Thursday, May 31

Pickton inquiry report gets extension

By James Keller
The Canadian Press

May 31, 2012

VANCOUVER – The former judge overseeing the Robert Pickton inquiry has received an extra four months to write his final report, but the extension will likely do little to allay critics who have demanded commissioner Wally Oppal spend more time hearing from witnesses about why police failed to catch the serial killer.

Oppal has been hearing evidence since last October about why police didn’t catch Pickton in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the inquiry has been sluggish as dozens of lawyers line up to cross-examine witnesses, some of whom have spent days and weeks at a time in the witness box.

The slow pace combined with a series of delays have made it increasingly unlikely Oppal would be able to finish his work before the previous deadline of June 30.

Oppal, who is scheduled to hear closing arguments next week, has asked the provincial government to have until Oct. 31 to write his final report, which will detail what police did wrong and what needs to change.

“He wants to take the appropriate amount of time to complete the report, to ensure that it has credibility, and I did agree to that,” Attorney General Shirley Bond, who approved the extension, said in an interview Thursday.

“There needs to be a balance here. I am very concerned about ensuring that this report comes to a conclusion so that we can use the recommendations that will be provided to ensure that this kind of tragic circumstance doesn’t happen again.”

Last year, Oppal asked to be given until the end of 2012 to complete his work, but the province instead set his deadline for the end of June.

A number of families of Pickton’s victims, their lawyers and the Opposition NDP have demanded Bond give Oppal more time, saying there are several witnesses that have yet to be heard that are important to understanding why police failed to catch Pickton as he murdered sex workers from Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside.

But Bond has repeatedly rejected those demands. She noted Oppal’s latest request was only for time to write his report, not to conduct more hearings.

“The request that came to me was related to the writing of the report, the analysing of information, of literally months and months of work. He did not request an extension related to witness testimony,” said Bond.

“The commissioner has assured me he has had the time required to understand the policing aspects that need to be changed.”

Cameron Ward, a lawyer for the families, has argued there are a number of witnesses that still need to be heard and he asked Oppal to add more than a dozen to the hearings schedule.

The list included Ross Caldwell, a police informant who implicated Pickton years before his arrest; Lynn Ellingsen, who told Pickton’s trial about seeing him murder a woman on his property; Bruce Chambers, a former Vancouver police chief; Beverly Hyacinthe, a civilian RCMP worker who knew the Pickton family; and police spokeswomen Anne Drennan and Catherine Galliford.

Ward also asked that Oppal hear from Pickton and his brother David.

Oppal rejected those witnesses and will write his report without their testimony.

The inquiry has been beset by delays and controversies since its inception.

Critics argued that Oppal, a former Liberal attorney general, was a poor choice to lead the commission.

A number of community and advocacy groups pulled out of the process last year when the province denied their requests for legal funding.

The inquiry was put on a three-week hiatus earlier this year when an independent lawyer appointed to represent aboriginal interests resigned, citing concerns that First Nations voices weren’t being heard.

And the inquiry was rocked by sexual harassment allegations in April, when the National Post newspaper published anonymous allegations directed at an unnamed member of Oppal’s staff. Oppal appointed an independent lawyer to look into those allegations.

The inquiry is looking into why the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to catch Pickton while he was murdering impoverished sex workers, despite receiving tips implicating the former pig farmer as early as 1998. Oppal is also examining why prosecutors declined to put Pickton on trial after he was charged with attempted to murder a prostitute in 1997.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.

The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his farm. He once told an undercover police officer that he killed a total of 49.

Canadian sex tourist Donald Bakker to be released from jail today

Man served seven years in prison for sexually assaulting seven girls

BY DAPHNE BRAMHAM, VANCOUVER SUN MAY 31, 2012 6:02 AM

Donald Bakker, pictured in these undated handouts, is a Canadian father and husband who plead guilty on June 7, 2005 and was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting seven girls aged seven to 12 in Cambodia and three years for sadistically abusing three women in Vancouver.

Photograph by: PNG, files

Canada's first convicted sex tourist, Donald Bakker, is being released from jail today after having served his full sentence.

Earlier this week, a provincial court judge agreed to Crown prosecutor Brendan McCabe's request for conditions on Bakker's release.

The conditions include “a fairly extensive list of terms,” according to Neil MacKenzie, communications counsel for the criminal justice branch of the B.C. Attorney general's ministry,

Details of those conditions were not available Wednesday due to problems with the court's computer system.

MacKenzie also confirmed that the Crown is seeking a peace bond, which would limit Bakker's freedom for a year. When the year is up, a peace bond can be renewed with a judge's approval.

That application will be heard July 4 in provincial court in Vancouver.

Bakker, a father and husband, pleaded guilty on June 7, 2005 and was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting seven girls aged seven to 12 in Cambodia and three years for sadistically abusing three women in Vancouver.

His sentence was reduced to seven years to account for the time he served awaiting trial.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, May 29

Deadly Dysfunction

Scathing undisclosed details from inside the Pickton investigation

Brian Hutchinson | May 25, 2012 10:33 PM ET | Last Updated: May 26, 2012 9:16 AM ET
More from Brian Hutchinson | @hutchwriter

Sam Cooper/Postmedia News

Sam Cooper/Postmedia News“It is only now that I recognize all of the signs and signals of burnout and post traumatic stress disorder brought on by doing a horrible job for an unsupportive and incompetent organization,” Lori Shenher wrote, a year after Pickton’s arrest

I had simply seen too much, felt too much and knew too much. I wanted out.
Vancouver police officer and former missing women investigator Lori Shenher

Lori Shenher thought her career as a police officer was over. The reasons: Pickton trauma. Burn-out. Guilt, the result of failure. Anger. For more than two years, from 1998 to 2000, Ms. Shenher had led a Vancouver Police Department unit tasked with finding missing women. And in that time, more women went missing and were murdered by Robert Pickton. The Port Coquitlam pig farmer had been in police sights — her sights — a long time.

Pickton was her prime suspect. He was placed under police surveillance, yet he continued to kill and dispose of bodies at his farm. When he was finally arrested in 2002, Ms. Shenher didn’t celebrate. She despaired, knowing a serial killer had slipped through her fingers. While on leave, suffering from post-traumatic stress and thinking she would never return to police work, she decided to spill her guts. Ms. Shenher sat in front of her computer and began to write.

The result was a 289-page manuscript that Toronto-based publisher McClelland & Stewart planned to have in bookstores by September 2003. But circumstances changed. The manuscript was never published. It was buried and stayed that way until this year, when lawyers representing the families of Pickton’s victims at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in Vancouver forced its disclosure and requested that it be made public.

During hearings in April, several passages from the Shenher manuscript were read into the inquiry record. Some lawyers argued the entire document should be entered as evidence. Commissioner Wally Oppal rejected their arguments last week. The National Post has obtained a copy of the manuscript and is publishing previously undisclosed details for the first time.

Related

_________________________________

David Clark/Postmedia News FilesRobert Pickton's farm in 2002.

‘It is only now that I recognize all of the signs and signals of burnout and post traumatic stress disorder brought on by doing a horrible job for an unsupportive and incompetent organization,” Ms. Shenher wrote, a year after Pickton’s arrest. “I was no longer able to bear the weight of our ineptitude and rationalization…. It had always been Pickton.”

Her book is the rawest, most immediate and revealing account of the botched missing women and Pickton investigations. It describes a major Canadian police department plagued by indifference, in-fighting, sexism, racism. And it reveals much about Ms. Shenher herself.

She was a fish out of water, a young lesbian trying to work her way up in an alpha male world. The VPD was not an exceptionally tolerant or progressive workplace in 1991, the year Ms. Shenher joined. Hostilities were common inside headquarters and on the street. She recalls how officers sometimes played it old school, kicking down doors and roughing up suspects.

After working on various assignments — patrol, surveillance, a prostitution task force in Vancouver’s crime-infested Downtown Eastside — Ms. Shenher joined the VPD’s Missing Persons Unit in July 1998. Despite her lack of seniority, she was made the unit’s lead investigator and file co-ordinator. It seemed the VPD brass had finally accepted that prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside were vanishing without a trace. Those cases became her focus.

‘There was
no real plan to
find these women’

Early in her assignment, she wrote, then-VPD inspector Peter Ditchfield suggested it “would very likely turn into a serial killer investigation.” She felt she had arrived. But her enthusiasm for the job waned when she discovered how thinly resourced the missing persons unit really was. It was moribund, perhaps by design, Ms. Shenher suggests in her account.

“There was no real plan to find these women,” she wrote, in one of the few passages that were read into the inquiry record last month. “I see now that I was merely a figurehead, a sacrificial lamb thrown into an investigation the VPD management was convinced would never amount to anything and would never grow into the tragedy it has become. An investigation they could care less about.”

Ms. Shenher is extremely critical of her colleagues; few are spared from her bitter attacks. She began at the top.

“At the time, beleaguered former chief constable Bruce Chambers was running the VPD,” she wrote. “Between trying to manage a highly dysfunctional organization and sniffing out snakes in his own senior management team, he was busy and not particularly interested in a bunch of missing hookers and drug addicts.”

The passage was read back to Ms. Shenher last month, when she returned to the inquiry for cross-examination by Cameron Ward, a lawyer for the families of the murdered and missing women. “I stand by that,” she testified.

