Pickton Inquiry concludes bias against victims

[oneh2obabe]

Petti Fong
Western Canada Bureau

VANCOUVER—The RCMP and the Vancouver police were “blatant failures” in investigating the disappearances of dozens of women from the Downtown Eastside who became victims of serial killer Robert Pickton, an inquiry into the missing women has found.

The massive report released Mondaty by Commissioner Wally Oppal placed blame squarely on authorities, finding that there were critical police failings that manifested in recurring patterns of errors that went uncorrected over several years.

The inquiry was called after the murder trial and conviction of Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert Pickton in 2007 following decades of women from the Downtown Eastside, who arrived in the drug-ridden and impoverished Vancouver from all over the country, going missing.

Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and is serving a life sentence. Twenty murder charges were stayed after Pickton’s conviction.

“I have found that the missing and murdered women were forsaken twice: once by society at large and again by the police,” Oppal wrote in his report.

He made 63 recommendations. One of the key recommendations was for the province to provide funding to allow centres that provide emergency services to women engaged in the sex trade to remain open 24 hours per day. Currently these centres are often closed before midnight. Another recommendation was to develop and implement better public transit system connecting the northern communities, particularly along Highway 16.

Oppal’s recommendations are already facing criticisms from many of the victims’ families who have long insisted that the inquiry itself needs to be re-examined.

In northern B.C. communities such as Prince George, many advocates argued that Oppal’s mandate was too narrow and did not look into the disappearances of dozens of missing — mainly First Nations — women along Highway 16. That highway has been named by many the Highway of Tears because of the disappearances of so many mothers, sisters, daughters and aunts of people left behind.

Oppal, a former Attorney General in the B.C. Liberal government, has also been criticized for not implementing a regional policing service in the province as many have suggested was needed. Pickton’s victims disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where the Vancouver police headquarters were only a couple of blocks away. The killer’s victims were taken to the farmer’s property in the suburb of Port Coquitlam about a 25-minute drive east of Vancouver in a jurisdiction overseen by the RCMP.

While in jail, Pickton told an undercover officer that he was going to kill 50 women but was stopped at 49 because he “got sloppy.”

The remains of 33 women were found on his farm which has now been redeveloped into dozens of townhomes.

Serial killer Robert Pickton was convicted in December 2007 of the murder of six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Some facts about those women:

Mona Lee Wilson: Born Jan. 13, 1975, Wilson had a son. She was last seen in November 2001.

Sereena Abotsway: Born Aug. 20, 1971, Abotsway suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and lived with a foster family most of her life. She was 29 when she was last seen in August 2001.

Andrea Joesbury: Born Nov. 6, 1978, in Victoria. Joesbury had a daughter. She was last seen in June 2001.

Georgina Faith Papin: Born March 11, 1964, Papin had seven children. She was last seen in March 1999.

Brenda Wolfe: Born Oct. 20, 1968, Wolfe had a son. She was last seen in February 1999.

Marnie Frey: Born Aug. 30, 1973 in Campbell River, B.C. Her daughter, Brittney, was born five years before she disappeared and gave an impact statement at Pickton's trial. Frey was last seen in August 1997.

First-degree murder charges related to the deaths of 20 women were stayed in August 2010. Some facts about those women:

Cara Louise Ellis: Known on the street as Nicky Trimble, Ellis was born April 13, 1971 and was last seen in January 1997.

Andrea Fay Borhaven: Born Jan. 19, 1972 in Armstrong, B.C. Borhaven was reported missing to police on May 18, 1999, but was last seen in 1997.

Kerry Lynn Koski: Born Aug. 14, 1959, Koski had three daughters. She was last seen Jan. 7, 1998.

Wendy Crawford: Born April 21, 1956, Crawford had a son and a daughter. She was last seen in December 1999.

Debra Lynne Jones: Born in 1957, she was last seen in December 2000.

Tiffany Louise Drew: Born Jan. 31, 1975, Drew had three children. She was last seen March 2000.

Sarah de Vries: Born May 12, 1969, to a troubled mother and adopted at 11 months. De Vries' journals and poetry have been widely published since she was last seen April 21, 1998. Her sister, Maggie de Vries, wrote about her sister in the award-winning book Missing Sarah.

Cynthia Feliks: Born Dec. 12, 1954 in Detroit, Feliks was a mother and grandmother. She was last seen in December 1997.

Angela Rebecca Jardine: Born June 23, 1971, Jardine was mentally disabled and said to have the intellect of an 11-year-old child. She was last seen Nov. 10, 1998.

Diana Melnick: Born Aug. 26, 1975, Melnick was last seen Dec. 27, 1995.

Jacqueline McDonell: Born June 6, 1976, McDonell had a daughter. She was last seen Jan. 16, 1999.

Dianne Rosemary Rock: Born Sept. 2, 1967, Rock had five children. She was last seen in October 2001.

Heather Kathleen Bottomley: Born Aug. 17, 1976, Bottomley had two children. She was last seen April 2001.

Jennifer Furminger: Born Oct. 22, 1971, Furminger grew up in St. Catharine's, Ont. She had a son and police say she was last seen in December 1999.

Helen Mae Hallmark: Born June 24, 1966, Hallmark had a daughter. She was last seen June 15, 1997.

Patricia Johnson: Born Dec. 2, 1975. Johnson had a son and a daughter, and was last seen March 2001.

Heather Gabrielle Chinnock: Born Nov. 10, 1970 in Denver, Colo. She had two children. She was last seen April 2001.

Tanya Marlo Holyk: Born Dec. 8. 1975, Holyk had a son. She was last Oct. 29, 1996.

