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An investigation into stolen property was at the root of a police operation Wednesday that involved closing off a street in West Kildonan for several hours, Winnipeg police said Thursday.
Police stopped short of calling the situation a stand-off, but officers had a part of Murray Avenue between Endcliff Place and Carsdale Drive blocked off for several hours.
Officers blared a siren repeatedly at a house on Murray Avenue and called for its occupants to exit.
Shortly after 9 p.m., police made contact with people inside the house. The street reopened a short time later.
In the end, police laid charges against three men, two 19 years old and one 18, and a female whose age they did not release.
The charges are related to a stolen vehicle and property stolen from a garage and a home in the south end of the city earlier this week, investigators said.
'Scary to live there'
Neighbours on the street said a constant flow of people move in and out of the house on Murray Avenue at all hours.
\"It's basically scary to live there,\" said Graham Keam, 20, who lives next door.
Keam described the home's occupants as \"gangsters\" who party too hard.
\"It's really loud,\" he said. \"Last week I spent the afternoon cleaning up beer bottles from the ice in my yard, because they were having a party and they were having a fight outside the yard.\"
Keam said he's called police several times about activities at the house, but police at the scene Wednesday night said they were not aware of any previous criminal activity at the house.
CBC staffer arrested, camera confiscated
A CBC cameraman in the area was arrested and charged by police just as the situation on Murray Avenue was getting underway.
CBC reporters were in the same area following a different story.
When police began arriving, the cameraman began rolling. Police instructed him to turn off the camera, then moved in, said CBC reporter Gosia Sawicka.
\"The officer started driving towards us in his cruiser, and then he got out, confiscated the camera, and before I knew it, my cameraman was … in the back of a cruiser,\" Sawicka said.
Several hours later, the cameraman was formally charged with obstructing a peace officer and released.
CBC regional director John Bertrand said he had concerns about the incident.
\"By all accounts, the CBC staff that were involved in this were acting completely appropriately,\" he said.
\"They were on public property, in essence a street, shooting an event that was public activity. They were doing nothing, that I can see, that was improper or illegal.\"
Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said the fact that there appeared to be no altercation between police and the cameraman made the arrest all the more puzzling.
\"To be honest, I was really surprised by it. It's very unusual for the police, in my experience, to seize a reporter's notebook or seize their videotapes. It doesn't happen very often,\" she said Thursday.
\"And when it happens without sort of any real kind of communication, any clear reason, and when a reporter's actually charged, that's really unusual in this country.\"
The camera and tape remain with police as evidence. CBC officials said they will try to secure the release of the tape.
