VIGILANTISM ISN'T THE RIGHT ANSWER

However Justified Their Anger, Residents Shouldn't Use Violence To Oust Bad
Neighbours

A few residents of Speed Avenue have given Neighbourhood Watch a new
meaning. Unable to get police, city hall or the landlord to deal with what
they perceived to be a crack house on their dead-end street, they trashed
the place this week.

This form of neighbourhood vigilantism can't be condoned. The
house-wreckers deserve to be charged, as they have been, with breaking and
entering, mischief and uttering threats. What they did could easily have
led to violence and injury.

Yet, deep down, many of us reading the story, felt an urge to cheer. What
the neighbours did was wrong, but we can sympathize with them for having to
put up with the piles of garbage, the discarded needles and the
comings-and-goings late at night. We can understand their frustration with
the landlord and local authorities who seemed powerless to do anything.

The landlord, reportedly, had given the tenants a month's notice, but found
it difficult to evict them.

Victoria's bylaw enforcement officers had visited the place more than once,
but the bylaws in question deal with the appearance of property, not the
behaviour of tenants.

That behaviour falls within police jurisdiction. But SWAT teams can't swarm
into a house just on the say-so of disgruntled neighbours. Police need
enough evidence to secure a search warrant, and collecting that evidence
takes time and already-stretched human resources.

One of those charged for his part in wrecking the house says he knows what
he did was wrong, "but it's the job of a parent to look after their kid."
No, that's too easy. There is no excuse for destroying someone else's
property, and there's no excuse for telling a child that it is.

People can choose their neighbourhoods, but they seldom get to choose their
neighbours. There are stories from across Canada and beyond of residents
marching to protest the presence of druggies, bikers, prostitutes and
pedophiles on their streets.

Closer to home, it was an outcry from residents a couple of years ago that
drove a porn movie studio from Esquimalt. And residents of a Songhees
condominium made things so unpleasant for a penthouse "escort agency" this
year that it had to move to View Royal and city council belatedly passed a
bylaw banning this sort of operation from multiple dwellings.

Residents of a neighbourhood are right to put pressure on local authorities
to enforce the laws and bylaws that make their streets safe and healthy for
them and their kids. But they should do it by gathering evidence for
authorities, like neighbourhood watchers.

And, if necessary, they can march, wave placards and do other things to
attract public attention to their problem. But they can't take the law into
their own hands. Victoria doesn't need vigilantes.