The unit operated from a tiny, “airless and windowless” room inside department headquarters on Main Street. Missing person complaints were handled by a civilian clerk named Sandra Cameron, whom Ms. Shenher alleged in her book was prone to “diatribes and rants.”

On one occasion, “I listened to [Ms. Cameron] speaking to someone on the phone, obviously growing more and more impatient and agitated. Finally, she shouted into the receiver, ‘SPEAK ENGLISH, THIS IS CA-NA-DA.’ This was not the first time I had witnessed [such] behaviour on her part and I had had enough.”

In another passage read aloud into the inquiry proceedings by lawyer Ward, Ms. Shenher recalls asking Ms. Cameron “who she had ‘blown’ to manage to retain her job all of these years. She just laughed, perhaps thinking I was kidding. I wasn’t.”

Ms. Shenher received compelling information that summer, tips that identified Robert “Willie” Pickton, a creepy loner living on a messy pig farm in suburban Port Coquitlam. According to police sources who came forward in 1998, Pickton bragged that he could dispose of bodies on his farm using a meat grinder. Sources claimed that women’s purses and identification were inside Pickton’s trailer. Shenher met one of the sources and thought him to be honest.

‘I became more convinced that Pickton was our man’

She learned that a year earlier, Pickton was charged with the attempted murder of a Downtown Eastside prostitute, whom he had lured to his farm. An RCMP officer who had investigated the stabbing and had recommended the attempted murder charge to Crown prosecutors believed the case was a slam dunk, an easy conviction. But the Crown stayed the charge, on the belief — not shared by the RCMP or Ms. Shenher — that Pickton’s alleged victim was too drug-dependent to make a reliable witness.

“I became more convinced that Pickton was our man,” Ms. Shenher wrote in her book.

She had a potential ally inside the VPD: Kim Rossmo, a geographic profiler with a doctorate in criminology. He believed one or more serial killers were preying on Downtown Eastside prostitutes and he shared his perspective with Ms. Shenher.

Mr. Rossmo was not well-liked by certain colleagues, who thought him an inexperienced flake and unworthy of the unique title he had been given, detective inspector. Ms. Shenher had similar opinions. “His own arrogance and insecurity are his greatest faults,” Ms. Shenher wrote. “Rossmo told me he felt the offender or offenders had the ability to dispose of bodies in privacy, was likely Caucasian and probably used a vehicle, all things I had surmised on my own without the use of any computer program.”

Of course, the description fit Robert Pickton. If Ms. Shenher had already drawn similar conclusions, and was convinced he was the perpetrator, then why was Pickton not apprehended in 1998? How could Ms. Shenher have failed, knowing all that she did? In her manuscript, she blames the old boys, the apathetic men in charge.

“[The missing women] were dead, we had a strong suspect and, still, VPD management put their collective hands over their ears, loudly sang la-la-la and pretended we didn’t have a responsibility to find these women,” she wrote, in another passage read aloud at the inquiry by Mr. Ward, the lawyer.

She could have pressed harder, she admits. “I, too, should have complained long and loud about the lack of resources to properly investigate these files and I really didn’t.”

By 1999, she had decided it came down to this: Rock the boat and watch her career go up in flames or go with the flow and keep climbing the VPD ladder. She chose the latter course. “The best I could hope to do was try my best for these women and cover my own ass,” she wrote.

_________________________________

BCTV NEWSRobert William Pickton

Mr. Rossmo’s VPD contract expired in 2000. He filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit that ended up before the courts. This “became an embarrassing display of VPD upper management accusing each other of lying on the [witness] stand, like a bunch of school boys in a playing field arguing over a goal,” wrote Ms. Shenher.

She portrayed her immediate boss, a VPD sergeant named Geramy Field, as a well-intentioned yet powerless, even befuddled, cop. Ms. Shenher wrote that at one point, it seemed as if “we had changed roles and I was now the supervisor, guiding and advising her as to the right thing to do. She appeared lost and pleaded with me to tell her what she should do.”

In May 1999, with more women disappearing from the Downtown Eastside, a formal missing person review team (MPRT) was established and additional resources and VPD officers were put to work. Initially, Ms. Shenher was thrilled. Then she compared her resources to the Home Invasion Task Force which was set up next door. “New detectives dreamed of being asked to join the Home Invasion Task Force,” she wrote, “while those same people avoided the MPRT like the plague, uninterested in searching for a bunch of missing ‘whores’…. Apparently, victimized homeowners warranted the big guns; missing, drug-addicted hookers did not.”

Her assessment of two VPD officers assigned to her team is scathing. Detective Constables Doug Fell and Mark Wolthers are depicted as renegades whom nobody liked. “Not only did they have even less experience dealing with major files than I had, they brought with them a dubious reputation, both on the street and among their fellow officers,” she wrote.

The pair annoyed Ms. Shenher from the start. She was especially upset by the close attention they paid to a previously convicted sex offender and drifter named Barry Niedermeyer, whom she did not believe had any connection to Vancouver’s missing women. But arrangements were made with RCMP in Alberta to put Niedermeyer under surveillance. Ms. Shenher was miffed.

“Fell and Wolthers strutted and preened as the surveillance was going on, basking in the glow of their perceived new importance as the detectives overseeing this large undercover operation that was the collection of [Niedermeyer’s] DNA,” she wrote sarcastically. “[Another VPD officer] and I were so annoyed, we took to snorting like pigs in the office — our way of staying sane in such a manic environment and of saying they were pursuing the wrong man and that we believed Pickton was a far more worthy suspect.”

‘We believed Pickton was a far more worthy suspect’

Niedermeyer was eventually charged with more sex offences and was convicted and imprisoned, thanks to the work of Messrs.. Fell and Wolthers. Yet Ms. Shenher slams them in her book, giving them no credit at all.

In testimony this month at the inquiry, Messrs. Fell and Wolthers claimed that information about Pickton was kept from them while they worked under Ms. Shenher. Other officers have denied the allegation. Mr. Wolthers also said the pair was unfairly criticized in the VPD’s official missing women investigation review, written by Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard and entered as evidence early on in the inquiry. Mr. Wolthers called the deputy chief’s findings “disgusting.”

Both officers were removed from the review team in 2000. Mr. Wolthers, now retired, does not believe the VPD ever completed its job, even after Pickton was arrested. “I believe strongly that there’s two to three serial killers,” he told the inquiry. “I don’t believe that Robert Pickton is responsible for all of ‘em.’”

Ms. Shenher turned to clairvoyants and psychics to help her crack the missing women cases. She “didn’t exactly broadcast it around the office,” she wrote. One psychic seemed to have a gift, but nothing useful materialized.

By the summer of 2000, the number of names on the VPD’s missing women list had surpassed 30. Ms. Shenher and other officers were told the review team was winding down, that the RCMP was going to review the entire investigation and basically assume the missing women files. The Mounties took review team documents to their offices in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb; some have not been seen since, according to frustrated inquiry lawyers.

The RCMP had already been conducting an on-again, off-again investigation into Robert Pickton and had shared the same graphic tip information with the VPD. The farm that Pickton shared with his younger brother David was in the RCMP’s jurisdiction; it was just a few kilometres from the RCMP’s Port Coquitlam detachment, in fact.

The Mounties were also aware of Piggy’s Palace, a booze can the brothers owned and operated; it sat across the street from their farm. It was widely understood to be frequented by Hells Angels members and associates. The RCMP had great interest in such characters and had various biker investigations underway.

Then there was Bev “Puff” Hyacinthe, a civilian who worked inside the RCMP’s Port Coquitlam detachment. She was a Pickton family friend and neighbour, the inquiry has heard. She allegedly attended a New Year’s Eve party at Piggy’s Palace in 1999 and saw Robert Pickton cavorting with a woman later identified as missing. Remarkably, Ms. Hyacinthe was also aware that Robert Pickton had learned he was under RCMP surveillance, the inquiry has heard. (Inquiry lawyers wanted Ms. Hyacinthe to testify; David Pickton, too. Commissioner Oppal refused their requests, without offering any explanation.)

‘It became obvious the VPD was looking for an opportunity to dump this case’

Like others, Ms. Shenher thought the Mounties’ on-again, off-again interest in Pickton was odd. Why, she wondered, had they suddenly offered to review Vancouver’s missing women investigations? “It became obvious the VPD was looking for an opportunity to dump this case,” she wrote. Perhaps the RCMP felt they needed to show “acceptance for some of the responsibility for the file.” The truth may be far more complicated.

Pickton kept on killing. Lori Shenher became fed up with the review team, and left in November 2000. This was “sooner than planned,” she wrote, explaining that “a murder took place in my own family and the only place I felt I should be was with my partner.” She and her same-sex partner had a baby boy early the next year. Ms. Shenher took maternity leave. When she returned to work, she joined the VPD’s Diversity Relations Unit.

But the missing women investigation gnawed at her conscience. The following summer, Ms. Shenher met with a Vancouver Sun reporter, Lindsay Kines, and she unloaded. “I told him of the set-up of the MPRT, of the shell game that was the VPD’s response to these women’s disappearances, of the incompetent people we were forced to work with,” she wrote in her manuscript. “I placed him in an awful position, knowing he wouldn’t be able to use any of it, but feeling someone needed to know this — the public needed to know this.”

