Racheal Blair and her husband say they feel let down by the people they called for help on what was a very scary night at their home in St. James.
Blair, her husband and two young children were sleeping at 3 a.m. on Saturday, June 24 night when she woke up to a loud noise.
She says she saw a hooded figure at their patio sliding door just a few feet away, trying to get in.
“I jumped out of bed and my husband sleeps on that side so he jumped over me and we booked it to the door,” Blair said.
They chased the person through their yard and then Blair turned back to phone 911.
“The dispatcher had no empathy or sympathy for me at all. They almost seemed like I was an annoyance,” Blair said.
Meanwhile, Blair’s husband was holding the person down.
“I tell the dispatcher this and they’re like, ‘Well you need to let them go,’” Blair said.
Her husband didn’t let the person go and police say they responded in about six minutes to the scene.
“They basically said ‘Just let her go, we’ll handle this from here on,'” Blair said.
As the Blairs walked back to their house, she says they could see their bikes and other items lined up in the yard and a motion sensor light covered.
Shortly after, a police officer came back and they showed him the items.
“He just tells us she’s so intoxicated, she couldn’t have done this and actually she lives right behind us and she has just mistaken our home as hers,” Blair said. “So it’s just a case of a mistaken home.”
Blair says they felt dismissed.
“He didn’t believe us at all with what we were trying to say,” Blair said.
She says they were not given a police report number, an incident report number or the officers’ names.
“We get back in the house and we’re like ‘our cameras’ because we kind of forgot about the cameras,” Blair said.
Blair says the cameras show the same person they saw at the door was on their property going through their things for about 15-20 minutes before trying to get into the house.
She says they haven’t given officers the footage because they weren’t given a police report number.
In a statement, Winnipeg Police Const. Claude Chancy said the officers took the appropriate course of action based on the information gathered from the complainants at the time of the incident.
He told 680 CJOB Wednesday the officers did not find grounds of intent to lay a break-and-enter charge but he understands how scary the incident would have been.
“I feel for them. That’s concerning. We never want to be in a position, especially with small children, to have that worry hanging over our heads,” Chancy said.
Global News followed up with questions, like if and why the 911 dispatcher told them to let the suspect go, but multiple requests for an on-camera interview and further information were refused.
Police say citizens can file complaints if they’re unhappy with officers’ conduct. Blair says she followed up with Winnipeg police professional standards. They got back to her Thursday to take her story and have assigned an investigator to the case.
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