WHDH reports Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino, plans to bill Sony for the chaos caused at Copley Place yesterday. According to WHDH it took 12 police officers to clear the "crazed gamers" and the city blames the Sony Style store. Unlike the Landmark Center Best Buy, which prevented a bad situation from occuring, the Sony Style store provoked it by withholding launch numbers, not allowing pre-orders and having a laissez-faire system in place for launch. Billing for police time could happen across the country with stores that withheld launch details causing a preventable situation to turn ugly.
WHDH reports Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino, plans to bill Sony for the chaos caused at Copley Place yesterday. According to WHDH it took 12 police officers to clear the "crazed gamers" and the city blames the Sony Style store. Unlike the Landmark Center Best Buy, which prevented a bad situation from occuring, the Sony Style store provoked it by withholding launch numbers, not allowing pre-orders and having a laissez-faire system in place for launch. Billing for police time could happen across the country with stores that withheld launch details causing a preventable situation to turn ugly.
Reader Comments (54)
Posted: Nov 19th 2006 8:09PM rowd149 said
Woah, Joystiq, "laissez-faire"? How many gamers do you really think paid THAT much attention during US History?
Posted: Nov 20th 2006 9:42AM omnicomic said
I can't believe some of you are actually deriding Menino for this.
I actually live in Boston, and that place was madness. Everyone saw the video. There were cops everywhere, and its not Boston's fault. Its the Sony style store's fault for not being better prepared (like the article said).
I don't think that's unreasonable at all. And not everyone wants a PS3 by the way, so saying he's doing this out of spite is just idiotic. He's not doing this to Sony, its the Sony Style store that did not take the responsibility as a retailer and organize the chaos.
People are idiots regardless, and mob mentality does nothing to help that. Yes, the individuals are responsible for being unruly, but its up to the Sony Style store to step in and organize it.
I actually live in Boston, and that place was madness. Everyone saw the video. There were cops everywhere, and its not Boston's fault. Its the Sony style store's fault for not being better prepared (like the article said).
I don't think that's unreasonable at all. And not everyone wants a PS3 by the way, so saying he's doing this out of spite is just idiotic. He's not doing this to Sony, its the Sony Style store that did not take the responsibility as a retailer and organize the chaos.
People are idiots regardless, and mob mentality does nothing to help that. Yes, the individuals are responsible for being unruly, but its up to the Sony Style store to step in and organize it.
Posted: Nov 21st 2006 8:15PM (Unverified) said
Hey all
For those of you that would like to know what it was like...I was at Copley. The Copley mall has two main entrances one which is very close to the sony store, and one which is kind of far. Regardless, people were lined up at both...LOTS of people. I got there at about 5am, and at about 5:30 the mall security or police force that was there, let opened the gate to the mall for the entrance which was furthest from the sony store. And All of us at the Prudencial side of the mall saw everyone line up which was completely unfair for all the people that had been waiting at my entrance...and there were people waiting since late the previous night way longer than me. At this point NO VIOLENCE occured but we all got pretty pissed. The response of the Police was to completely kick all of us out of the mall, both the group I was in, and the group which was waiting at the store. I give the police credit for actually then realizing how unfair that was...and he told us that everyone had to get out of the mall and it was raining and gross, but I was the second in line luckily when the line formed outside. Within twenty minutes i went magically from number 2 to number 50 as people basically walked out the door and turned around..