Vancouver police are investigating after a heckler interrupted a live broadcast to hurl sexually explicit remarks at a female reporter.
CTV British Columbia news director Les Staff confirms that reporter Sarah MacDonald has filed a complaint with the Vancouver Police Department over the incident, which happened in the city’s downtown around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday.
MacDonald was reporting on a group of Pokemon Go players that had gathered in Robson Square when a man stepped beside her and uttered a vulgarity while apparently recording the incident with his cell phone.
During Thursday’s incident, MacDonald’s ear piece was also ripped off her blazer and out of her ear as the unidentified man hurriedly left. When confronted by MacDonald’s cameraman a few moments later, he said he had taken the video for Snapchat.
Vancouver police spokesman Randy Fincham said that while jumping in front of the camera isn’t a criminal offence in itself, assault is.
“If you go to the length of assaulting a cameraperson (or) a reporter, then criminal charges if they’re appropriate we will look at that,” he said.
The lewd trend has plagued journalists, predominately women, in recent years.
That same obscenity is the latest in a viral phenomenon that flared up about two years ago where hecklers interrupt live television reports to yell the comment into a reporter’s microphone.
Staff says he hopes this doesn’t mark a resurgence of the behaviour.
A Toronto engineer was fired from Ontario’s Hydro One last year after he was identified shouting the obscenity during a live broadcast outside a soccer stadium, but he was reinstated after an arbitration process.
Police forces across the country have taken different approaches to addressing the problem.
Toronto police indicated they wouldn’t pursue charges in the instance of the Hydro One employee, while in Calgary, officers charged a man with a traffic offence after he accosted a CBC journalist with the same obscenity from his vehicle.
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