Mask, costume, toy gun draw police attention

Go ahead and dress up for Halloween, but make sure you don’t look too scary.

That’s the mistake a Nanaimo man in his 20s made Monday afternoon, donning camouflage clothing, a full mask and carrying what turned out to be a cheap toy gun. The costume caught the eye of an area resident, who called police.

Officers had no way of knowing the gun was a dollar-store model, said Nanaimo RCMP Const. Gary O’Brien. “It looked like a rifle with a scope.” Police shut down the road after the man was seen going into an apartment building. And because he was inside, the emergencyresponse team was called, O’Brien said.

Just as the team was ready to go in, the man walked out. He was carrying the outfit.

“He couldn’t understand for the life of him what the kerfuffle was,” O’Brien said.

For the most part, Halloween hijinks largely played out this past weekend, and police are hoping Halloween night will be subdued.

“Typically, we see the weekend before Halloween, if Halloween doesn’t fall on a weekend, to be busy with parties and alcohol-fuelled issues,” said Victoria police Const. Matt Rutherford.

He said that the weekend saw “a multitude of calls from mischief to assaults to breaking up house parties.”

In Victoria, police responded to about 500 calls last weekend, up from about 400 for the same period in 2017.

Rutherford doesn’t expect similar problems today.

“It’s more families out on a Wednesday, doing all the trick-or-treating.”

Additional officers will be working as a precaution, he said. “We hope everyone behaves and especially that nobody drives impaired.”

Impairment was a concern for Victoria police over the weekend, with 16 drivers from Friday to Sunday found to have alleged impairment.

Two traffic stops were drug-related and the rest were due to alcohol.

Rutherford said seven drivers were suspected to be impaired during the same pre-Halloween period in 2017.

Weekend calls for Victoria police included having to disperse two large parties — both with an estimated 200 people — one in Victoria West and another in the North Park area. As well, the police blotter shows six fights, with one involving 20 people on Wharf Street and another on Herald Street having 10 participants.

Also dealt with were reports of two males dressed as lifeguards running in and out of traffic on Bay Street and people jumping on parked cars on Vancouver Street.

There was also a report from Government Street of shots fired, but police could not locate a source for the noise. It was less rowdy in Saanich. The combined total of calls for service on Friday and Saturday was about 150.

“It was a little bit higher-than-normal call volume, but not significantly,” said Saanich police Sgt. Jereme Leslie.

“There was about a dozen party calls each night that we went to.”

He said there were about five alcoholrelated calls each night.