She also discussed details with television producer Chris Haddock, the creator of the CBC drama da Vinci’s Inquest, which was shot in Vancouver. Ms. Shenher had been a journalist before joining the VPD and she often worked as an advisor for Mr. Haddock on his hit series. She couldn’t resist sharing with him her “frustration with the lack of progress on the Pickton file.”

_________________________________

Jason Payne/Postmedia NewsFormer VPD Const. Lori Shenher (centre) at the missing women inquiry in Vancouver, BC Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The RCMP had all kinds of information on Pickton: The 1997 knife attack on a Downtown Eastside prostitute. Reports from various sources in 1998 and 1999, about women’s clothing and firearms on his farm. About Pickton talking about his ability to dispose of corpses. A witness account, about Pickton purportedly skinning a female corpse in his barn. Bev Hyacinthe’s alleged knowledge of Pickton. And yet senior RCMP officers claim they lacked information to obtain a warrant to search the Pickton farm.

But in February 2002, a young RCMP corporal applied to the courts for permission to enter the property. His search warrant application was based on the suspicion that Pickton possessed an illegal handgun. Once on the farm, more macabre discoveries were made: Items that had belonged to missing women. The farm became a massive crime scene investigation and Pickton was soon arrested.

Ms. Shenher was invited to witness RCMP investigators interview Pickton at their Surrey detachment. She was told that Pickton “had masturbated almost immediately upon entering the cell the previous night and, to the horror of his poor cellmate, would do so several times throughout the night.” Pickton would give the RCMP a confession, of sorts, hinting that he might have killed as many as 49 women. By then, his fate was practically sealed. He was eventually charged with 26 counts of first degree murder and was convicted by a jury on six counts of second degree murder. But his trial was not held until 2007.

‘… nothing in policing appealed to me’

Ms. Shenher felt no satisfaction after his arrest. The RCMP had taken most of the credit for nabbing Pickton. VPD investigators were cast as failures. Truth was they had failed. Ms. Shenher wrote that she had come “to a startling and sobering realization — nothing in policing appealed to me.” She was done. Or so she thought.

She went on medical leave in mid-2002 and began working on her manuscript. It was a cathartic exercise, she told the inquiry and, clearly, she felt she had some scores to settle. She and her partner had another baby. Ms. Shenher went on a long maternity leave in February 2003. She hired a literary agent, signed a book deal with McClelland & Stewart, and began delivering chapters. She wrote 289 pages.

Inevitably, reporters caught wind of her book project. Families of Pickton’s victims were outraged. The VPD claimed Ms. Shenher was not writing a book. But she was, and was still collecting a VPD paycheque. She had been part of the Pickton investigation, and she had filled her manuscript with details about evidence. Yet Pickton hadn’t even been tried. There was confusion.

So the book disappeared.

It “just died a death,” Ms. Shenher testified last month, when inquiry lawyers quizzed her on it. “The VPD really had no knowledge that I had written it…. They had nothing to do with the decisions around it at all.” The VPD had not ordered her to kill it. “I wasn’t in any way pressured by them.”

On the other hand, she told lawyer Cameron Ward, “I stand by most of what I wrote, for the most part. There are a couple of things that I have come to, you know, in the fullness of time, have come to understand a little bit differently, or I have had more information provided to me, which has changed my view. But I think the overall tenor of the book I would stand by.”

Ms. Shenher returned to the VPD in 2004. She is now a Detective Constable with the Emergency and Operations Planning Section. Reached at her work late this week, she declined to discuss her book. “I still have to work here,” she said. “I do intend to rewrite it as a memoir one day.”

National Post
bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

Former ace interrogator Bill Fordy lands job as head of Surrey RCMP

Bill Fordy set to replace retiring Fraser MacRae

BY KIM BOLAN, VANCOUVER SUN MAY 29, 2012 12:07 AM

Bill Fordy, seen here during a 2009 Integrated Homicide Investigation Team media briefing, will head the Surrey RCMP

Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, PNG

He has interrogated some of B.C.’s most notorious criminals, including serial killers Robert Pickton and Charles Kembo.

Now RCMP Supt. Bill Fordy is poised to take over as the head of the Surrey RCMP — Canada’s largest RCMP detachment — when Asst. Commissioner Fraser MacRae retires Friday.

While the formal announcement is yet to be made, Fordy’s name has been circulating for days as the successful candidate for the top Surrey job.

And Surrey City Council ratified the decision Monday.

Fordy did not respond to an interview request.

Nor would Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts comment on the news.

But several police and community sources confirmed that Fordy, 47, has been notified of his promotion into one of the RCMP’s most-coveted policing jobs in Canada.

Fordy has been a Mountie since abandoning his dreams of playing professional hockey.

He was a ninth round draft pick for the Hartford Whalers back in 1983 when he was 18. The left-winger never played an NHL game, but had a successful college career in Ontario.

He found his true calling when he joined the RCMP.

Fordy built a reputation as a skilled interrogator of suspects in high-profile murder cases.

He used his background as a hockey player when he was part of the interview team that got a confession from Pickton in the murder of women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Fordy told Pickton that his NHL career was dashed due to injuries.

“I was drafted to go to try out for the Hartford Whalers in the NHL and then I broke my shoulder. And as a result of that I ah, broke my hand twice, my arm, my cheek bone, I ended up playing in the minors, Rob,” he said to Pickton on Feb. 22, 2002.

“And I look back on my life and that’s probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you Rob?”

Besides the successful Pickton murder case, Fordy worked on the case of child killer Shane Ertmoed, who confessed to killing 10-year-old Heather Thomas.

He got a confession from Lance Dove, who murdered Kimberly Ann Tracey after a night of drinking.

He pushed wife-killer Mukhtiar Panghali to admit his role in killing wife Manjit in 2006.

“I’m not playing games,” Fordy said as he told Panghali a body had been found in Delta that might be his missing wife.

“You hope that it’s not the worst-case scenario but, to be honest, it may be the worst case,” Fordy said.

Defence lawyers would often complain in court about Fordy’s ability to elicit confessions.

In recent years, Fordy was a leader of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, before assuming a senior role in the Surrey RCMP as Investigative Services Officer, in charge of all major crime.

The Surrey RCMP has 661 Mounties and 275 support staff, making it about twice as large as any other detachment in Canada. It is the second largest municipal police force in B.C., behind the Vancouver police department.

Asst. Commissioner Fraser MacRae, who has been the officer in charge of Surrey for eight years, is retiring June 1.

kbolan@vancouversun.com

Blog: vancouversun.com/therealscoop

Twitter.com/kbolan

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Friday, May 25

Momenutum builds for prostitution law change | OpenFile

Momenutum builds for prostitution law change | OpenFile:

'via Blog this'

Deadly Disfunction: Scathing undisclosed details from inside the Pickton investigation

Brian Hutchinson May 25, 2012 – 10:33 PM ET | Last Updated: May 25, 2012 10:38 PM ET

Sam Cooper/Postmedia News

Sam Cooper/Postmedia News

“It is only now that I recognize all of the signs and signals of burnout and post traumatic stress disorder brought on by doing a horrible job for an unsupportive and incompetent organization,” Lori Shenher wrote, a year after Pickton’s arrest

I had simply seen too much, felt too much and knew too much. I wanted out.
Vancouver police officer and former missing women investigator Lori Shenher

Lori Shenher thought her career as a police officer was over. The reasons: Pickton trauma. Burn-out. Guilt, the result of failure. Anger. For more than two years, from 1998 to 2000, Ms. Shenher had led a Vancouver Police Department unit tasked with finding missing women. And in that time, more women went missing and were murdered by Robert Pickton. The Port Coquitlam pig farmer had been in police sights — her sights — a long time.

Pickton was her prime suspect. He was placed under police surveillance, yet he continued to kill and dispose of bodies at his farm. When he was finally arrested in 2002, Ms. Shenher didn’t celebrate. She despaired, knowing a serial killer had slipped through her fingers. While on leave, suffering from post-traumatic stress and thinking she would never return to police work, she decided to spill her guts. Ms. Shenher sat in front of her computer and began to write.

The result was a 289-page manuscript that Toronto-based publisher McClelland & Stewart planned to have in bookstores by September 2003. But circumstances changed. The manuscript was never published. It was buried and stayed that way until this year, when lawyers representing the families of Pickton’s victims at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in Vancouver forced its disclosure and requested that it be made public.

During hearings in April, several passages from the Shenher manuscript were read into the inquiry record. Some lawyers argued the entire document should be entered as evidence. Commissioner Wally Oppal rejected their arguments last week. The National Post has obtained a copy of the manuscript and is publishing previously undisclosed details for the first time.

Related

_________________________________

David Clark/Postmedia News Files

Robert Pickton's farm in 2002.

‘It is only now that I recognize all of the signs and signals of burnout and post traumatic stress disorder brought on by doing a horrible job for an unsupportive and incompetent organization,” Ms. Shenher wrote, a year after Pickton’s arrest. “I was no longer able to bear the weight of our ineptitude and rationalization…. It had always been Pickton.”

Her book is the rawest, most immediate and revealing account of the botched missing women and Pickton investigations. It describes a major Canadian police department plagued by indifference, in-fighting, sexism, racism. And it reveals much about Ms. Shenher herself.

