With the conclusion of the Pickton criminal trial, the BCCLA is renewing its call for a public inquiry into the missing women of Vancouver and Highway 16 in Northern B.C. Recent high profile calls for inquiry have come from celebrated former Vancouver Police Department officer Dave Dickson, who said that the VPD “appear to have learned nothing” from the incident, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Walk 4 Justice, and Amnesty International Canada. Many of the missing women in Vancouver and in the north are aboriginal.
“Now that the criminal trial matters are resolved, we can get down to learning how to keep this tragedy from ever happening again,” said David Eby, Executive Director of the BCCLA. “When a retired VPD officer whose career was focussed on sex worker protection says that his former force appears to have learned nothing, that reinforces public concern and our concern that the issues continue to this day.”
The Vancouver Police Department has issued a public apology for not preventing the deaths of more women by acting sooner on complaints that women had gone missing, but former sex work policing specialist Dave Dickson said in a letter to local media that attitudes that existed at the time “still exist” within the VPD. Community sex work activists say that the conditions for women on the streets of Vancouver are worse than during the time of the Pickton murders and continue to decline.
“A public inquiry will help us learn how to prevent tragedies like the serial murders in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver from ever happening again,” said Eby. “All citizens are entitled to equal policing services and protection, and if issues with policing for marginalized women are continuing within our local and national police forces, we need to get to the bottom of that issue and solve it.”
Women continue to go missing from the Highway 16 area of northern B.C. and while the RCMP are investigating 18 cases, community advocates say many more cases of missing
women could be related.
Read the BCCLA’s letter to the Premier, Solicitor General and Attorney General here
MEDIA CONTACT: David Eby, Executive Director, 778-865-7997
