It took months of testimony from police, Crown prosecutors, sex trade workers and the families of the women who have disappeared from the Downtown Eastside for years, but the 1,448-page report on the Missing Women’s inquiry led by Wally Oppal has finally been released today.
Oppal called it an emotional day for everyone involved and said the inquiry was a heart wrenching experience.
“It is time to stop the violence against all women,” said Oppal ahead of delivering the report.
Family members of the missing women gathered in front of the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue ahead of the press conference.
Many filled the room where Oppal was delivering the report. Some heckled Oppal saying the case of the missing women was not a “story” but a harsh reality.
In his report, Oppal concludes inadequate housing, food insecurity, health issues, inadequate access to healthcare, extreme poverty, and drug dependency all contributed to the women’s vulnerability to violence.
The distrust of sex trade workers toward police was also an important factor.
Oppal concludes there were serious limitations on the initial investigation of the 1997 assault on a sex trade worker involving Pickton.
That charge was not pursued by the Crown counsel.
Oppal says “a reasonable person would come to the conclusion that Ms. Anderson (ed. the assault victim) may have had important evidence about the missing women.”
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“The likelihood that the assault on Ms. Anderson was not a ‘one-off’ was clear.”
Oppal says it was patently unreasonable that the investigation was not pursued more fully at the time.
Oppal says poor report taking and follow-up on the missing women amounted to critical police failures. The lack of urgency in the face of the mounting numbers of missing woman was also ‘unreasonable,’ according the Commissioner.
He says police failure to get to the know the women hindered the investigation.
Oppal says the faulty risk assessment by police led to the creation of the so-called ‘review’ teams rather than the full investigative task forces.
The Commissioner says police also failed to develop and implement a proactive strategy to prevent further harm to women on the DTES, even when police became more and more aware of the dangers facing these women.
Oppal aims his criticism directly at the VPD saying the department was under an obligation to warn women in the DTES and it “utterly failed to do so.”
Not all investigation strategies were pursued, according to the Commissioner, who points out the lack of an Aboriginals-specific strategy, unreasonably restricted involvement of family members and failure to use surveillance, undercover operations and other alternative investigative avenues.
Oppal says cross-jurisdictional co-ordination was an issue in the investigative process, with both RCMP and VPD failing to improve it.
He says the two forces were not clear regarding whose case was which, and were sometimes investigating the same crime.
While Oppal admits an investigation this big is prone to human errors, he says the lack of oversight and the lack of both internal review mechanisms and external accountability mechanisms resulted in errors.
As far as the underlying causes of police failures, Oppal pointed out systemic bias in the police response to the missing women’s investigations, prompting applause from the family members present in the audience.
He also emphasized the absence of clear leadership, outdated police standards, and fragmentation of policing.
One of the underlying causes Oppal brings up in his report is poor allocation of resources that were necessary for the investigation. He says the resources were not properly allocated due to under-prioritization rather than inadequate resources.
However, Oppal concludes there is no evidence of widespread institutional bias in the VPD or the RCMP. He says any instance of overt bias toward the missing women and their families was isolated and did not have a pervasive impact on the investigation.
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