Vancouver is preparing for its first World Cup match with a large and unusually coordinated police operation. Authorities are pulling together officers from several forces at once, including the RCMP, the Metro Vancouver Transit Police, the Delta Police Force, and reinforcements from Calgary and Edmonton. Officials describe the effort to bring all these officers together as something genuinely unique for the city.
To free up the manpower, the city has taken drastic staffing measures in the run-up to the games. All police vacations in Vancouver have been cancelled well into July, in what is being described as an all-hands-on-deck approach. Even the mounted units are being drawn into the operation, with the horses normally used by medics expected to leave a gap elsewhere.
Crowd control has emerged as the most immediate concern for those planning the security response. Officers have been drilling for months and have shown reporters only a fraction of the training they have put in. Behind the scenes, they say they have prepared for a full menu of worst-case scenarios, drawing on questions and lessons gathered from around the world.
Part of that preparation has taken Canadian officers well beyond their own borders. According to the force, individuals were sent to Scotland, France and Germany specifically to observe soccer matches and to see whether hooliganism was taking place. The aim was to understand how trouble can develop around football fixtures before such crowds arrive in Vancouver.
At the same time, those studying the issue warn against misreading the behaviour of supporters. One of the defining characteristics of soccer fandom is that it is inherently rowdy, which is simply the norm for football fans. The danger, they caution, is that celebratory behaviour can be misinterpreted as the start of hooliganism, leading in turn to an overly zealous police reaction.
The security effort also leans on cooperation with forces abroad that know their own fans well. To help understand the flow of supporters, British police, for example, are sending three officers to the United States for the games that Britain plays there. The British government has also banned some 2,000 people from travelling to the World Cup because of their past behaviour.