Delta police officers were busy earlier this week as local high school students marked the beginning of the new school year.
The annual Hell Night, an alcohol-fuelled rite-of-passage that sees South Delta teens spend the first night of the school year partying outside, resulted in a number of tickets for minors in possession of alcohol, alcohol seizures, and incidents of mischief and property damage.
Delta police spokesperson Const. Ciaran Feenan said the department's school liaison officers and staff at Delta Secondary met with the Grade 12 students earlier in the day to try to get the message out that the annual party was not a school-sanctioned event and talked about acting responsibly.
"They tried to be preventative to a point," he said, adding that officers were busy and the department's resources were stretched dealing with youths throughout the night.
While there were tickets issued, there were no reports of any arrests this year.
On Monday night, Delta police and fire departments dealt with a number of issues around grad pranks in North Delta.
In the span of about two hours, four North Delta schools - Seaquam, Burnsview and Sands secondary schools and Gibson Elementary - were hit by vandalism.
The fields at Seaquam and Sands were set on fire and parts of the schools were spray-painted. At Burnsview, youths threw toilet paper and wrote on the front of the building
The front of Gibson was also spray-painted.
"That's dangerous, that's dangerous activity when you're burning," Feenan said.
"That really stretched our resources," he said, adding officers continued to patrol those areas throughout the night to deter any further mischief.