(the door was revolving btw) and then a single file line turned into a half moon around this door. To where we waiting in the rain, rather calmly I might had...no pushing...no shoving whatsoever. It was a bunch of college students and we were all calm and patiently waited for the police to come outside and decide what the FUCK they were going to do. And it was clear the police and store had no clue what they were doing. On a side note...i personally called the head of security in the mall, and spoke to several guards in the mall and this was the conversation... me: "How do you guys plan to handle the release of the PS3 in the mall?" Security: "We have no plans we have no idea what we are going to do, but your not allowed to wait in the mall, police will kick you out. The mall technically opens at six, and the store will open at 8am...after that we have no idea whats going to happen but we have NO planned proceedures." I honestly thought that was a joke, and I called on the 24th in the afternoon and he told me the same thing. :back to the morning of the 25th: so we all were outside waiting patiently meeting new people all crowded in the gross rain as the police basically stood around doing NOTHING inside for a good hour and a half to two hours until one finally came out and decided what they were doing was have a grab bag lottery. He said the store had 20 PS3s (can you believe the sony story got 20?) and they were butting numbered tickets in a bag. 1-20 got a ps3 and everyone after that will be sequencially added to a list that the store will honor as new ones come in. Though we were all shocked that all the store got was 20, most everyone was happy with that solution as most of the people i was talking to...even one kid that was there since 3am...thought that was the most fair thing to do. So they made us wait while sony "printed tickets" which I dont believe they did cause the ticket looked soooooo premade. It was on thick paper with thick thick raised black ink. (i still have my card) and the cop said it was taking so long to get this started as most of us really felt.. Look lets do the lottery so I can go home. Eventually the lottery started and pretty much the numbers 1-20 were gone within about 10 minutes and there were still hundreds outside that were drawing cards with basically no hope. I ended up getting number 59 and my girlfriend who picked right after me got 181. To make a long story short, in my opinion the store had every opportunity to prepare in addition to coordinate some sort of plan with police/security ahead of time and did not a thing. I even met someone that bought a hotel room in the Weston and Marriott (250 dollars a night) to try and get a PS3, because we all truely thought the Sony store would get more units than other vendors when infact we could not have been more wrong. .....All the while this was going on...The CBS 4 news asses came and started filming us and making a whole scene of it. I was in the crowd, and the truth is we were all cooperative, kind, no pushing, no shoving. It was not even as bad as leaving a concert or crowded sporting event. The bottom line this was a complete failure from the perspective of preparation and brainstorming on everyone's part. The Store, Security, The Mall, and police. And the people that deserve the most credit are the Police. They did the best they could, though I have been nothing but dissapointed with most Bostonians' and their work ethic...the police were going on 15 hour shifts and they did a very good job dealing with the situation at hand. Specifically the officer that took charge.
As for the escalators they claim we broke. THERE WAS NO RIOT. When the Police said everyone MOVE THE LINE OUTSIDE...we hurried down the escalator. This is a crowded mall, I've seen the escalator packed before. Considering all we did was run down them just like you run down a flight of stairs I find it hard to believe we broke it. And to be really honest as far as i remember the escalators were OFF. THE MALL WAS TECHNICALLY CLOSED.
To sum it up...wow what an interesting experience. and way to blow stuff way out of proportion Boston. But if you ask me...the Sony cooperation for whatever reason did not ship enough units and that def is not too fair...but it is not the SONY cooperation's job to tell a store how to deal with the launch of this thing. The mall, store, security, and police could not have been more dissorganized and unprepared for this event and it showed. In my opinion they had every opportunity to run a lottery at the sony store, just like ticketmaster does for shows. Being the sony store is in a mall/hotel it makes the most sense. All those cooperate brains failed. The Sony cooperation is not to blame. And that was a day at Copley mall in Crap town Boston.
