair a certain way and drives a particular kind of car. Trouble also travels in large, often intimidating groups, and has a rough plan for the weekend that includes getting into clubs, getting hammered, trying to get laid, and, when nothing else pans out, getting into a fight.
Believe it or not there are places in the Lower Mainland where this is typical every Saturday night, not some anomaly in the slow shoulder season. There are also places in suburban Vancouver where people carry weapons around because thats what you do if you want to be tough.
Whistler doesnt want these kinds of people visiting, but sometimes it seems like we dont have a choice if a customers money and I.D. is good, what choice do we have but to take it?
Thats not to say that theres nothing we can do.
Right now the RCMP is working with high schools in the Lower Mainland to discourage class trips to Whistler. The RCMP have also brought in extra officers from Friday to Monday every week, and have been conducting regular road checks and foot patrols to make the police presence obvious.
Some cattle fencing is being placed by the taxi loop every Saturday night to create a more ordered line for cabs, which is something that the taxi company has wanted for a long, long time.
Hotels now have a policy in place where the person who makes a reservation by credit card has to be there in person to sign-in for their room. Local nightclubs have increased communication, using walkie-talkies to inform one another about problem groups and guests.
While these actions have had some impact, we still have a long way to go to make families feel safe in the village on a Saturday night. We could probably do more.
In London, England, for example, there are security cameras in virtually all of the known trouble spots on the street, inside the club, and in the interior of cabs. Even the doormen at nightclubs have cameras and microphones strapped to their heads these days. So far its been extremely effective because people know theyre being watched.
Its a libertarian nightmare, but in a town like Whistler, where the shiznit goes down in the same general areas every night the taxi loop, parking lot A, the corner of Main Street and Northlands, outside one of our six major nightclubs cameras could have a huge impact. Its expensive, sure, but what do 30 extra police officers cost us? How much will a murder cost us once the word gets out that Whistler is not a safe place to visit and people cancel their trips?
In Halifax, a city of drunken college students, the police dont take you to the station when youre inebriated or causing problems. Instead, they throw you in the back of a paddy wagon which keeps driving around town until its full. Obviously we cant have paddy wagons driving around our pedestrian village, but maybe we can put up a few steel cages somewhere central that will hold people until things slow down enough for the police to take them to the station.
Putting gates up during the big air events and New Years Eve also seems to work, but thats going to take resources as well to set up gates every weekend. Although some businesses might believe that the cages would drive guests away, studies have shown that people are willing to do a lot get filmed, get patted down, whatever to be safe.
Of course the best solutions are to either price Whistler out of the range of undesirables, or to somehow shed our reputation as a party destination, but I cant see either thing happening while theres money on the line.
We might weed out a few bad apples, but at what price?