Policing the police
Pickton report contains lessons that apply across Canada
The sordid story of murderer Robert Pickton has always held less national cachet than, say, that of Paul Bernardo. The reason for that rests with the socioeconomic status of the victims they chose. Pickton preyed on women who were poor and marginalized; Bernardo’s victims were the middle-class girls next door.
It’s something everyone tacitly knows, but few will admit to — and it’s why the Pickton case has always seemed to be something in B.C., somewhat removed from the radar screen of the rest of the country. This theme runs through the 1,448page report produced by Wally Oppal, the former B.C. attorney general who headed an inquiry into the police’s handling of the missing women cases in B.C.
Oppal found that the women were forsaken — indeed, that’s the title of the report — by police, who didn’t respond with the alacrity that they should have, because the women were prostitutes, aboriginal or substance abusers. There was a palpable sense that they were “nobodies,” ignored by police, politicians and the average citizen.
Because of that, the policing was slipshod, inadequate, lackadaisical. Over 20 years, some 60 women had simply vanished from Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside, but it wasn’t until those two decades had elapsed that various police forces put together a task force to look into it. This is clearly shameful and it is obvious that had 60 women vanished from one of Vancouver’s more affluent neighbourhoods, their disappearances would not have flown under the radar for 20 years. This sort of underlying discriminatory attitude appears to be at play again in the inability of police to find the killer or killers in the Highway of Tears disappearances, according to those who are frustrated with what they perceive to be the snaillike pace of that investigation. That, too, is taking place in B.C. and it involves the disappearances and deaths of women, many of them aboriginal, along Highway 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George, dating back to 1969.
Oppal has come forward with 62 recommendations — for which he is being criticized — that include such things as changes to police procedures and to police attitudes, apologies, compensation for the children and families of the women Pickton killed, and more money for support services, such as women’s emergency shelters, aboriginal groups, etc. The critics say marginalized women won’t be any safer after this, and Angel Wolfe, 19, daughter of one of Pickton’s victims, said that “nothing Wally Oppal or the police can say to me will bring my mom back.”
Nothing anybody can say or do will bring any of the women back. Oppal’s report, while levelling blame at the police, is also about moving forward. And its theme lifts the Pickton murders to a level of national urgency, for it contains sobering lessons for all police forces across Canada. It should be required reading for those forces and its recommendations taken to heart, for the tragedy of missing and murdered aboriginal women knows no provincial boundaries in this country.
Too many reports like Oppal’s have ended up gathering dust on archive shelves somewhere. The ball is now in the court of police forces across the country, to ensure Oppal’s report does not meet that same fate.