Pubdate: Tue, 18 Dec 2012
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: James Keller

BIAS LET PICKTON KEEP ON KILLING

'They were poor, aboriginal, drug addicted and they were not taken
seriously'

Bias against the poor, drug-addicted sex workers in Vancouver's
troubled Downtown Eastside led to a series of failures that allowed
serial killer Robert Pickton to spend years hunting his victims
unimpeded by police, a public inquiry has found. Commissioner Wally
Oppal's 1,448-page final report, released Monday, chronicles years of
mistakes that allowed Pickton to lure dozens of women to his farm in
Port Coquitlam, with little interference from police and even less
concern from the public.

He noted that even referring to Pickton's victims as missing women is
a misnomer. "The women didn't go missing. They aren't just absent,
they didn't just go away. They were taken."

In a news conference interrupted by applause, jeers, drumming and
aboriginal singing, Oppal appealed to the general public, asking
people to imagine what life was like for Pickton's victims and other
women like them, even before they crossed paths with Pickton.

Oppal's report found the problems with the investigation included
structural ones - poor co-operation between Vancouver police and the
RCMP, for example.

But many were a result of something far more insidious and difficult
to cure.

Oppal cited "an institutional, systemic bias against the women ...
They were poor, they were aboriginal, they were drug addicted and they
were not taken seriously." Those biases were compounded by a lack of
leadership among Vancouver police and the RCMP, he said.

Still, Oppal concluded the effects of that bias were not intentional.
There were reports of missing women in Vancouver dating back to the
1980s, and those disappearances increased dramatically in the mid-1990s.

The first major investigative blunders began in 1997, when Pickton
attacked a sex worker at his farm, leaving her with injuries so severe
that she died twice on the operating table. Pickton was charged with
attempted murder, but prosecutors eventually stayed the case, after
which 19 more women later connected to Pickton's farm
disappeared.

Following the attack, police seized clothing and other material from
Pickton's property, which, when tested following his arrest in 2002,
revealed the DNA of two missing sex workers.

Oppal also said the fact that Pickton had been accused of trying to
kill a sex worker in 1997 should have served as a massive red flag,
especially when several informants implicated Pickton in the
disappearances of other women from the Downtown Eastside.

The report noted senior officials within the Vancouver police were
reluctant to accept the possibility a serial killer was at work,
dismissing evidence from their own officers, including geographic
profiler Kim Rossmo, who floated the theory in 1998.

In Port Coquitlam, RCMP officers allowed their investigation to lie
dormant for months at a time, and when they did work on the file, it
was riddled with errors.

When Mounties tried to talk to Pickton in late 1999, they granted his
brother's request to wait until rainy season. When Pickton was
interviewed, it was poorly done by officers without interrogation training.

The Mounties and Vancouver police started an RCMP-led missing women
task force in 2001, but its investigators operated under the mistaken
belief that women were no longer disappearing. 
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