Vancouver police to be 'out in full force' on Halloween night after multiple weekend stabbings

British Columbia's public safety minister said Monday that police would be out in force on Halloween night after five people were stabbed in less than an hour early Sunday as Halloween partiers flooded Vancouver's entertainment zones.

Sgt. Steve Addison with the Vancouver Police Department said five victims went to hospital in two separate and unrelated incidents.

Police believe the weekend stabbings were targeted and followed prior fights between the same groups of people.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said police will be on patrol Monday night and "enforcing rigorously," particularly in entertainment districts.

"What we've seen around Halloween is drunken morons, to put it bluntly, who had too much to drink getting into fights with each other."

"The police are going to be out in full force and will have zero tolerance for that kind of behaviour." 

Police say they responded to a triple stabbing at a bar at West Broadway and Oak Street around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. The victims were three men in their 20s who had come to the city from White Rock for a birthday party.

One person was treated in hospital and released, but two were more seriously injured and remain in care.

Police said less than an hour later, officers patrolling downtown intervened in a large fight between two groups on Granville Street that left two men in their 20s with stab wounds to the face, hands and torso.

Addison noted that the weekend before Halloween is always busy, and the stabbings stretched their resources. 

Police said the attackers in the first case fled, and they have not identified any suspects in the second.

Other incidents this weekend included a Surrey man in his 20s who was slashed in the face near Granville Street after he tried to intervene in a fight between strangers and a stranger threatening a man with a knife in Chinatown, police said.