‘The place is a disaster:’ Regina Airbnb host cleaning up after SWAT raid

It was a scene straight out of a cop show when the Regina Police Service’s SWAT team showed up at Tara Van Sichem’s Airbnb.

Police say the raid was because the renters of the property on Pasqua Street were dealing drugs.

Van Sichem didn’t see it coming, saying in a social media post that “one day you’re setting up your hot chocolate bar and the next SWAT is at your property.”

Van Sichem spoke on Thursday’s Evan Bray Show about the experience, saying there were red flags right from the start.

“We get the rental request on Airbnb just saying ‘two guests visiting Regina to visit family.’ OK, that sounds pretty standard,” she said. “So we accept it. We could tell right away at check-in on the door camera it’s not two guests, it’s four.”

Van Sichem and her husband Stan discussed messaging the guests, but gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought it was best to deal with it at check-out.

Then they got a call from the Regina police, who informed her they had a warrant to search the property and to expect damages.

“We just kind of braced ourselves and hoped for the best,” she said.

“We can’t see anything that happened inside but definitely on the door camera watching SWAT go in and seeing tear gas come out the door was definitely pretty crazy to see.”

Damages to the property were extensive. The house was left messy by the renters, but all the windows were broken by members of the SWAT team.

“All the windows are smashed. There’s still tear gas, so your eyes and nose are burning,” Van Sichem said.

“The place is a disaster. I mean it’s turned over by the police looking for stuff so we understood that part of it. The guests had been smoking in there (and) all the smoke detectors had been removed. It’s a mess to say the least.”

She was told by police that the damages would not be covered as they were part of the SWAT team operation.

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“We’re left in a situation where we know we can fix this. Everything is fixable. We’re not hurt. But who’s paying for this?” she asked.

“The police are not responsible for any of the damages. We’ve been told that Airbnb is going to cover it. That’s one of the main reasons that we did go with Airbnb in the first place is because of that liability insurance.”

Van Sichem started a claim with Airbnb and is hopeful for a positive outcome. As far as preventing anything like this in the future, that’s more difficult.

“We do have to approve our guests,” she said. “You try and do the best that you can by (asking), ‘Why are you visiting? How many people? Do you have reviews?’ But there are fake accounts out there. There’s people like this.”

Police perspective

RPS Supt. Darcy Koch explained the process of the warrant to Bray and why breaking all the windows was part of the operation.

“This was drug dealing, I understand,” said Koch. “There’s potentially weapons. We do a long, very critical risk assessment on that address and how we’re going to proceed and what the objective of that warrant is going to be.”

According to Koch, since drugs were involved, it was important to get in quickly and cause distractions to avoid the flushing or removal of evidence.

If the damages are planned and not accidental, it is not the police service’s responsibility to pay for or clean up those damages, he explained.

“Our responsibility is to move in and stop the criminal activity,” he said. “If damage occurs, it’s a result of that.

“It’s not our intent necessarily to cause that. We try to do things as safely as we can, but based on that risk assessment, sometimes we have to do tactics that are going to cause damages.”

Once the guests were removed from the property, a more thorough search took place.

“Our drug team has a search warrant (so) they come in,” Koch said. “They then search the house top to bottom looking for evidence (and) potentially weapons — anything that helps further that investigation to a conclusion.”

Drugs can be hidden anywhere, like in air vents, toilets and floor tiles. That’s why Van Sichem’s Airbnb was turned upside down, on top of all the damages.

Koch said the situations are tricky to prevent with Airbnb, but praises Van Sichem for her doorbell camera and for asking a lot of questions.

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