More importantly, the probe would embarrass too many powerful people
BY MICHAEL SMYTH, THE PROVINCE AUGUST 8, 2010The calls for a public inquiry into police mishandling of the Robert Pickton case will undoubtedly get louder in the days ahead, but I suspect most British Columbians will be uttering a more silent plea:
Spare us. Spare us the cost. Spare us the political circus.
Spare us yet another horrific trip through the deranged mind of this despicable "man" and his depravity.
The government undoubtedly knows people are sick to death of Pickton and his gruesome crimes. Yes, most British Columbians know police bungled the case and are concerned. But they also know the investigation has been analyzed for years, and authorities realize all too well what went wrong.
Communication breakdowns among the Vancouver cops, the RCMP and other agencies. Official indifference to the plight of drug-addled prostitutes living on society's murky margins. Warning signs overlooked or ignored, when they could have been used to stop a killer in his muddy tracks.
A public inquiry would take months -- maybe years -- and consume millions of tax dollars to reach obvious conclusions.
And if you want a preview of the political finger-pointing that would ensue, look no further than Friday's sniping between former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen and former police inspector Kim Rossmo.
Owen was chair of the Vancouver Police Board when many women went missing. Rossmo was the high-tech sleuth who said officials ignored his warnings of a serial killer on the loose.
"But he [Rossmo] eventually said, 'There's no crime scene. I don't have any evidence. We haven't got any victims. There are no witnesses,'" Owen told CKNW radio. "He kind of backed off. The police department got paralyzed for several years while Kim Rossmo was going through his gymnastics."
Rossmo, who lost a wrongful-dismissal suit against the Vancouver cops, fired back: "He [Owen] is undoubtedly out of the loop. I would have thought a responsible member and chair of the police board would have known what was going on. It's pretty clear that he didn't."
But Owen makes clear the Pickton blame game would spread to other police forces, and even other municipalities: "It really involves the entire region, the whole 21 municipalities. You certainly can't tag it just on the Vancouver Police Department. After all, the horrible events took place in Port Coquitlam. And a lot of these women were transients. They weren't residents of the Downtown Eastside."
It wouldn't end there. Liberal types would demand to know what the governing New Democrats did during the 1990s.
And NDPers would zero in on Premier Gordon Campbell's role when he was Vancouver mayor and famously said: "We keep hearing about these prostitutes or hookers that are being killed. Is there a trend? Is there a pattern? The answer is no. There is no trend that I can see, so there is no pattern."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Campbell doesn't seem enthusiastic about a public inquiry now: "Sometimes public inquiries can take a long, long time," he said. "They can get bogged down in legal discussions."
Watch for the government to reject a public inquiry for all these reasons. The police bungles and screw-ups are already known. The public is disgusted and fatigued with the Pickton story.
And too many powerful, well-connected people stand to suffer too much embarrassment and political damage in the process.
The noise will get louder. But a public inquiry won't happen.
msmyth@theprovince.com
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