The last Stanley Cup rioters have been given stiff jail sentences
Posted February 20, 2016 7:36 am.
Last Updated February 20, 2016 7:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Almost three years in jail for each of the last two suspects in the Stanley Cup riots. The pair faced a number of offences ranging from assault to break and enter.
William Fisher, 31, has been given 36 months in jail, while 24-year-old Jeffrey Milne has been sentenced to 32 months.
Crown Council Gordon Comer says they received the longest sentences of all rioters because of what happened on Georgia Street that night.
“They were there for two and a half hours. They encouraged others, they advanced on police positions. One of them had committed three assaults in the offence, Mr. Fisher and he received a longer sentence because of that.”
He says this closes the book on the Stanley Cup riot prosecutions, which took more than four and a half years and cost more than $5 million.
BC Attorney General Suzanne Anton is happy it’s all over. “From the results there were 300 charges and 284 pleaded guilty and nine others convicted so they put together very strong cases. It was treated seriously of course by the police. It was treated seriously of course by the prosecution service. They were criminal acts and they were criminal convictions as a result.”
Anton says the personal trauma it caused was even more disturbing, “That is why we have an independent prosecution service. They are free from political influence, they don’t get ordered around. They do things that are done in their judgment in the public interest, so they look at all these cases applying their usual standard of the public interest.”
She adds police have learned many lesson and often refer to what came out of that night.
