Former Vancouver police chief denies coverup in Pickton probe
VANCOUVER — The man who was Vancouver’s police chief from 1999 to 2002 — when serial killer Robert Pickton was stepping up his homicidal attacks on Downtown Eastside women — took the stand at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry on Monday as lawyers traded shots over the commission’s integrity.
Former VPD Chief Const. Terry Blythe, who was chief from December 1999 to August 2002, has retained respected and costly Toronto lawyer Edward Greenspan, who began Monday by attacking claims the inquiry has become a “coverup.”
Greenspan said such alle- gations have been made on the blog of Cameron Ward, one of two lawyers acting for the families of 25 women murdered by Pickton or still among the missing.
Greenspan told Commissioner Wally Oppal that there have been “very serious allegations” that Blythe was “involved in … or enabled a coverup when he was chief of police.”
When Ward objected to Greenspan’s line of attack, Greenspan offered to drop questions about a coverup as long as Ward would exempt his client Blythe from any suggestions that the former chief had in any way failed to commit fully to the missing women investigation or concealed facts about it. Ward declined to do so.
Greenspan then launched into questioning Blythe about his long and distinguished police career, starting as a 20-year-old officer in 1969 and progressing through patrol, internal affairs, vice and narcotics, to acting chief and then chief from June 1999 to August of 2002, when he voluntarily retired. Greenspan noted that Blythe’s father and godfather were police officers, and that Blythe and his father between them amassed 65 years of experience in police work with the VPD.
Greenspan asked if Blythe ever forgot in his long career “where you came from” as a beat cop and Blythe responded he did not. Asked if he ever “cared less about one citizen or another in this great city,” Blythe answered: “Not for a minute.”
Greenspan also directly asked Blythe for his reaction to what he may have “heard suggested at this inquiry that somehow police didn’t try enough to find the women who began disappearing from the Downtown Eastside as early as 1991.”
Lawyer Jason Gratl, acting for Downtown Eastside groups, pointed out to the inquiry that the allegation is that the VPD’S “management disengagement” was from the investigation of missing women, not from the community as a whole. Greenspan then asked if it was true that the VPD “didn’t make an effort to investigate the missing women because they were from the Downtown Eastside, were sex trade workers and were aboriginal.”
Replied Blythe: “I totally disagree.”
Blythe testified that by the time he took over as chief he was “extremely handicapped” by a lack of resources. In fact, by July 1999 the VPD already had spent 80 per cent of its budget for the year. Blythe said he did lend VPD beat cop Const. Dave Dickson, twice, to ongoing attempts to determine if women were going missing. Dickson and VPD Det. Const. Lori Shenher both believed as many as 28 women had gone missing and they likely had been the victims of foul play. Blythe testified that although he was aware of the importance of the missing women investigation, it was a “sensitive” investigation and that he wasn’t personally directly aware of solid informant evidence as early as 1998 identifying Pickton as a likely killer.