She was a fish out of water, a young lesbian trying to work her way up in an alpha male world. The VPD was not an exceptionally tolerant or progressive workplace in 1991, the year Ms. Shenher joined. Hostilities were common inside headquarters and on the street. She recalls how officers sometimes played it old school, kicking down doors and roughing up suspects.

After working on various assignments — patrol, surveillance, a prostitution task force in Vancouver’s crime-infested Downtown Eastside — Ms. Shenher joined the VPD’s Missing Persons Unit in July 1998. Despite her lack of seniority, she was made the unit’s lead investigator and file co-ordinator. It seemed the VPD brass had finally accepted that prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside were vanishing without a trace. Those cases became her focus.

‘There was
no real plan to
find these women’

Early in her assignment, she wrote, then-VPD inspector Peter Ditchfield suggested it “would very likely turn into a serial killer investigation.” She felt she had arrived. But her enthusiasm for the job waned when she discovered how thinly resourced the missing persons unit really was. It was moribund, perhaps by design, Ms. Shenher suggests in her account.

“There was no real plan to find these women,” she wrote, in one of the few passages that were read into the inquiry record last month. “I see now that I was merely a figurehead, a sacrificial lamb thrown into an investigation the VPD management was convinced would never amount to anything and would never grow into the tragedy it has become. An investigation they could care less about.”

Ms. Shenher is extremely critical of her colleagues; few are spared from her bitter attacks. She began at the top.

“At the time, beleaguered former chief constable Bruce Chambers was running the VPD,” she wrote. “Between trying to manage a highly dysfunctional organization and sniffing out snakes in his own senior management team, he was busy and not particularly interested in a bunch of missing hookers and drug addicts.”

The passage was read back to Ms. Shenher last month, when she returned to the inquiry for cross-examination by Cameron Ward, a lawyer for the families of the murdered and missing women. “I stand by that,” she testified.

The unit operated from a tiny, “airless and windowless” room inside department headquarters on Main Street. Missing person complaints were handled by a civilian clerk named Sandra Cameron, whom Ms. Shenher alleged in her book was prone to “diatribes and rants.”

On one occasion, “I listened to [Ms. Cameron] speaking to someone on the phone, obviously growing more and more impatient and agitated. Finally, she shouted into the receiver, ‘SPEAK ENGLISH, THIS IS CA-NA-DA.’ This was not the first time I had witnessed [such] behaviour on her part and I had had enough.”

In another passage read aloud into the inquiry proceedings by lawyer Ward, Ms. Shenher recalls asking Ms. Cameron “who she had ‘blown’ to manage to retain her job all of these years. She just laughed, perhaps thinking I was kidding. I wasn’t.”

Ms. Shenher received compelling information that summer, tips that identified Robert “Willie” Pickton, a creepy loner living on a messy pig farm in suburban Port Coquitlam. According to police sources who came forward in 1998, Pickton bragged that he could dispose of bodies on his farm using a meat grinder. Sources claimed that women’s purses and identification were inside Pickton’s trailer. Shenher met one of the sources and thought him to be honest.

‘I became more convinced that Pickton was our man’

She learned that a year earlier, Pickton was charged with the attempted murder of a Downtown Eastside prostitute, whom he had lured to his farm. An RCMP officer who had investigated the stabbing and had recommended the attempted murder charge to Crown prosecutors believed the case was a slam dunk, an easy conviction. But the Crown stayed the charge, on the belief — not shared by the RCMP or Ms. Shenher — that Pickton’s alleged victim was too drug-dependent to make a reliable witness.

“I became more convinced that Pickton was our man,” Ms. Shenher wrote in her book.

She had a potential ally inside the VPD: Kim Rossmo, a geographic profiler with a doctorate in criminology. He believed one or more serial killers were preying on Downtown Eastside prostitutes and he shared his perspective with Ms. Shenher.

Mr. Rossmo was not well-liked by certain colleagues, who thought him an inexperienced flake and unworthy of the unique title he had been given, detective inspector. Ms. Shenher had similar opinions. “His own arrogance and insecurity are his greatest faults,” Ms. Shenher wrote. “Rossmo told me he felt the offender or offenders had the ability to dispose of bodies in privacy, was likely Caucasian and probably used a vehicle, all things I had surmised on my own without the use of any computer program.”

Of course, the description fit Robert Pickton. If Ms. Shenher had already drawn similar conclusions, and was convinced he was the perpetrator, then why was Pickton not apprehended in 1998? How could Ms. Shenher have failed, knowing all that she did? In her manuscript, she blames the old boys, the apathetic men in charge.

“[The missing women] were dead, we had a strong suspect and, still, VPD management put their collective hands over their ears, loudly sang la-la-la and pretended we didn’t have a responsibility to find these women,” she wrote, in another passage read aloud at the inquiry by Mr. Ward, the lawyer.

She could have pressed harder, she admits. “I, too, should have complained long and loud about the lack of resources to properly investigate these files and I really didn’t.”

By 1999, she had decided it came down to this: Rock the boat and watch her career go up in flames or go with the flow and keep climbing the VPD ladder. She chose the latter course. “The best I could hope to do was try my best for these women and cover my own ass,” she wrote.

_________________________________

BCTV NEWS

Robert William Pickton

Mr. Rossmo’s VPD contract expired in 2000. He filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit that ended up before the courts. This “became an embarrassing display of VPD upper management accusing each other of lying on the [witness] stand, like a bunch of school boys in a playing field arguing over a goal,” wrote Ms. Shenher.

She portrayed her immediate boss, a VPD sergeant named Geramy Field, as a well-intentioned yet powerless, even befuddled, cop. Ms. Shenher wrote that at one point, it seemed as if “we had changed roles and I was now the supervisor, guiding and advising her as to the right thing to do. She appeared lost and pleaded with me to tell her what she should do.”

In May 1999, with more women disappearing from the Downtown Eastside, a formal missing person review team (MPRT) was established and additional resources and VPD officers were put to work. Initially, Ms. Shenher was thrilled. Then she compared her resources to the Home Invasion Task Force which was set up next door. “New detectives dreamed of being asked to join the Home Invasion Task Force,” she wrote, “while those same people avoided the MPRT like the plague, uninterested in searching for a bunch of missing ‘whores’…. Apparently, victimized homeowners warranted the big guns; missing, drug-addicted hookers did not.”

Her assessment of two VPD officers assigned to her team is scathing. Detective Constables Doug Fell and Mark Wolthers are depicted as renegades whom nobody liked. “Not only did they have even less experience dealing with major files than I had, they brought with them a dubious reputation, both on the street and among their fellow officers,” she wrote.

The pair annoyed Ms. Shenher from the start. She was especially upset by the close attention they paid to a previously convicted sex offender and drifter named Barry Niedermeyer, whom she did not believe had any connection to Vancouver’s missing women. But arrangements were made with RCMP in Alberta to put Niedermeyer under surveillance. Ms. Shenher was miffed.

“Fell and Wolthers strutted and preened as the surveillance was going on, basking in the glow of their perceived new importance as the detectives overseeing this large undercover operation that was the collection of [Niedermeyer’s] DNA,” she wrote sarcastically. “[Another VPD officer] and I were so annoyed, we took to snorting like pigs in the office — our way of staying sane in such a manic environment and of saying they were pursuing the wrong man and that we believed Pickton was a far more worthy suspect.”

‘We believed Pickton was a far more worthy suspect’

Niedermeyer was eventually charged with more sex offences and was convicted and imprisoned, thanks to the work of Messrs.. Fell and Wolthers. Yet Ms. Shenher slams them in her book, giving them no credit at all.

In testimony this month at the inquiry, Messrs. Fell and Wolthers claimed that information about Pickton was kept from them while they worked under Ms. Shenher. Other officers have denied the allegation. Mr. Wolthers also said the pair was unfairly criticized in the VPD’s official missing women investigation review, written by Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard and entered as evidence early on in the inquiry. Mr. Wolthers called the deputy chief’s findings “disgusting.”

Both officers were removed from the review team in 2000. Mr. Wolthers, now retired, does not believe the VPD ever completed its job, even after Pickton was arrested. “I believe strongly that there’s two to three serial killers,” he told the inquiry. “I don’t believe that Robert Pickton is responsible for all of ‘em.’”

Ms. Shenher turned to clairvoyants and psychics to help her crack the missing women cases. She “didn’t exactly broadcast it around the office,” she wrote. One psychic seemed to have a gift, but nothing useful materialized.

By the summer of 2000, the number of names on the VPD’s missing women list had surpassed 30. Ms. Shenher and other officers were told the review team was winding down, that the RCMP was going to review the entire investigation and basically assume the missing women files. The Mounties took review team documents to their offices in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb; some have not been seen since, according to frustrated inquiry lawyers.

The RCMP had already been conducting an on-again, off-again investigation into Robert Pickton and had shared the same graphic tip information with the VPD. The farm that Pickton shared with his younger brother David was in the RCMP’s jurisdiction; it was just a few kilometres from the RCMP’s Port Coquitlam detachment, in fact.

The Mounties were also aware of Piggy’s Palace, a booze can the brothers owned and operated; it sat across the street from their farm. It was widely understood to be frequented by Hells Angels members and associates. The RCMP had great interest in such characters and had various biker investigations underway.

