Shameful victory celebrations in Montreal.

Yesterday, once the game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins was over, the victorious hockey fans gathered in downtown Montreal and started cheering and chanting, in decency.

During the initial hour of celebration, everybody remained calm and no major incident was reported. The subway lines were filled of happy and cheering fans who were heading home, satisfied of still being in the Stanley Cup hunt.

But as the night went on, the celebrations were troubled by a group of people who started going over the edge. Among those people, some has taken advantage of a lack of organization inside the police ranks to go over the top. A couple of stores were vandalized.

Another group of rioters had another ultimate goal in mind: the police vehicles themselves. They were just standing around the cars, stomping and bashing them with all kinds of stuff then flaming them at will. The police and special forces did eventually manage to recover and restore peace and stop the extent of the damages.

Once this crazy night weared down, a total of sixteen police cars were vandalized, stomped, bashed and burned. For an approximate $500 000 in damages only for the cars.

What was supposed to turn up a relative quiet evening slipped into a mini-riot. All the damage was caused by a few dozens individuals. The worse is that for the majority of those people, they didn't even realize before vandalizing that it is their own taxes that are paying for this equipment. The whole community PAYS for public services thru the taxes.

All that for a first round victory.

(Pictures: Montreal police cars, Canadian Press.)