VPD releases final report into Pickton investigation
Posted Aug 20, 2010 12:17:47 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver Police have released their lengthy report into the city’s missing women, and why serial killer Robert Pickton wasn’t stopped earlier. The massive report was supposed to come out September 9th, but damning details have already filtered out through the Victoria Times Colonist and other papers.
The report, authored by Deputy Chief Doug LePard in 2004, confirms police had compelling evidence pointing to Robert Pickton as the murderer of women from the Downtown Eastside over two years before his arrest in 2002.
However, the 450-page review says bad management, jurisdictional squabbling, and shoddy investigative work caused police to essentially ignore the pig farmer as he took vulnerable women to his Port Coquitlam farm and murdered them. LePard says his report makes a series of recommendations including improving information sharing between the RCMP and the Vancouver police, and he says those recommendations have already been implemented.
LePard says after August 1999, 13 more sex trade workers went missing and evidence connects 11 to the Pickton farm. He blasts his own department for not recognizing sooner a serial killer was at work, but lays much blame on the RCMP which took the lead since Pickton lived in their jurisdiction.
The RCMP had to respond, but has not said much about the Vancouver Police Department’s internal review of the missing women case on the Downtown Eastside.
Superintendent Janice Armstrong with the RCMP read a statement on behalf of Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass, who is out of the province at the moment. In the release, he says he received the 450-page report from Deputy Chief Doug LePard on August 7th and in fact, there was a team reviewing it for the purposes of providing comment.
He was hoping that it would not be released until September, but once it was leaked in the newspapers today, they decided that they would have to make a statement. “I can say that there are certain views expressed, which I don’t share. However, in fairness, I know that the same can be said with respect to the RCMP report created in 2002.”
That report is in the hands of the province right now. No word yet when they are going to review it, or whether or not they are going to call a public inquiry.
