Disturbance at the Abbotsford Arts Centre

This evening the Abbotsford Arts Centre, located in the 2300 block of Crescent Way had a scheduled performance of South Asian comedians. The 735 seat auditorium was sold out and by 7:00 pm the venue was near capacity.

An issue arose when it was realized that some seated attendees had brought children, without tickets, to the performance. This caused the room to reach capacity despite the fact that patrons with tickets were still outside. The promoter and the building management were working through a solution when several persons outside became upset and aggressive. Abbotsford Police were the requested to attend by Abbotsford Arts Centre staff. Six officers then began working with the event organizers to calm the crowd and to allow the show to continue. Unfortunately, several persons outside became more agitated with the delays.

The situation worsened when a man smashed a window to an entrance door and cut himself quite badly. The small contingent of Abbotsford Police officers on scene attempted to take custody of the man to both arrest him and to expedite his medical treatment. Another man in the crowd then turned on these officers. Fortunately, the vast majority of the approximately 100 persons outside obeyed the police request for calm. The result of the brief physical exchange was that 2 men were arrested and two Abbotsford Police officers were injured. All four were taken to hospital for treatment.

The crowd remained on scene outside and the 700 plus persons inside were advised by the promoter that the event was cancelled. This created some more tensions but fortunately no further incidents. Additional Abbotsford Police officers were deployed to the location and because of the size of the crowd and the earlier incident, available Langley and Mission RCMP members were requested to attend. The Abbotsford Police would like to thank their law enforcement partners as well as BC Ambulance and Abbotsford Fire Rescue for their assistance.

The Major Crime Unit of the Abbotsford Police Department has assumed responsibility for the investigation of the incident

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Abbotsford
• Arts
• Centre
• police
• riot
• times
• fire
• global

[neerping]

I'm not saying it was okay to smash windows or to become agitated, but nobody had any business letting in so many NON ticket holders, whether or not the non-ticket holders were children.

Very bad idea to oversell a show.