Then there was Bev “Puff” Hyacinthe, a civilian who worked inside the RCMP’s Port Coquitlam detachment. She was a Pickton family friend and neighbour, the inquiry has heard. She allegedly attended a New Year’s Eve party at Piggy’s Palace in 1999 and saw Robert Pickton cavorting with a woman later identified as missing. Remarkably, Ms. Hyacinthe was also aware that Robert Pickton had learned he was under RCMP surveillance, the inquiry has heard. (Inquiry lawyers wanted Ms. Hyacinthe to testify; David Pickton, too. Commissioner Oppal refused their requests, without offering any explanation.)

‘It became obvious the VPD was looking for an opportunity to dump this case’

Like others, Ms. Shenher thought the Mounties’ on-again, off-again interest in Pickton was odd. Why, she wondered, had they suddenly offered to review Vancouver’s missing women investigations? “It became obvious the VPD was looking for an opportunity to dump this case,” she wrote. Perhaps the RCMP felt they needed to show “acceptance for some of the responsibility for the file.” The truth may be far more complicated.

Pickton kept on killing. Lori Shenher became fed up with the review team, and left in November 2000. This was “sooner than planned,” she wrote, explaining that “a murder took place in my own family and the only place I felt I should be was with my partner.” She and her same-sex partner had a baby boy early the next year. Ms. Shenher took maternity leave. When she returned to work, she joined the VPD’s Diversity Relations Unit.

But the missing women investigation gnawed at her conscience. The following summer, Ms. Shenher met with a Vancouver Sun reporter, Lindsay Kines, and she unloaded. “I told him of the set-up of the MPRT, of the shell game that was the VPD’s response to these women’s disappearances, of the incompetent people we were forced to work with,” she wrote in her manuscript. “I placed him in an awful position, knowing he wouldn’t be able to use any of it, but feeling someone needed to know this — the public needed to know this.”

She also discussed details with television producer Chris Haddock, the creator of the CBC drama da Vinci’s Inquest, which was shot in Vancouver. Ms. Shenher had been a journalist before joining the VPD and she often worked as an advisor for Mr. Haddock on his hit series. She couldn’t resist sharing with him her “frustration with the lack of progress on the Pickton file.”

_________________________________

Jason Payne/Postmedia News

Former VPD Const. Lori Shenher (centre) at the missing women inquiry in Vancouver, BC Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The RCMP had all kinds of information on Pickton: The 1997 knife attack on a Downtown Eastside prostitute. Reports from various sources in 1998 and 1999, about women’s clothing and firearms on his farm. About Pickton talking about his ability to dispose of corpses. A witness account, about Pickton purportedly skinning a female corpse in his barn. Bev Hyacinthe’s alleged knowledge of Pickton. And yet senior RCMP officers claim they lacked information to obtain a warrant to search the Pickton farm.

But in February 2002, a young RCMP corporal applied to the courts for permission to enter the property. His search warrant application was based on the suspicion that Pickton possessed an illegal handgun. Once on the farm, more macabre discoveries were made: Items that had belonged to missing women. The farm became a massive crime scene investigation and Pickton was soon arrested.

Ms. Shenher was invited to witness RCMP investigators interview Pickton at their Surrey detachment. She was told that Pickton “had masturbated almost immediately upon entering the cell the previous night and, to the horror of his poor cellmate, would do so several times throughout the night.” Pickton would give the RCMP a confession, of sorts, hinting that he might have killed as many as 49 women. By then, his fate was practically sealed. He was eventually charged with 26 counts of first degree murder and was convicted by a jury on six counts of second degree murder. But his trial was not held until 2007.

‘… nothing in policing appealed to me’

Ms. Shenher felt no satisfaction after his arrest. The RCMP had taken most of the credit for nabbing Pickton. VPD investigators were cast as failures. Truth was they had failed. Ms. Shenher wrote that she had come “to a startling and sobering realization — nothing in policing appealed to me.” She was done. Or so she thought.

She went on medical leave in mid-2002 and began working on her manuscript. It was a cathartic exercise, she told the inquiry and, clearly, she felt she had some scores to settle. She and her partner had another baby. Ms. Shenher went on a long maternity leave in February 2003. She hired a literary agent, signed a book deal with McClelland & Stewart, and began delivering chapters. She wrote 289 pages.

Inevitably, reporters caught wind of her book project. Families of Pickton’s victims were outraged. The VPD claimed Ms. Shenher was not writing a book. But she was, and was still collecting a VPD paycheque. She had been part of the Pickton investigation, and she had filled her manuscript with details about evidence. Yet Pickton hadn’t even been tried. There was confusion.

So the book disappeared.

It “just died a death,” Ms. Shenher testified last month, when inquiry lawyers quizzed her on it. “The VPD really had no knowledge that I had written it…. They had nothing to do with the decisions around it at all.” The VPD had not ordered her to kill it. “I wasn’t in any way pressured by them.”

On the other hand, she told lawyer Cameron Ward, “I stand by most of what I wrote, for the most part. There are a couple of things that I have come to, you know, in the fullness of time, have come to understand a little bit differently, or I have had more information provided to me, which has changed my view. But I think the overall tenor of the book I would stand by.”

Ms. Shenher returned to the VPD in 2004 and to a promotion. She is now a Detective Constable with the Emergency and Operations Planning Section. Reached at her work late this week, she declined to discuss her book. “I still have to work here,” she said. “I do intend to rewrite it as a memoir one day.”

National Post
bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

Thursday, May 24

Inquiry hears police knew Robert Pickton was 'hunting' women while in disguise

BY THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 24, 2012 9:40 PM

Retired RCMP inspector Keith Davidson (left) told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry he met with several other Mounties at the Coquitlam detachment in February 2000 to talk about Pickton, who they knew was picking up sex-trade workers while wearing wigs.

Photograph by: Sam Leung, The Province

VANCOUVER - A retired RCMP sergeant says police met to discuss their criminal suspicions about Robert Pickton two years before evidence of dozens of murders was uncovered on his Port Coquitlam farm.

But Keith Davidson couldn't explain why police failed to focus on Pickton, who officers said had been "hunting" women while in disguise.

Davidson told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry he met with several other Mounties at the Coquitlam detachment in February 2000 to talk about Pickton, who they knew was picking up sex-trade workers while wearing wigs.

In the two years between that meeting and Pickton's arrest, 14 women disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Davidson, who was a criminal profiler, says he also didn't know why police didn't get the search warrants or wiretaps they had discussed during that same meeting.

Instead, a rookie was granted a search warrant to look for firearms in February 2002, and investigators found either the remains or DNA of 33 women on the farm.

Missing Women inquiry hears police knew Robert Pickton was 'hunting' women while in disguise

BY TERRI THEODORE, THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 24, 2012 5:17 PM

Gary Bass, who was deputy commander of the RCMP during the Pickton investigation, leaves the missing women inquiry in Vancouver, May 23, 2012.

Photograph by: Nick Procaylo, PNG

VANCOUVER — Almost two years to the day before police searched Robert Pickton's now-notorious pig farm, police knew the man was "hunting" for women while in disguise, the missing women's inquiry has heard.

A retired RCMP profiler told the inquiry Thursday that he met with several other officers to discuss Pickton as a key suspect in the case at the Coquitlam, B.C., RCMP detachment, not far from Pickton's muddy farm.

During the Feb. 4, 2000, meeting, then-sergeant Keith Davidson said investigators discussed getting a search warrant for the farm and asking for a wiretap of Pickton's phone lines.

But police didn't get the warrant.

It would be another two years before police searched the farm, and in between that time, 14 women disappeared, said Cameron Ward, lawyer for more than two dozen family members of the murdered and missing women.

"Can you explain to me and my clients ... why the RCMP failed to either prove he was a suspect or rule him out in that two-year period?" Ward asked Davidson.

"I can't," he replied.

A rookie officer from the Coquitlam detachment eventually obtained a search warrant to look for weapons on the farm in February 2002. Instead, police found evidence of horrible crimes and eventually the remains or DNA of 33 women.

Davidson said he learned at the February meeting that police knew Pickton was a night person, that he picked up pigs every Saturday at auction and that he was ritualistic and sloppy.

He used wigs when he picked up girls, Davidson said.

"He went out hunting for girls in disguise, right?" Ward asked as he read over Davidson's notes of the meeting.

"Hunting would probably have been my word. Obviously if he wears wigs," he said, pausing. "I was being told he went out to pick out girls wearing wigs."

Davidson, who testified at the inquiry via Internet from London, contradicted testimony given by his former boss on Wednesday.

Gary Bass, the former deputy commissioner of the RCMP in B.C., said he didn't launch a task force into the missing women investigation because he wasn't asked to get involved by Vancouver's police department.

But Davidson said Bass told him the Mounties didn't have the resources after Davidson presented a joint task force proposal to look into the missing-women case.

Davidson told the inquiry he believed a provincewide task force was necessary because the RCMP was the provincial police force and had the investigative resources.

He testified he didn't contradict his boss on the decision not to get involved.

Thursday was the last day for oral testimony at the commission.

Final arguments from various lawyers representing police officers, their departments, governments, family members and aboriginal interests, among others, have been put off until June 4.

