When her neighbour’s house burned down last fall, Debbie Walker couldn’t help feeling relief.
For months, she’d watched people come and go at strange hours, sometimes witnessed by the RCMP officers who frequently patrolled the residential area in downtown Chilliwack. Property crime was a common occurrence, causing some neighbours to install surveillance cameras, while Walker began recording licence plates and vehicle descriptions.
So when the house went up in flames on Oct. 26, Walker felt strangely happy. No one was injured, and the first firefighters on scene thought the blaze was the result of a cooking fire.
“I just couldn’t believe that,” Walker recalled in a recent interview. She was vindicated a few days later when RCMP announced it was a large batch of hash oil that was being cooked.
But while the fire solved some problems, eight months later the street remains under siege by an army of transient criminals, dealing and stealing apparently without consequences.
“The police need to find a better way to deal with this,” said Walker, who claims she gave officers three binders of information on suspect activity in the neighbourhood, and has never heard anything about it. “These people aren’t afraid of the cops. It’s like a party every night.”
Meanwhile, some of her neighbours have started to take matters into their own hands.
Rob and Nicole Iezzi have become YouTube stars after posting their surveillance videos online. One of them shows a hooded man stealing cigarette butts from the Iezzis’ back deck before being scared away by the homeowners, armed with paintball guns.
Nicole Iezzi told The Province the couple was tipped off to the intruder’s presence by a motion-sensing light and gate chime.
“We like to think we gave him a bruise or two, but we don’t know for sure,” she said.
The man was well known to the couple through their security footage, which showed him poking around once a month for almost a year. Some of the videos also showed him climbing the fence into a neighbour’s yard.
“It’s become an unfortunate part of living in this neighbourhood,” said Nicole Iezzi. “You’re always on guard, you never leave your stuff out. God forbid you have a garden gnome.”
While the Iezzis’ video only recently gained Internet attention, it was actually taken a year ago. Since the paintball incident, the man has returned only once, although the problems in the neighbourhood remain the same.
The couple lives close to a public swimming pool with a big parking lot that attracts drug dealers and prostitutes during the night.
Both the Iezzis and Walker said they feel frustrated with the RCMP response, though they don’t blame individual officers. Instead, they point to a system that’s overburdened with complaints about petty crime and a court system that makes it almost impossible to prosecute the perpetrators.
“As perpetual victims of petty crime, we’re left feeling abandoned,” said Nicole Iezzi. “It’s hard to feel abandoned by the people you rely on to stop crime from happening.”
Chilliwack RCMP Const. Tracey Wolbeck said police understand the frustration that comes from “being a target over and over again.”
Crime in the downtown core is an ongoing concern for police, with the Iezzis’ neighbourhood making it on to the detachment’s “hot spot” list for the month of July. (Property crime statistics are analyzed every 30 days, with hot spots receiving extra police presence.)
Wolbeck said police visibility is known to be a deterrent to some crime. She encouraged residents to continue notifying police when incidents occur, although response times will vary depending on what else is happening at that time.
“Our number-one mandate is public safety,” she explained. There may be a delay in police response in the aftermath of a serious crime or rescue situation.
Police also advise residents against vigilantism.
But for the Iezzis, posting their surveillance videos has become a way to fight back.
“It’s cathartic,” said Nicole Iezzi. “It’s not really justice, but we feel like it’s fair play for a change.”
