RC A NORTH Vancouver woman returned from work early Thursday morning to discover the gruesome remains of her pet kitten divided into pieces and distributed throughout various rooms of her home. North Vancouver RCMP are currently investigating the case. Said Const. Darlene Burwash, “We're treating this seriously, but this is an isolated incident.” Twenty-two-year-old Liesa Sunday through Tuesday, cloudy with a few shawers. Highs near 14°C, Business . . Classified Ads........ Doug Collins.. Comies...... Editorial Page.... Fashiva . . Bob Hunter...... Lifestyles . . Mailbox..... Sports .......... TV Listings... .. ‘Travel . . What's Going On. Second Class Registration Number 3885 By MICHAEL BECKER News Reporter Herdman returned to her 200- block West 23rd Street residence at approximately 1:30 a.m. Thurs- day. She Jooked in the kitchen cupboard, where one of her adult cats customarily sleeps, and found the half carcass of one of her two one-month-old kittens. “YY looked for my other kitten and went to my bedroom where the kittens had been sleeping in a box,’’ she said. Her two adult cats and remain- ing kitten were found unharmed. She believes the cat killer crawl- ed through an open kitchen win- 3 - Sunday, September 25, 1988 - North Shore News WS photo Cindy Betlamy NORTH VANCOUVER WOMAN MAKES GRUESOME DISC P investigate dow or forced the door open and dismembered the kitten with a knife-like object. North Vancouver vet Dr. Terry Lake examined the mutilated re- mains of the kitten Thursday. ‘Ks difficult to know exacily how the cat met its fate,’ Lake said, “but it did not Jook to me that an animal was capable of that kind of mutilation. | would hesi- tate to go out on a limb and say a | Crashing MAPLEWOOD COMMUNI- TY School neighbor Mike Dropko surveys ihe debris Jeft behind after a 16-year-old North Vancouver youth iost contro! of the car he was driv- ing and crashed through the double doors on the northwest side of the — school Sept. 18. North Vancouver RCMP allege the youth had been drinking and driving in the school park- ing lot with some friends when he lost control of the vehicle. The youths fled the scene. Charges are pending against the driver. QVERY cruel cat killing person did that, but on the other hand, an animal wouldn't do that.”’ Herdman, fearing for her safety, has moved in with a friend. “don’t have any enemies as far as I'm concerned,” she said. “We all have people we don’t get along with, but 1 don’t know anybody sick enough to cut my cat to pieces.’’ NV RCMP TO BOOST VISIBLE MINORITY NUMBERS THE RCMP has embraced the multicultural credo in a bid to bury the Nelson Eddy image of the organization’s membership makeup on Canada. The nation’s police force is therefore out to boost its visible minority representation to five per cent within the next [5 years. Chinese-Canadian Guy Louie, 30, serving with the North Van- couver RCMP auxiliary for the past 11 years, was a statistical odd- ity when he joined the force. He still is today. Currently all 136 regufar members of the North Vancouver detachment are Caucasian. Pro- vince-wide, the force is 99.6 per cent Caucasian. A recent national in-house survey showed only 40 visible mi- nority regular members serving with the RCMP. The figure repre- sents less than .4 of one per cent out of a total membership of 13,800. For the first time in its {15-year history, the RCMP will be going out into the local Chinese com- munily to seek recruits. With an estimated 150,000 Chinese-Canadians living in B.C., there are just three regular RCMP members of Chinese descent. The RCMP national recruiting team will be hosting a career informa- tion session for the Chinese-Cana- dian community Sept. 28 at the Strathcona Community Centre in Chinatown. the North Shore and across MICHAEL BECKER News Reporter Said Louie of the initiative, ‘‘! certainly encourage it myself. Un- fortunately we are going to en- counter some resistance from the Chinese community itself. One of the biggest hang-ups is that Chinese have never seen policing as an honest profession. Overscas, police have a bad reputation as be- ing corrupt. That barrier is going to be so, so hard to break.”’ According to Louie the matter is further complicated by cultural divisions within the Chinese com- munity. He said most of the recent wave of entrepreneurial Hong Kong immigrants don’t associate with the pioneer Chinese. And Canadian-born Chinese, such as Louie, straddle two cultures. Said Louie, ‘‘We term ourselves lemons — yellow on the outside and white on the inside.” It is from this group, he said, that the police force will find the most success in its current recruiting drive. But said Louie, ‘‘There’s always the suspicion when police forces are mainly run by Caucasians. You can’t help but think if there is a Chinese member on the force, he’s NEWS photo Tom Burley GUY LOUIE, foreground, is one of the only members of the North Vancouver RCMP belonging to a visible minority. RCMP detachments across Canada will be trying to increase their ethnic mix in the future, going to fink on the community. That view has always been, I remember my grandfather feeling that way. The Chinese community sees just a policeman. Whether it’s an ftalian, Chinese, Black or East Indian who shows up at the door, you're considered a fake — there is no trust. You’re seen as a joc-boy from a big organization.’ Louie bridges the credibility gap by virtue of his command of two of the seven Cantonese dialects and a very personal approach to policing. ‘‘The Janguage helps break the barrier, and I come across on a personal basis that I’m trying to help them,” he said, He said his friends were shocked when he decided to join the RCMP auxiliary 1] years ago. “That's when ] found out who my friends were and who my associates were. Eleven years ago, 1 found myself going to the Avalon doing a bar check and the people would do a triple take because this Oriental in a uniform was coming through,’” Louie said. Two North Vancouver auxiliary RCMP candidates of East Indian descent will be among the graduating class in November.