The week-long delay of final legal arguments angered Lori-Ann Ellis, the sister-in-law of Cara Ellis, whose DNA was found on Pickton's farm.

"Family members have made travel plans," she said. "They're going to the memorial."

A memorial event at a park on the edge of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside where many of the women lived is set for June 1.

It was planned as a way for the women's families to mark the end of the public inquiry.

Outside the inquiry, Ward said a great deal about what went wrong around the police investigations into the women's disappearances has come out since the inquiry started last October.

Commissioner Wally Oppal must complete his report by June 30.

"It's my hope ... that we learn enough from this process to ensure that a tragedy of this nature does not happen again," Ward said.

He said the process has been especially horrific for the murdered or missing women's families who have waited more than a decade to learn why Pickton wasn't caught sooner.

One stark factor that's emerged from the inquiry has been the attitude of indifference by some people involved in the investigation towards the women who disappeared, Ward said.

He said he would like to see recommendations on improving police communications, more resources for such investigations and how police in the province could better co-operate to solve such cases sooner.

The inquiry started off on a sour note when the provincial government denied legal funding to several groups who had already been granted participant status at the inquiry. Many of those groups or individuals pulled out of the process.

Pickton was charged with killing 26 women, but convicted of six murders. Many of his victims were sex workers from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside.

© Copyright (c)

Cops didn't mention Hells Angels investigation on Pickton farm over optics, missing women inquiry hears

BY TERRI THEODORE, THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 24, 2012 7:59 AM

FILE PHOTO: Vancouver Police Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard denied lawyer Cameron Ward's charge that there was a 'conspiracy' behind investigators not referring to Hells Angels investigations on the Pickton properties.

Photograph by: Bill Keay, PNG files

VANCOUVER — Police didn't mention an investigation of the Hells Angels on the same property where the remains of 33 women were found because they didn't want to be accused of bungling their job, the missing women inquiry has heard.

Cameron Ward, the lawyer for two dozen family members of the murdered and missing women, made the allegations Wednesday, while questioning Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard about other police investigations into the notorious pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry has already heard that a property separate from the Pickton family's farm, called Piggy's Palace, was well known as a partying place for members of the biker gang.

"You deliberately did not mentioned the Hells Angels by name to avoid the difficult questions that would surely ensue that the families and members of the public might have," Ward asked LePard.

"How in the world, if the Hells Angels were active on the Pickton properties and they were being monitored, [did] the police miss it?"

LePard — who wrote a report on the missing women's investigation concluding police made many mistakes — denied he excluded any evidence about police investigations into the Hells Angels on the Pickton properties.

"It's not a grand conspiracy," he replied, adding the assertion was completely false.

Earlier in the day, the inquiry heard police were paying careful attention to what was happening on the Pickton properties in the years leading up to the arrest of Robert Pickton for the murders of 26 women.

During that time, the name of Pickton's brother, David, had been queried 107 times on the Canadian Police Information Centre. Police investigators from all over the Lower Mainland were looking for a criminal background.

One search of Dave Pickton's record came in January 2002, just weeks before police raided the farm and discovered gruesome evidence his brother had murdered many women there.

Gary Bass, the former RCMP deputy commissioner in B.C., agreed during testimony that several police operations were targeting the motorcycle gang in the Lower Mainland during that time.

Ward suggested the women were taken to parties at Piggy's Palace, given drugs and later killed on the Pickton farm.

"The RCMP's organized crime agency was simultaneously conducting intelligence operations on the Hells Angels members and the associates who were frequenting the area. Does that sound accurate?" Ward asked.

"I've never seen any reports or had any briefings that indicated something like that was happening," Bass replied.

But the records created by the many RCMP agencies investigating the gang haven't been made available, Ward said.

Bass agreed that would be the way to confirm the claim.

"I suggest none of those records that may have indicated what was happening in that neighbourhood of Port Coquitlam ... have been produced to this inquiry, have they?" Ward asked.

"I'm not aware of any," Bass replied.

"The RCMP was ... focused on addressing that organization's trafficking of illegal narcotics and trying to stop it, wasn't it?"

"The Hells Angels have been in the sights of police for many, many years," Bass testified.

The inquiry is looking into the actions of police and the Crown prosecutors between 1997, when Pickton was accused of attempting to murder a sex trade worker, and when he was arrested in February 2002.

Many women, most of them sex-trade workers, disappeared from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside during that period.

Pickton was convicted of killing six women from the area, but confessed to an undercover officer that he killed 49 women.

Bass also told the inquiry that it was obvious more should have been done to find Vancouver's missing women, but the Mounties weren't asked to get involved in the investigation by Vancouver police.

"It wasn't my responsibility," he said.

The RCMP major crimes section was providing some help to the missing women's investigation in 1998, but wasn't in charge of it, he testified.

Vancouver police still believed the women had simply gone missing on their own, even though RCMP thought foul play was involved as far back as 1995, Bass said.

When the major crime section was finally asked to review the missing women's case in 2000, Vancouver police didn't have their files ready and the investigation was delayed for another six months.

Bass told the inquiry that the RCMP believed there were three serial killers operating in the province at the time — in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and in northern B.C.

Police decided to focus on the Valley murders because they had DNA exhibits, he said.

"Ironically, they still have not been solved," Bass added.

In 1999, police records indicated there were at least 45 unsolved prostitute murders in the province.

Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam.

© Copyright (c)

Gang the original focus at Pickton farm

by The Canadian Press - Story: 75587
May 23, 2012 / 8:27 pm

Police didn't mention an investigation of the Hells Angels on the same property where the remains of 33 women were found because they didn't want to be accused of bungling their job, the missing women inquiry has heard.

Cameron Ward, the lawyer for two dozen family members of the murdered and missing women, made the allegations Wednesday, while questioning Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard about other police investigations into the notorious pig farm in Port Coquitlam.

The inquiry has already heard that a property separate from the Pickton family's farm, called Piggy's Palace, was well known as a partying place for members of the biker gang.

"You deliberately did not mentioned the Hells Angels by name to avoid the difficult questions that would surly ensue that the families and members of the public might have," Ward asked LePard.

"How in the world, if the Hells Angels were active on the Pickton properties and they were being monitored, (did) the police miss it?"

LePard, who wrote a report on the missing women's investigation concluding police made many mistakes, denied he excluded any evidence about police investigations into the Hells Angels on the Pickton properties.

"It's not a grand conspiracy," he replied, adding the assertion was completely false.

Earlier in the day, the inquiry heard police were paying careful attention to what was happening on the Pickton properties in the years leading up to the arrest of Robert Pickton for the murders of 26 women.

During that time, the name of Pickton's brother, David, had been queried 107 times on the Canadian Police Information Centre. Police investigators from all over the Lower Mainland were looking for a criminal background.

One search of Dave Pickton's record came in January 2002, just weeks before police raided the farm and discovered gruesome evidence his brother had murdered many women there.

Gary Bass, the former RCMP deputy commissioner in BC, agreed during testimony that several police operations were targeting the motorcycle gang in the Lower Mainland during that time.

Ward suggested the women were taken to parties at Piggy's Palace, given drugs and later killed on the Pickton farm.

"The RCMP's organized crime agency was simultaneously conducting intelligence operations on the Hells Angels members and the associates who were frequenting the area. Does that sound accurate?" Ward asked.

"I've never seen any reports or had any briefings that indicated something like that was happening," Bass replied.

But the records created by the many RCMP agencies investigating the gang haven't been made available, Ward said.

Bass agreed that would be the way to confirm the claim.

"I suggest none of those records that may have indicated what was happening in that neighbourhood of Port Coquitlam ... have been produced to this inquiry have they?" Ward asked.

"I'm not aware of any," Bass replied.

"The RCMP was ... focused on addressing that organization's trafficking of illegal narcotics and trying to stop it wasn't it?"

"The Hells Angels have been in the sights of police for many, many years," Bass testified.

The inquiry is looking into the actions of police and the Crown prosecutors between 1997, when Pickton was accused of attempting to murder a sex trade worker, and when he was arrested in February 2002.

Many women, most of them sex-trade workers, disappeared from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside during that period.

Pickton was convicted of killing six women from the area, but confessed to an undercover officer that he killed 49 women.

Bass also told the inquiry that it was obvious more should have been done to find Vancouver's missing women, but the Mounties weren't asked to get involved in the investigation by Vancouver police.

"It wasn't my responsibility," he said.

The RCMP major crimes section was providing some help to the missing women's investigation in 1998, but wasn't in charge of it, he testified.

Vancouver police still believed the women had simply gone missing on their own, even though RCMP thought foul play was involved in some instances as far back as 1995, Bass said.

When the major crime section was finally asked to review the missing women's case in 2000, Vancouver police didn't have their files ready and the investigation was delayed for another six months.

Bass told the inquiry that the RCMP believed there were three serial killers operating in the province at the time, in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and in northern BC.

Police decided to focus on the valley murders because they had DNA exhibits, he said.

"Ironically, they still have not been solved," Bass added.

In 1999, police records indicated there were at least 45 unsolved prostitute murders in the province.

Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam.

He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.

