'No idea what was going on': Whitehorse residents raise concerns about RCMP communication after break-in
CBC
When Jamie Fendrick looks out the back windows of her home, she can see the block of houses in Whitehorse's Whistle Bend neighbourhood where an apparent armed break-in happened earlier this week.
On Wednesday, she saw several armed police officers going around the area.
But no one knocked at her door to warn her about the situation, Fendrick says.
"I had no idea what was going on," she told CBC News.
"I have a small child. I've got dogs. I didn't even want to open the door so that my dogs aren't running down the street.… I panicked a bit," she said.
"When you don't know what's going on you just like obviously think the worst.… 'Am I going to get shot if I walk outside,' right?"
RCMP were called to the Whistle Bend area after receiving a report of an armed person trying to break into a home. Police said the person had fled by the time officers arrived and no one has been arrested.
They confirmed on Friday that more than one home had been broken into.
Many residents say they learned about the incident through social media, where a video taken from a home surveillance camera showed a man walking through a back alley behind a house with what appeared to be a gun and breaking a window.
They are now decrying the fact that the footage was circulating online before the RCMP released a statement. Opposition MLAs in the Yukon Legislature also brought the issue forward the day after the incident.
According to a news release from police, the initial call about the break-in came around 2:30 p.m. The release was issued at about 6 p.m.
"We actually heard it on Facebook … instead of hearing it from [the police] when we live a block away from where it actually happened," Madison Gard, a Whistle Bend resident, said in a recent interview.
Gard says the fact she got information from social media, rather than the RCMP, makes her feel "extremely unsafe" — especially given the fact the incident took place on a residential street when children were returning from school.
Some parents, including Gard, are questioning why some residents were told by police to stay away from the area on Wednesday afternoon or blocked from entering the neighbourhood, while school buses were still dropping off children in the area.
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