VANCOUVER -- A Vancouver woman accused of trying to chain shut the front doors of Pidgin restaurant during an anti-gentrification demonstration is the subject of a police manhunt.

Robyn Claire Pickell, 25, is wanted for mischief in connection with her alleged actions outside the restaurant at 350 Abbott St. in the early morning hours of March 15.

Const. Brian Montague of the Vancouver Police Department said several Pidgin staff members were working inside when officers monitoring a protest observed a woman attempting to chain and lock the front doors.

Police began their search for Pickell, who also spells her first name Robin, after a criminal charge was approved by Crown counsel. Those attempts have so far failed, prompting police to issue a public plea Friday to help them track her down.

“It would be difficult to say she doesn’t know she is wanted from all the efforts we’ve made (to contact her),” Montague said.

Police said Pickell has no previous criminal record but is believed to have been actively involved in demonstrations outside Pidgin, as well as other public demonstrations.

In 2011, Pickell, then an Emily Carr arts student, spoke with various media outlets about her role as a volunteer with the Occupy Vancouver movement, where she helped to coordinate and distribute food to protesters camped outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.

She has also blogged about her experiences as a vegan eating food pulled from garbage cans.

Pidgin has been the focus of continuous protest since it opened its doors for business in February.

Heckling demonstrators have been picketing nightly outside the restaurant to draw attention to what they say is gentrification and encroachment on the only remaining Vancouver community where low-income people feel accepted.

On Monday night, several police used bicycles to barricade the restaurant’s front doors from a group of May Day protesters, many of them masked and some carrying lit torches.

The group had earlier met at Victory Square and had been marching through the Downtown Eastside streets with banners reading “rich scum beware” and “disarm authority.”

Montague said police, who had been monitoring the march, decided to intervene when marchers stopped in front of Pidgin.

“It was a matter of showing the group that there were police officers there,” he said of the VPD response.

Brandon Grossutti, Pidgin co-owner, said he and his staff have grown accustomed to facing the nightly anti-gentrification protests outside the business.

But Monday’s incident was different, he noted, in that it involved an entirely different group of individuals.

“I saw a bunch of people with black masks and torches. It looked like a KKK (Ku Klux Klan) rally, really,” he said.

Grossutti said the business has no intention of shutting down, though acknowledged the protests have deterred some customers.

He said he’s attempted on several occasions to engage demonstrators in a discussion about the challenges of the Downtown Eastside and, in particular, the pressing need for social housing.

“I just get heckled. I get called a capitalist pig. I get screamed at. It is never a debate,” Grossutti said.

dahansen@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/darahhansen