Should've realized that something was up when this was the very first thing I saw upon arriving at the venue:
There was a big crowd rush on one of the entrances (or it might've been the TicketMaster will-call), and a whole bunch of police converged. The "oooooh" you hear on the video was people reacting to the police taking a guy down to the ground (I didn't capture it well on the video).
It just got worse from there. The Groove Tickets will-call had a line that stretched for hundreds of feet. I probably would have been waiting an hour if I hadn't cut the line. And amazingly, they only had 75% of the will call windows open.
Then the ticket entrances to the venues had huge lines also. Fortunately, I found a place where there was no crowd and got it fairly easily. Once I got in at 10 PM, the music had already been stopped for about half an hour. They made a few announcements about people sitting down or clearing certain rows and stuff, but nothing detailed enough for people to understand. After about 10:30 they stopped making announcements.
At just after 11 PM, I had just stepped outside the foyer for a second. Bad timing. Right at that moment, the staff forcibly shut the venue doors, and a line of riot police and staff were immediately on us, escorting us into the parking lot. I walked around the venue a little bit, and found my way back in through another entrance.
I think they already knew at that point that the show was cancelled though. I don't know why they let everyone wait around with no information until the announcement was made at just after midnight.
I made my way to the floor, and spoke to Toby Vogel as he was breaking down his equipment. He didn't even have a copy of the setlist yet, cause the boys hadn't made it yet (although Karl tweeted that the wrote it up away from the venue in the hopes that they would be able to return to play it). He also said that the boys felt gutted because they had put a lot of preparation into it and were looking forward to playing.
Then the riot police formed up and pushed everyone out of the floor:
And they even brought in a police helicopter. According to the policewoman I spoke to, she said it was shut down by the fire marshall because there were too many people and the venue wasn't big enough. Therefore, IMO, the blame falls squarely on the promoter, HARD, for overselling. I hope all the artists get paid in full, and that everyone gets their refund (which has been promised). HARD deserves to pay through the nose. Or, as the refrain went tonight, "Fuck HARD!"