The RCMP issued a public apology Friday to the families of the women murdered by Robert “Willie” Pickton, admitting the “RCMP did not do more” in the investigation before he was charged.
The prepared formal apology came after days of testimony at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, in which the way that the RCMP and Vancouver police handled the investigation into the murders of six women Pickton was convicted for -- as well as the disappearances many other women -- has been challenged.
According to this revelation, the RCMP tipped Pickton off; they let him know that he was a target of their investigation - a "known subject".
Incompetence and malfeasance, that's what it appears to me. Isn't it obvious - particularly in light of allegations that women working for the organization suffered systemic discrimination and ongoing, unofficially sanctioned, sexual harassment at the hands of fellow male RCMP officers.
2 comments:
I was in Vancouver in the early 1990s, looking for work in the medical field for which I was trained. I had never been in Vancouver before. I got temporary work in the East End of Vancouver. It was like they had declared war on women, all women. I couldn't walk down the street without being sexually harassed and I was in my forties. On one occasion this man followed me onto a bus, saying he was going to follow me home. I asked the bus driver for help - he was brilliant in getting rid of this creep, much more than the police would have been, though I didn't realize that at the time. Looking back, it must have been in the mass murder period and every man in the place knew he could get away with virtually anything. I mentioned my problems at the clinic where I was working, but they were in denial in a major way. I was happy to leave Vancouver after three weeks and would never go back. I have lived in three cities, all larger than Vancouver, and have never experienced such harassment before. In fact, the largest city, London, England, was the safest.
The impression you'd get from the media at the time is that Pickton was just some sort of creepy pig farmer guy on a farm out in the countryside. No mention at all of parties held at the farm under a registered charity or the influential people that attended.
No mention of possible connections to BC's criminal underworld that BC policing seems to find difficult to lay charges against. And even when charges are laid, certain BC judges have a disturbing tendency to just dismiss the charges. So it might be in character for Pickton to have been tipped off. (whether incompetence or something else, who's to say...)
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