Sherry Leigh Irving: Born March 19, 1973, Irving was last seen in April 1997.

Inga Monique Hall: Born in 1952 in Germany, Hall had two daughters and two granddaughters. She was last seen in February 1998.

A 27th murder charge involving a woman referred to only as Jane Doe, whose remains were found on Pickton's farm, was dropped. That woman has never been identified.

Police also found the DNA of six more women on Pickton's farm. No charges were ever laid in those cases. Some facts about those women:

Nancy Clark: Born July 29, 1966, Clark was last seen Aug. 22, 1991 and reported missing to Victoria police the following day.

Stephanie Lane: Born May 28, 1976, Lane grew up in Vancouver. She was 20 years old and had recently given birth to her only son when she disappeared from the Downtown Eastside in January of 1997.

Jacqueline Murdock: Born Jan. 28, 1971, Murdock was the youngest daughter of a large First Nation family in Fort St. James. She had four children. She was last seen on Aug. 13, 1997.

Dawn Crey: Born Oct. 26, 1958, Crey was a member of the Sto:lo First Nation near Chilliwack, B.C., and had a son. She was last seen in November of 2000.

Sharon Abraham: Last seen in 2000.

Yvonne Boen: Born Nov. 30, 1967, Boen had a son. She was last seen in March of 2001.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/arti ... ailuresvic

[flamingfingers]

Well worth the read:

Monday, December 17, 2012
The only real change is to Oppal's wallet

http://northerninsights.blogspot.ca/

[grammafreddy]

Oppal, a former Attorney General in the B.C. Liberal government

Hardly neutral.

[coffeeFreak]

Report shines no new light on tragedy
Oppal offers no insights gained from half a century in the legal system; he documents police failures, but doesn't analyze why they happened

BY IAN MULGREW, VANCOUVER SUN DECEMBER 18, 2012
Missing Women's Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal had been speaking for several minutes before the first derisive comment rang out: "Hogwash!" Over the course of a rambling hour-long presentation unveiling his multivolume report, the former appeal court justice was interrupted several times by victims' families and aboriginal women.

They did not yell, "Bravo." Oppal, who was appointed to oversee the inquiry in September 2010, pleaded with his audience for understanding, for people to read the 1,448page document and to consider his conclusions. But the native people and victims' families who attended his media conference on Monday responded with angry skepticism.

Who can blame them? They had heard much of it before over the decade since serial killer Robert Pickton was apprehended - the police investigations were "blatant failures," there were "patterns of error," there was an "absence of leadership," there were "outdated policing systems ..."

Yet no one was to blame. "All of us have to take responsibility," Oppal said.

There was a "lack of accountability," he said - there still is.

His solutions? Working groups, liaison officers, community workers, mandatory training, research projects, consultation processes ...

More money for victims' kids, more money for victims' families, more money for aboriginal women's groups, more money for women's shelters ... a regional police force, a new agency for warning the public ... Police officers should "promote equality" and "refrain from discriminatory policing," "equality" should be added as a fundamental principle to the Crown Policy Manual ... there should be an end to endemic poverty! Oppal might as well have thrown Jell-O at the wall and told the government to adopt whatever sticks.

He did a good job of documenting the police mistakes, but he didn't do a good job of analyzing the reasons this tragedy occurred.

What seems missing from his tome was any perspective from the man who spent most of the last half-century in the legal system at every level.

From the prosecution service to the eccentricities of the provincial policing system, from the inner workings of the criminal justice branch to the politics of the bench, to how things get done in cabinet, Oppal is intimate with it all. And he's from a visible minority group.

If there's anyone who should know about institutional racism and systemic problems, it's him.

Yet none of that insight was brought to bear. In spite of how much he says this was a heart-wrenching ordeal, Oppal appears to have simply gone through the motions.

And he is dead wrong when he says we are all responsible.

Yes, most of us should shoulder some blame for society's inequalities.

But in this case, the media and the community clamoured for police to wake up and they were not just ignored, their fears and concerns were discounted and ridiculed.

It's disingenuous to use longstanding social inequities to muddy the issue of institutional responsibility and the failure of government in this specific case.

Regardless, Attorney General Shirley Bond said the broad societal changes "will not happen overnight. There is a long journey ahead of us."

No kidding. I'm reminded of a Jewish guy who once said the poor will be with you always, but let's leave that quibble aside.

The systemic problems this report itemizes are also going to be with us for a long time.

The government's response was to say we'll have a lot more talk.

Bond committed to little else - the $750,000 she announced as funding for an emergency drop-in centre is considerably less than the legal fees charged by the commission's own lawyers. No wonder there were hecklers.

Imagine, after all this time, dozens of women went missing and now we know what went wrong - systemic failures in two police departments for which Mr. Nobody is responsible.

Still, given his conclusions, what was Oppal doing as attorney general from 2005 through 2009? Didn't he see the systemic issues then?

At least he could have explained in his report why he's making recommendations today on things he had the power to set right years ago.

Oppal said the missing women were "forsaken twice: once by society at large and again by the police."

I tend to agree with the woman who yelled: "And now a third time by you!"

View the full report, a missing women timeline and more photos online.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Report ... z2FQhFSFr2

[diggerdick]

Someone else has come to the conclusion that the police services are acting in an incompetent arrogant way.And many deaths occurred because of it.

The RCMP seemed to have little turf wars With the other Police agencies and refused to cooperate Unless they are looked at as The superior lead investigators Who all others must be subordinate to.

After all,in their eyes these people were the lowest scale of society and if they disappeared it really didn't matter.

It doesn't really matter no one will ever be held accountable for it anyhow. they'll only be promoted and treated as heroes despite their incompetence.