Residents witness vandalization of Fort Langley pride crosswalk
Posted October 22, 2023 3:56 pm.
Residents are speaking out after witnessing the vandalization of a rainbow crosswalk on Glover Road in Fort Langley Friday evening.
Brad Dirks, a lifelong resident of Langley whose son is transgender, says he was with a group of about 20 people on a ghost walk led by the Fort Langley National Historic Site when they heard tires screeching at around 11 p.m.
“Everybody just stopped, and I said out loud ‘Oh, they’re vandalizing the rainbow crosswalk,’ because I knew right away,” he said. “The people I was with just noticed my whole body clench up and a wave of anxiety came over me because I knew what was going on.”
Dirk says the group was just out of sight of the crosswalk and that he didn’t bother running to try and capture the incident on his phone because he assumed the culprit would promptly speed off. Instead, he says the burn outs continued for about three minutes as the vandals sped off and returned from the opposite direction to continue the destruction.
“You could see the smoke rising above the building; that’s how long they were doing it for,” he said. “And then they were brazen enough to actually turn around and come back in the opposite direction in the other lane.”
The vehicle then sped down the road in the direction of where his group was standing before taking off, Dirk says. Based on what his group observed, he says he thinks the vandals were driving a small to medium-sized white pickup truck.
Dirks says Mounties have video footage of the incident, and they may have a clear image of the vehicle and occupants by Monday. He says witnesses saw what appeared to be “two white males” in the truck.
He says it seems the drivers of the vehicle were “quite committed to doing a lot of damage” before they sped off at a speed of 80 to 90 km/h.
This is the second time in two months that the crosswalk has been vandalized, according to Langley RCMP.
Sgt. Joe Leeson says a similar incident took place on Sept. 13, and both are currently under investigation by police.
While vehicle and suspect descriptions cannot be released at this time, Leeson says if a charge were to be laid, it would be for a criminal offence of mischief.
He says based upon their investigation so far, it would be difficult to call these incidents ‘accidental.’
“It would be pretty tough not to be a deliberate action if someone is rolling up to that and just doing a burnout in the middle of Glover Road, in a high pedestrian, low-speed area,” Leeson said.
Reparations for the community
Dirk says he hopes RCMP are able to identify the vandals in both incidents and hold them to account for their actions.
He says in order to deter future incidents, he’d like to see the guilty parties appear in court and maybe even participate in community service.
“I think if people were thinking about destroying public property knowing they were going to be responsible for fixing whatever damage they do in our community, maybe that would be enough of a deterrent to minimize this kind of stuff,” he said.
If the guilty parties were held publicly accountable for their actions, Dirk says he also thinks it could help change the narrative on 2SLGBTQ+-related incidents from two sides, to one.
“You don’t get universal condemnation when a rainbow crosswalk gets vandalized,” he said.
“Everybody would normally come together if a school window or a church window was broken; all these things we all understand are equally horrible. But for some reason, there seems to be a lot of room to have two sides when it comes to a rainbow crosswalk.”
He says he wishes there was more dialogue in his community about these incidents when they happen and that there could be more education on 2SLGBTQ+ issues within his community to increase awareness and deter future incidents.
-With files from Shawn Ayers
