A ‘whisper campaign’ sparks legal threats

A council candidate filed a complaint with city hall after receiving a “threatening” phone call from Coun. Lorrie Williams, but the veteran councillor says she was merely trying to put an end to a “whisper campaign” claiming she has Alzheimer’s disease.

Scott McIntosh contacted the city after receiving an after-hours call from Williams in June. During the call, which was made from city hall, McIntosh said Williams was “very demanding and threatening” about whether he was going to run for council and she made “verbal attacks” that were directed at him and his family.

“Her intention of this demented phone call was to intimidate me as a new potential candidate and attack my mother,” he wrote in a letter to The Record.

According to McIntosh, he ended the call when Williams didn’t respect his request that she talk to him in a more respectful way. He said she called demanding an apology for telling people she has Alzheimer’s disease, which he denied.

McIntosh said “numerous” people have told him they have concerns about Williams’ health, but he denied telling people she has Alzheimer’s and said he doesn’t know her well enough to make that judgment.

Williams told The Recordshe called McIntosh after hearing from people, including one of McIntosh’s co-workers in the City of Vancouver, that he’d been telling people she had Alzheimer’s.

“I am perfectly within my rights to ask someone why they are lying about me. I don’t regret it at all,” she said.

“What would you do if you heard someone was telling rumours about you? Wouldn’t you go to them and ask them? I went directly to him. I think he was caught off guard; he was surprised that I knew. It’s like a whisper campaign, ‘Lorrie’s got dementia.’”

On the advice of her lawyer, Williams has seen her doctor and obtained a letter stating she’s of sound mind.

“I said, ‘I want you to stop that because if you don’t I am going to sue you for defamation, and you better not do this,’” she said of the call she made in June. “This was taken to the city solicitor and it went to the police chief. I don’t know why he is taking this on. It is very silly for him to do this because he is the one who is at fault.”

Williams denies threatening McIntosh in any way, other than suggesting she’d sue him for defamation if he continued to tell people she has Alzheimer’s.

“It had nothing to do with him running for council,” Williams said of the call. “ I just asked him to stop talking about me. I was quite angry, of course. How do you stop this sort of thing? I phoned him directly and confronted him and asked him to stop, that’s all.”

Williams said the call wasn’t intended to intimidate a potential council candidate but to ask seek an end to the spread of rumours about her health.

“If I have to I can get people’s statements about what he said to them about Alzheimer’s. Easily. They would do affidavits,” she said. “This is not the only person who has told me this.”

Chief Const. Dave Jones said city hall forwarded McIntosh’s complaint to the police department because of allegations he had been threatened.

“Scott McIntosh first contacted the city about his concerns. Because of the nature of what he told the city, the city passed that on to the police department,” Jones said. “We took a look at it, including speaking with Mr. McIntosh, and concluded very early and very quickly there was no criminal allegation for us to look at and we referred it back to the city.”

Police officers interviewed McIntosh, but they didn’t speak with Williams.

“We didn’t need to,” Jones said. “After speaking with him we didn’t need to talk to her – it was that clear.”

Aside from the call itself, McIntosh is concerned that Williams called him from city hall and that she got his cellphone number from city staff. He said the only city official who had that number was the building inspector, as any documentation he’s filed with the city about his home used his house phone number.

McIntosh had applied for a variance with the city’s development services department, Williams said, so she was able to get his phone number from the development services department. She said Coun. Bill Harper was in the room and overheard the call that was on speakerphone, as she wanted a witness in case she needed to contact a lawyer about defamation.

“I can call from any phone, that has nothing to do with it,” she said. “His cell phone number is on documents which are downstairs, which you can access.”

City officials declined to comment on McIntosh’s complaint before The Record’s deadline.