The Canadian Press

Wednesday, May 23

RCMP was monitoring club frequented by Pickton, probe told

ROBERT MATAS
VANCOUVER – Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, May 23, 2012

gary bass_rcmp

The RCMP was monitoring an after-hours hangout during the same period that serial killer Robert Pickton lured some of his victims there to be abused and drugged, a lawyer for the victims’ families suggested at the Oppal inquiry.

During a cross-examination Wednesday of former RCMP deputy commissioner Gary Bass, lawyer Cameron Ward said RCMP were monitoring Mr. Pickton’s brother, David, as part of a narcotics investigation that included surveillance of the infamous Piggy’s Palace, where Mr. Pickton brought prostitutes he picked up from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“I suggest what likely happened here … was [the women] were taken from their usual environment in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, out to the Port Coquitlam neighbourhood, where they were taken to parties at Piggy’s Palace,” said Mr. Ward.

Piggy’s Palace, located on a rural road around the corner from the Pickton farm, was an after-hours night club run by Robert and Dave Pickton. Mr. Ward said Piggy’s Palace was well known as a gathering place for members and associates of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.

The women from the Downtown Eastside were given drugs at Piggy’s Palace, “used and abused,” and later killed at the Pickton farm “while the RCMP’s organized crime agency simultaneously conducted intelligence operations on Hells Angels and associates who frequented the area,” Mr. Ward suggested to Mr. Bass.

However, both Mr. Bass, and later Wednesday deputy chief Doug LePard, of the Vancouver Police Department, dismissed Mr. Ward’s suggestion. “There is no information to support what Mr. Ward is suggesting,” deputy chief LePard told the inquiry.

Mr. Bass, who was B.C.’s top Mountie when he retired last year, said he had not heard about Piggy’s Palace until after Robert Pickton was arrested in February, 2002. He did not know Dave Pickton was a suspect in an illegal narcotics investigation, he said.

Mr. Bass confirmed that the RCMP in the 1990s conducted several large-scale operations involving investigations into the Hells Angels motorcycle clubs in the Lower Mainland. Full-patch members were convicted after an investigation into the motorcycle club that involved an agent buying drugs, Mr. Bass said

Keeping close tabs on the Hells Angels was “absolutely” a priority for the RCMP between 1997 and 2002, the five years leading up to Robert Pickton’s arrest, he said.

However, Mr. Bass said he was not aware that the inquiry had any documents on what was happening at Piggy’s Palace. He had never seen any reports or had any briefings that indicated that women were being killed while the RCMP had Piggy’s Palace under surveillance, he told the inquiry.

The inquiry would have to look at the records of the RCMP’s criminal intelligence section or the organized crime agency during the period they conducted their investigation, he said. Those records have not been submitted to the inquiry.

During the questioning of Mr. Bass, Mr. Ward said police officers checked out Dave Pickton on their internal record system 107 times before Robert was arrested in 2002. The inquiries came from several police detachments, including Vancouver, New Westminster, Delta, Coquitlam, Surrey and Richmond.

The RCMP physical surveillance section took an interest in Dave Pickton as a suspect in illegal narcotics, Mr. Ward said.

Public hearings at the inquiry are to conclude this week. Former attorney-general Wally Oppal was appointed in the fall of 2010 to look into the police investigation leading up to the arrest of Robert Pickton in 2002.

Mr. Pickton was convicted of six murders and once said he killed 49 women. Mr. Oppal is to submit a final report to the provincial government by the end of June.

MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY

· Waive warrants on sex workers reporting violent crimes, inquiry told

· Police spokeswomen will not be asked to testify in missing women inquiry

· Police response to Pickton's victims an ‘embarrassment,’ former mayor says

· RCMP allowed Pickton file to lay dormant for months

· Pickton inquiry head takes hit in splatter movie

© Copyright 2012 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Missing women inquiry hears focus was on organized crime, not disappearances

THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 23, 2012 3:26 PM

Retired RCMP top boss Gary Bass told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that Mounties were never asked to aide the investigation into missing women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Photograph by: GlobalTV

VANCOUVER — In the years leading up to Robert Pickton’s arrest, police were paying careful attention to what was going on on his family’s properties, but it was organized crime, not murdered women, that was their focus, a lawyer says.

During that time, the name of Pickton’s brother, David, had been queried 107 times on the Canadian Police Information Centre. Police investigators from all over the Lower Mainland were looking for a criminal background.

One search of Dave Pickton’s record came in January 2002, just weeks before police raided the farm and discovered gruesome evidence his brother had murdered many women there.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry into Vancouver’s missing women has already heard that a property separate from the Pickton family’s Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farm, called Piggy’s Palace, was well known as a partying place for the Hells Angels and their associates.

Gary Bass, the former RCMP deputy commissioner in B.C., agreed during testimony Wednesday that several police operations were targeting the motorcycle gang in the Lower Mainland during that time.

Cameron Ward, the lawyer for two dozen family members of the murdered and missing women, suggested the women were taken to parties at Piggy’s Palace, given drugs and later killed on the Pickton farm.

“The RCMP’s organized crime agency was simultaneously conducting intelligence operations on the Hells Angels members and the associates who were frequenting the area. Does that sound accurate?” Ward asked.

“I’ve never seen any reports or had any briefings that indicated something like that was happening,” Bass replied.

But the records created by the many RCMP agencies investigating the gang haven’t been made available, Ward said.

Bass agreed that would be the way to confirm the claim.

“I suggest none of those records that may have indicated what was happening in that neighbourhood of Port Coquitlam ... have been produced to this inquiry have they?” Ward asked.

“I’m not aware of any,” Bass replied.

“The RCMP was ... focused on addressing that organization’s trafficking of illegal narcotics and trying to stop it wasn’t it?” Ward asked.

“The Hells Angels have been in the sights of police for many, many years,” Bass testified.

The inquiry is looking into the actions of police and the Crown prosecutors between 1997, when Pickton was accused of attempting to murder a sex trade worker, and when he was arrested in February 2002.

Many women, most of them sex-trade workers, disappeared from Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside during that period.

Pickton was convicted of killing six women from the area, but police found the remains or DNA of 33 women on the farm.

Bass also told the inquiry that it was obvious more should have been done to find Vancouver’s missing women but the Mounties weren’t asked to get involved in the investigation by Vancouver police.

“It wasn’t my responsibility,” he said.

The RCMP major crimes section was providing some help to the missing women’s investigation in 1998, but wasn’t in charge of it, he testified.

Vancouver police still believed the women had simply gone missing on their own, even though RCMP thought foul play was involved as far back as 1995, Bass said.

When the major crime section was finally asked to review the missing women’s case in 2000, Vancouver police didn’t have their files ready and the investigation was delayed for another six months.

Bass told the inquiry that the RCMP believed there were three serial killers operating in the province at the time — in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and in northern B.C.

Police decided to focus on the valley murders because they had DNA exhibits, he said.

“Ironically, they still have not been solved,” Bass added.

In 1999, police records indicated there were at least 45 unsolved prostitute murders in the province.

Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam.

He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.

© Copyright (c)

Pickton victim’s daughter bullied over mother’s murder | APTN National News

Pickton victim’s daughter bullied over mother’s murder | APTN National News:

'via Blog this'

Mounties not asked to help in missing women investigation, inquiry hears

THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 23, 2012 1:02 PM

Retired RCMP top boss Gary Bass told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that Mounties were never asked to aide the investigation into missing women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Photograph by: GlobalTV

VANCOUVER — A retired top RCMP official says it’s obvious more should have been done to find Vancouver’s missing women but the Mounties weren’t asked to get involved in the Robert Pickton case.

Gary Bass told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry examining Pickton’s actions that the RCMP major crimes section was providing some help to the missing women’s investigation in 1998, but wasn’t in charge of it.

The former deputy commissioner in B.C. says that at the time, Vancouver police still believed the women had simply gone missing on their own, even though RCMP thought foul play was involved as far back as 1995.

He says when the major crime section was finally asked to review the missing women’s case in 2000, Vancouver police didn’t have their files ready and the investigation was delayed for another six months.

Bass told the inquiry that the RCMP believed there were three serial killers operating in the province at the time — in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and in northern B.C.

Pickton wasn’t arrested until 2002 and was eventually convicted of killing six women, but the DNA of 33 women was found on his family’s farm in Port Coquitlam.

© Copyright (c)

Saturday, May 19

Vancouver police refutes allegations of sexism, indifference at Pickton inquiry

James Keller, 18 May 2012, Canadian Press

VANCOUVER - Allegations that sexism and bias against sex workers are rampant within the Vancouver police and played a role in the force's failure to catch serial killer Robert Pickton are false, a senior officer from the force told a public inquiry Friday.

Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who testified at length last fall about the department's missing women investigation in the late 1990s and early 2000s, returned to the inquiry to refute a handful of the allegations made against the force in recent months.

Many of those allegations centred on how the force treated sex workers, with former officers, civilian police employees, sex workers and families of Pickton's victims recounting episodes in which officers treated prostitutes poorly or dismissed family members and friends attempting to report them missing.

LePard denied there is a culture of sexism that neglects sex workers, then or now.

"You're view about whether the (Vancouver Police Department) tolerates under-enforcement or under-investigation of violence against women in the sex trade is that it's simply not correct?" asked Sean Hern, a lawyer for the force

"No, and there are many examples now and during that time where serious crimes were committed against sex workers that vigorous investigations ensued," replied LePard.