For those of you that would like to know what it was like...I was at Copley. The Copley mall has two main entrances one which is very close to the sony store, and one which is kind of far. Regardless, people were lined up at both...LOTS of people. I got there at about 5am, and at about 5:30 the mall security or police force that was there, let opened the gate to the mall for the entrance which was furthest from the sony store. And All of us at the Prudencial side of the mall saw everyone line up which was completely unfair for all the people that had been waiting at my entrance...and there were people waiting since late the previous night way longer than me. At this point NO VIOLENCE occured but we all got pretty pissed. The response of the Police was to completely kick all of us out of the mall, both the group I was in, and the group which was waiting at the store. I give the police credit for actually then realizing how unfair that was...and he told us that everyone had to get out of the mall and it was raining and gross, but I was the second in line luckily when the line formed outside. Within twenty minutes i went magically from number 2 to number 50 as people basically walked out the door and turned around..(the door was revolving btw) and then a single file line turned into a half moon around this door. To where we waiting in the rain, rather calmly I might had...no pushing...no shoving whatsoever. It was a bunch of college students and we were all calm and patiently waited for the police to come outside and decide what the FUCK they were going to do. And it was clear the police and store had no clue what they were doing. On a side note...i personally called the head of security in the mall, and spoke to several guards in the mall and this was the conversation... me: "How do you guys plan to handle the release of the PS3 in the mall?" Security: "We have no plans we have no idea what we are going to do, but your not allowed to wait in the mall, police will kick you out. The mall technically opens at six, and the store will open at 8am...after that we have no idea whats going to happen but we have NO planned proceedures." I honestly thought that was a joke, and I called on the 24th in the afternoon and he told me the same thing. :back to the morning of the 25th: so we all were outside waiting patiently meeting new people all crowded in the gross rain as the police basically stood around doing NOTHING inside for a good hour and a half to two hours until one finally came out and decided what they were doing was have a grab bag lottery. He said the store had 20 PS3s (can you believe the sony story got 20?) and they were butting numbered tickets in a bag. 1-20 got a ps3 and everyone after that will be sequencially added to a list that the store will honor as new ones come in. Though we were all shocked that all the store got was 20, most everyone was happy with that solution as most of the people i was talking to...even one kid that was there since 3am...thought that was the most fair thing to do. So they made us wait while sony "printed tickets" which I dont believe they did cause the ticket looked soooooo premade. It was on thick paper with thick thick raised black ink. (i still have my card) and the cop said it was taking so long to get this started as most of us really felt.. Look lets do the lottery so I can go home. Eventually the lottery started and pretty much the numbers 1-20 were gone within about 10 minutes and there were still hundreds outside that were drawing cards with basically no hope. I ended up getting number 59 and my girlfriend who picked right after me got 181. To make a long story short, in my opinion the store had every opportunity to prepare in addition to coordinate some sort of plan with police/security ahead of time and did not a thing. I even met someone that bought a hotel room in the Weston and Marriott (250 dollars a night) to try and get a PS3, because we all truely thought the Sony store would get more units than other vendors when infact we could not have been more wrong. .....All the while this was going on...The CBS 4 news asses came and started filming us and making a whole scene of it. I was in the crowd, and the truth is we were all cooperative, kind, no pushing, no shoving. It was not even as bad as leaving a concert or crowded sporting event. The bottom line this was a complete failure from the perspective of preparation and brainstorming on everyone's part. The Store, Security, The Mall, and police. And the people that deserve the most credit are the Police. They did the best they could, though I have been nothing but dissapointed with most Bostonians' and their work ethic...the police were going on 15 hour shifts and they did a very good job dealing with the situation at hand. Specifically the officer that took charge.
As for the escalators they claim we broke. THERE WAS NO RIOT. When the Police said everyone MOVE THE LINE OUTSIDE...we hurried down the escalator. This is a crowded mall, I've seen the escalator packed before. Considering all we did was run down them just like you run down a flight of stairs I find it hard to believe we broke it. And to be really honest as far as i remember the escalators were OFF. THE MALL WAS TECHNICALLY CLOSED.
To sum it up...wow what an interesting experience. and way to blow stuff way out of proportion Boston. But if you ask me...the Sony cooperation for whatever reason did not ship enough units and that def is not too fair...but it is not the SONY cooperation's job to tell a store how to deal with the launch of this thing. The mall, store, security, and police could not have been more dissorganized and unprepared for this event and it showed. In my opinion they had every opportunity to run a lottery at the sony store, just like ticketmaster does for shows. Being the sony store is in a mall/hotel it makes the most sense. All those cooperate brains failed. The Sony cooperation is not to blame. And that was a day at Copley mall in Crap town Boston.
Posted: Nov 23rd 2006 1:12PM (Unverified) said
What in the world is wrong with most of you? The people responsible for violence are the idiots who put a game above their sense of humanity. It frightens me that the notion of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and DIGNITY are unfamiliar with many of those who favor punative actions on Sony.
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