Local police have launched a “full review” into a letter on Burnaby RCMP letterhead that appears to take sides in a longstanding feud between two next-door neighbours.
Dated Nov. 29, 2020, the letter went out to neighbours in the area of Rathburn Drive.
It identifies the residents of one house on the street as “victims” of ongoing harassment and then lists a litany of wrongdoing the family has been “subjected to.”
The list includes broken windows, screws screwed into tires, “loud obnoxious music” and “swarming” incidents by individuals “likely attempting to intimidate” the residents, according to the letter.
“It is the goal of your local police to stop the ongoing harassment of the residents/victims living at (the address), and we require your assistance to do so,” the letter states.
It doesn’t name the perpetrators of the harassment, but a woman living next door to the residents named in the letter says it is a thinly veiled, “unsubstantiated and slanderous” reference to her, her husband and their two teenaged sons.
She told the NOW the letter had been distributed to all of the houses in the neighbourhood but not to hers.
She was only made aware of it, she said, when a neighbour told her about it.
He told her he didn’t think it was legitimate, she said, because it was poorly written, didn’t cite a file number and wasn’t signed by a specific officer.
Other neighbours told her there had also been an earlier RCMP letter in the spring.
The woman said her family has feuded for years with the retired couple next door, who live at the address referenced in the letter.
She said the man next door is a retired Vancouver deputy fire chief and, during the course of their dispute, has told her “I know people in law.”
She believes the RCMP letter came out of the man’s connections in law enforcement, and she has written a letter of complaint to the Burnaby RCMP, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP and Burnaby North-Seymour MP Terry Beech.
In an interview with the NOW, however, the man next door said he has “no connections with the RCMP at all.”
“I’ve been retired for 12 years, as has anybody that I knew, and I certainly didn’t know anybody in the RCMP,” he said.
He agreed the RCMP letter was unusual but said it “made sense” considering the number of incidents “with evidence” the couple had reported to police.
Many of the incidents the man described were referenced in the letter.
“It’s been a godsend to us that the police have said to the neighbourhood, ‘Watch out for the damage that keeps occurring to these people,’” he said. “There was no mention in the letter of who was doing it … The reason the neighbours know is because, on any given Friday or Saturday night, there are six hooligan cars parked in front of the house.”
But both families have made complaints to police, and both insisted to the NOW that they are the victims in the ongoing feud.
“It’s a neighbourhood dispute that’s been around for years,” Burnaby RCMP spokesperson Mike Kalanj told the NOW.
When asked to respond to the woman’s concerns about the authenticity of the RCMP letter and its bias in terms of portraying one family as the victims, Kalanj confirmed the letter had been written by someone at Burnaby RCMP and that the incident had sparked a “full review.”
He said the allegations of possible undue influence on someone inside the RCMP are “absolutely concerning.”
“It is being taken seriously,” Kalanj said.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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