Rae-Lynn Dicks, a 911 operator who testified last month, described a culture in which officers believed sex workers didn't deserve the protection of the police.

Dicks described a case, which wasn't related to the missing women investigation, involving a teenaged prostitute who had been raped at a gas station. Dicks alleged an officer who responded to the call sent her a note on the force's internal messaging system that said: "It's just a hooker. Hookers don't get raped."

LePard said he examined all of the sexual assault calls Dicks had ever taken, and he identified the case she appeared to be referring to. He listened to an audio recording of the 911 call and reviewed records of all communication related to the case.

LePard said there was no record of any messages sent to Dicks, let alone the one she described.

And LePard said the story Dicks told the inquiry contained numerous factual errors about the call, what the victim told her, and how the case was handled.

"This example was held up by Ms. Dicks as something she would never forget, as an example of the bias that Vancouver police members held against sex workers," said Hern. "In your review of the file, what is this file indicative of?"

"When you Google Ms. Dicks," replied LePard, "what you come up with is multiple articles that said missing women were considered scum of the earth, and it was just entirely inconsistent with what was actually going on. In fact, what it was an example of is the type of police officers that we had in the 1990s doing that work, that dealt with the case very professionally, did everything that could be expected."

The case resulted in a conviction against the woman's attacker, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, LePard said.

LePard also denied allegations from Marion Bryce, mother of Patricia Johnson, whose remains were found on Pickton's farm.

Bryce claimed she was treated poorly by a 911 operator when she attempted to report her daughter missing.

LePard said he located the recording of the 911 call that generated the first missing person report in Johnson's case. The call actually involved another of Bryce's daughters, said LePard, though it appeared Bryce was next to the phone.

He said the operator taking the call was professional and courteous.

"It was a very pleasant conversation, she (Bryce's daughter) finishes off by saying,' Thank you very much for all your help, it was wonderful,'" said LePard.

The testimony on Friday was limited to a small handful of allegations, mostly dealing with attitudes towards women and sex workers.

LePard authored a report, released in August 2010, that was highly critical of the force's investigation and identified a number of failings. But the report also concluded sexism and anti-sex-worker bias weren't factors.

LePard has apologized a number of times for not catching Pickton sooner, and the department's lawyers have repeated that apology numerous times during the inquiry.

However, the force has spent the inquiry arguing those failings are only apparent with the benefit of hindsight. Officers did the best they could with the information they had, the department insists, and shouldn't be blamed now,

Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam.

He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.  [Tyee]

Police deny bias at Pickton inquiry

May 18, 2012 / 9:00 pm

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

A Squamish First Nation woman stands behind a display with photographs of missing women during the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry public forum in Vancouver on January 19, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Allegations that sexism and bias against sex workers are rampant within the Vancouver police and played a role in the force's failure to catch serial killer Robert Pickton are false, a senior officer from the force told a public inquiry Friday.

Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who testified at length last fall about the department's missing women investigation in the late 1990s and early 2000s, returned to the inquiry to refute a handful of the allegations made against the force in recent months.

Many of those allegations centred on how the force treated sex workers, with former officers, civilian police employees, sex workers and families of Pickton's victims recounting episodes in which officers treated prostitutes poorly or dismissed family members and friends attempting to report them missing.

LePard denied there is a culture of sexism that neglects sex workers, then or now.

"You're view about whether the (Vancouver Police Department) tolerates under-enforcement or under-investigation of violence against women in the sex trade is that it's simply not correct?" asked Sean Hern, a lawyer for the force

"No, and there are many examples now and during that time where serious crimes were committed against sex workers that vigorous investigations ensued," replied LePard.

Rae-Lynn Dicks, a 911 operator who testified last month, described a culture in which officers believed sex workers didn't deserve the protection of the police.

Dicks described a case, which wasn't related to the missing women investigation, involving a teenaged prostitute who had been raped at a gas station. Dicks alleged an officer who responded to the call sent her a note on the force's internal messaging system that said: "It's just a hooker. Hookers don't get raped."

LePard said he examined all of the sexual assault calls Dicks had ever taken, and he identified the case she appeared to be referring to. He listened to an audio recording of the 911 call and reviewed records of all communication related to the case.

LePard said there was no record of any messages sent to Dicks, let alone the one she described.

And LePard said the story Dicks told the inquiry contained numerous factual errors about the call, what the victim told her, and how the case was handled.

"This example was held up by Ms. Dicks as something she would never forget, as an example of the bias that Vancouver police members held against sex workers," said Hern. "In your review of the file, what is this file indicative of?"

"When you Google Ms. Dicks," replied LePard, "what you come up with is multiple articles that said missing women were considered scum of the earth, and it was just entirely inconsistent with what was actually going on. In fact, what it was an example of is the type of police officers that we had in the 1990s doing that work, that dealt with the case very professionally, did everything that could be expected."

The case resulted in a conviction against the woman's attacker, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, LePard said.

LePard also denied allegations from Marion Bryce, mother of Patricia Johnson, whose remains were found on Pickton's farm.

Bryce claimed she was treated poorly by a 911 operator when she attempted to report her daughter missing.

LePard said he located the recording of the 911 call that generated the first missing person report in Johnson's case. The call actually involved another of Bryce's daughters, said LePard, though it appeared Bryce was next to the phone.

He said the operator taking the call was professional and courteous.

"It was a very pleasant conversation, she (Bryce's daughter) finishes off by saying,' Thank you very much for all your help, it was wonderful,'" said LePard.

The testimony on Friday was limited to a small handful of allegations, mostly dealing with attitudes towards women and sex workers.

LePard authored a report, released in August 2010, that was highly critical of the force's investigation and identified a number of failings. But the report also concluded sexism and anti-sex-worker bias weren't factors.

LePard has apologized a number of times for not catching Pickton sooner, and the department's lawyers have repeated that apology numerous times during the inquiry.

However, the force has spent the inquiry arguing those failings are only apparent with the benefit of hindsight. Officers did the best they could with the information they had, the department insists, and shouldn't be blamed now,

Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam.

He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.

The Canadian Press

Friday, May 18

Former sex worker reveals encounter with man she says was Robert Pickton

BY JAMES KELLER, THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 17, 2012

Frame grab of Robert Pickton while in his jail cell on February 23, 2002. Two Vancouver police officers who worked on the force’s missing women investigation say the RCMP didn’t pursue Pickton as a suspect with enough urgency.

Photograph by: Handout, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER -- A former sex worker said she found herself sitting in a vehicle next to serial killer Robert Pickton almost two years before his arrest, but when she reported the encounter to police, she was dismissed.

The sex worker was testifying Thursday at a public inquiry into the Pickton investigation. A Vancouver Police lawyer immediately attempted to cast doubt on much of what she said, including her claim that the man she encountered confessed to killing sex workers and burying them on his Port Coquitlam property.

The woman, who testified anonymously and sat in the witness box wearing large dark sunglasses, said that sometime in the fall of 2000, she was working the street in Mount Pleasant.

A grey cube van approached her and she got inside, where she encountered a man who propositioned her to come to a biker party at his farm in Port Coquitlam, the woman testified. She told the inquiry she declined the offer because she had heard a warning at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre not to get into a vehicle with a man offering to bring women to Port Coquitlam.

“So when I had the conversation with Mr. Pickton, he had said, ‘Do you want to go out to the biker party?’ and I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Why not?’ and I said, ‘Because I know what you’re doing out there — these women are missing,’ “ the woman told the inquiry.

“And he said, ‘Yes, all of them are on my property, I killed them.’ “

The woman said she demanded to get out of the van and threatened to go to “criminal” associates if he didn’t let her go. She said she jumped out of the moving van, which then sped away.

She later phoned the police, she told the inquiry.

“I reported it,” she said.

“I said, ‘I’ve just got out of a man’s car who’s admitted to me to killing the women.’ ... And they said, ‘Basically, we don’t believe your story, and we’re doing the best we can on keeping an eye on him.’ “

Sean Hern, a lawyer for the Vancouver police, attempted to cast doubt on the woman’s story, telling the inquiry his department could not locate any records connected to such a call.

“I can tell you that [the woman’s] name has been searched in order to identify any incident,” Hern said. “I can only assume that if that call occurred — and I’ll argue and suggest it didn’t — it must not have generated an incident report.”

The woman acknowledged she didn’t know which police department she reached after dialing 911.

Bonnie Fournier, a street nurse who worked in a mobile van in the Downtown Eastside in the 1990s, said she, too, was familiar with Pickton.

“I dealt with people who were injured by Willie Pickton, but they wouldn’t go to the police,” Fournier said. “Why? Because they didn’t trust them.”

The woman, who is 38, said she entered rehab in December 2000 and has been clean ever since. She later went to school and is now employed, she said.

The inquiry is examining why the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to catch Pickton while he was murdering sex workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The inquiry has heard Pickton was well-known among women working the streets of Vancouver, and the former sex worker who testified Thursday said she heard rumours about a pig farmer during her half-year in prostitution.

“Through a group of women in the women’s centre, they sat me down and told me what was happening with these women and where they had gone,” she said.

“They said, ‘No matter what, don’t go out there,’ and I remembered that.”

Pickton was arrested in February 2002. He was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and once told an undercover police officer that he killed 49 women.

© Copyright (c)