Vancouver cop refutes allegations of sexism, indifference at inquiry

THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 18, 2012

Vancouver Police Deputy Chief Doug LePard disputed allegations of sexism and indifference to missing womeni in the Downtown Eastside on his return to the stand at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which is looking into how police handled the Robert Pickton investigation.

Photograph by: GlobalTV

VANCOUVER — A senior Vancouver police officer has refuted some claims made against the force at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, denying allegations that sexism and indifference slowed response to reports of missing sex workers.

Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who testified extensively last fall, has returned for another day of testimony to dispute various allegations made during the hearings.

In particular, LePard disputes much of the testimony of Rae-Lynn Dicks, a 911 operator who claimed officers brushed off reports of violence against sex workers.

Dicks recalled receiving a call unrelated to the missing women case in which a teenaged sex worker reported a rape, and in her testimony Dicks claimed an officer who responded dismissed the victim as “just a hooker.”

LePard says he examined records related to that case, including the 911 call, and that nearly everything Dicks said about the call and the conduct of officers is contradicted by recordings and transcripts.

LePard also denies allegations from Marion Bryce, mother of serial killer Robert Pickton victim Patricia Johnson, who claimed she was treated poorly by a 911 operator.

LePard says he located the 911 tape, which actually features Bryce’s daughter, and that he says it was a pleasant, courteous conversation.

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Missing women inquiry: Former sex worker claims Pickton confessed killings to her

BY JAMES KELLER, THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 17, 2012 4:09 PM

A former sex worker testified that she encountered a man who confessed to killing sex workers and burying them on his property in Port Coquitlam two years before Robert Pickton was arrested.

Photograph by: GlobalTV

VANCOUVER — A former sex worker says 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 the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry into the Pickton investigation, where the Vancouver Police Department 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 property in Port Coquitlam.

A lawyer for the force said there were no records of the call the woman said she made to police and argued it never happened.

The woman, who testified anonymously and sat in the witness box wearing large dark sunglasses, told the inquiry she turned to street prostitution for about six months in 2000 to support her addiction to crack cocaine and heroin.

She said sometime in the fall of 2000, she was working the street in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, several kilometres south of the notorious Downtown Eastside.

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, B.C., 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 associates in the “criminal side of life” if he didn’t let her go. She said she jumped out of the moving vehicle, which then sped away.

She later phoned the police, she told the inquiry.

“I reported it,” she said.

“I said, ‘I’ve just gotten 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,” said Hern.

“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.”

Hern noted the woman referred to contacting “the task force,” but he said the RCMP-led joint missing women investigation known as Project Evenhanded wasn’t launched until the following year.

However, the woman never said she talked to the RCMP and acknowledged she didn’t know which police department she reached after dialling 911. Hern neglected to mention the Vancouver police department’s own missing women review team was still up and running in the fall of 2000.

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 as 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.”

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,” said Fournier. “Why? Because they didn’t trust them.”

Pickton was arrested in February 2002.

He was eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.

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

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Former mayor tells Pickton inquiry it's wrong to suggest he didn't care

By The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER - A former Vancouver mayor who was in office during Robert Pickton's killing spree insists he acted quickly when he learned of community concerns about missing sex workers.

Philip Owen was in office from 1993 until 2002, and during that time he served as chair of the city's police board.

Owen and the board have been accused of ignoring reports that sex workers were disappearing and adopting the police line that there was no evidence of a crime, let alone a serial killer.

Owen says he took the case very seriously and was disturbed by what he heard, noting he voted with the board to approve a $100,000 reward for information about missing sex workers.

But Owen was initially reluctant to approve the reward, suggesting it would be little more than a "location service" that would pay people for finding women who had simply moved to different cities.

Still, Owen insists he and the board acted very quickly from when the idea of the reward was first floated to when it was finally approved.

My experience of VPD in stark contrast to inquiry testimony

BY G. E. BONNIE THIELE, VANCOUVER SUN MAY 2, 2012

Missing 'hookers' were low priority for VPD, civilians tell inquiry; Sexist and racist attitudes were common among police, former employee testifies, April 24

The Pickton inquiry appears to be demonizing the male officers of the Vancouver police department.

Testimony by the two civilian clerks of the department, one from Missing Persons and the other a 911 operator, paint a portrait of the officers vastly different to my experience while working as a 911 operator and police dispatcher from 1962 to 1996.

I worked with and was supervised by several of the officers who testified at the trial, as well as countless others over the years who did two-year stints in Communications as part of training toward promotions.

Probably 99 per cent of these men treated the public, including prostitutes and aboriginals, with equal integrity, respect and compassion.

Such remarks as "she is only a hooker" or "he is only a drunk Indian" were not part of their vocabulary, either in public or private conversation.

I have no present connection with the VPD, but despite all the negative publicity, I believe we are lucky to have such a great group of officers in whom we can have confidence.

G. E. Bonnie Thiele Vancouver

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Civilian RCMP employee saw missing woman at Pickton's booze can in '99: inquiry

THE CANADIAN PRESS

VANCOUVER - The public inquiry into the Robert Pickton case has heard that a civilian RCMP employee attended a party with the serial killer in 1999 and saw him with a woman she recognized as a missing Vancouver Downtown Eastside sex worker.

The inquiry has already heard that Beverly Hyacinthe, a civilian member of the Mounties at their detachment in Coquitlam, had known the Pickton and his brother for years.

Lawyer Cameron Ward has revealed the contents of a police interview with Hyacinthe after Pickton's 2002 arrest, in which she told investigators what she knew about the serial killer.

Hyacinthe recalled attending a New Year's Eve party in 1999 and seeing Pickton with a woman, who several weeks later she saw identified as a missing sex worker in a local newspaper.

It's not clear whether Hyacinthe ever told any RCMP officers about recognizing the woman, but the inquiry has already heard she had told investigators that she knew Pickton and his brother, David Pickton.

Ward says the police interview also reveals Hyacinthe knew Pickton was holding illegal cockfights, regularly associated with sex workers, and once was spotted with bloody clothing in his truck.