It’s Hockey Riot Day 12 and the blame game continues.

The heat is on Mayor Gregor Robertson and Police Chief Jim Chu. If they aren’t responsible for public safety, who is? And if public safety fails, as it certainly did on the night of June 15, do they take the blame? And what does “taking the blame” mean? A public apology? Falling on your sword? Desperately casting about for someone else to take the fall?

Well, for Chu and Robertson so far, it’s been door number three.

Both blamed anarchists for inciting the riot. Sorry, said the anarchists, it wasn’t us. No self-respecting anarchist would trash a bookstore the way the rioters went after Chapters.

OK, Chu and Robertson then blamed hooligans, also known as “not real hockey fans.” The problem with that was obvious to anyone who watched people dressed in expensive hockey jerseys set cars on fire, smash windows, loot stores and take cool photos of each other.

Could be anarchists posing as hockey fans. Clever anarchists.

As potential scapegoats were disqualified one by one, the wolves began to circle Chu, who doesn’t look good. At one point he tried to discredit the guy who helped write the 1994 riot report (which, apparently, went unread at city hall), and has been playing coy with the number of officers assigned before Game 7 and the subsequent riot.

Robertson, meanwhile, has apparently decided to become the victim in all of this. ( “No, the police chief won’t tell me the number of officers, but I’m sure Chief Chu knows what he’s doing and the buck stops here,” etc.)

If I were Chief Chu, I’d start updating my resumé.

I’d like to sympathize with the chief and the mayor, but I sympathize more with the poor people at Blenz Coffee, in the epicentre of the riot, who spent hours huddling in the back room in fear of their lives while the anarchists/hooligans/hockey fans trashed and looted the store and no one came to help.

I’d be more sympathetic if both the chief and the mayor apologized to those people for putting them in harm’s way. If I were the mayor, I’d then promise the people of Vancouver to stop all the mad-scientist social experiments for a while to concentrate on good governance and public safety, which may not be as much fun as inviting huge mobs to clog the streets but they are the bases for a civilized democracy.

Then I’d stop letting the wolves chew on the chief and let everyone know that by generating a huge mob and tempting the fates on a historic, emotionally charged day  and then failing to plan for the inevitable, I let everyone down.

Who knows – if he did that, he might even get re-elected.