The Missing Women Inquiry will stand as one of the most important public inquiries in Canada's history. It is examining the reasons that police failed to apprehend a serial killer, Robert Pickton, before he proceeded on his murderous rampage.
Vancouver police arrested Pickton in 2002 and found traces of DNA to thirty-three women on his pig farm. Vancouver police had received credible tips years earlier that Robert Pickton was a possible suspect for the killing of missing prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Dramatic evidence was called last week at the inquiry to examine the issue of why the original list of missing women wasn't taken seriously by the police.
According to a local newspaper account, retired Vancouver police Staff Sgt. Doug MacKay-Dunn testified that he believed that the missing women had met foul play. He had learned from another officer that the women had stopped picking up their welfare cheques.
Another officer gave evidence that an effort to convince the Vancouver Police Department to issue a warning that there was a possible serial killer attacking women was blocked by Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, who was apparently hostile to any theory that a serial killer was operating in the Vancouver area.
Biddlecome will testify on a panel when the inquiry resumes next month.
MacKay-Dunn was unsparing in expressing his criticism of the manner in which the plight of the missing women was dismissed. The Vancouver Sun reported that he testified ''that if two dozen women had been reported missing from a wealthy neighbourhood such as Shaughnessy, there would have been political pressure from city council and the mayor, who is chairman of the police board, to solve the problem.''
According to MacKay-Dunn there was a common attitude among senior Vancouver Police Department managers that the reported missing women were ''just hookers' who were transient and would be eventually discovered.
This disturbing portrayal of the police brushing aside concerns about the missing women because they were merely street-workers must be forcefully addressed in the Missing Women Inquiry's report. It is an open question that must resolved.
Any police officer, regardless of rank, found to have glossed over the predicament of a group of street workers because of their status should be held accountable.
Sadly, that is an unlikely outcome.
The notion that the value of any person's life is diminished because of their background clashes with the standards of our thriving democratic society. The missing women in Vancouver weren't "just hookers." They were human beings deserving of protection.
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