Missing women ‘just hookers’ to cops, 911 operator tells Pickton inquiry
VANCOUVER — A former 911 operator alleges uniformed superiors repeatedly brushed off calls reporting the disappearance of sex trade workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the late 1990s, while a civilian clerk agrees there was prejudice across the police department but has denied being dismissive herself.
Rae-Lynn Dicks says she was repeatedly told by her sergeants they weren’t going to spend “valuable time and money” looking for prostitutes when she worked for the Vancouver Police Department’s call centre.
She described an atmosphere of rampant bias that considered the women to be “just hookers,” which was corroborated by Sandy Cameron, who worked for the missing women’s unit for 22 years.
Dicks said if callers had no fixed address for the person they were reporting missing, the file could get blown off. Cameron added there was an unwritten policy of no body, no homicide.
911 operators were often the first line of contact for the public, later being routed to Cameron.
"They didn’t care. It was systemic. It didn’t matter. They were marginalized women, most of them were aboriginal,” Dicks told the missing women inquiry on Monday.
“As far as I was getting from the department, I was told to ’stop being a bleeding heart,’ ‘grow up, these people are scum of the Earth.“’
The pair both took calls from family members of women who were vanishing at the same time Robert Pickton was hunting sex workers in the impoverished neighbourhood. The inquiry is examining why the serial killer wasn’t caught sooner.
Dicks said officers would mock prostitutes around the office, and Cameron agreed she heard statements like “a hooker can’t report getting raped,” suggesting instead the rape report was made because the woman wasn’t paid for sex.
“To name a name to it, I couldn’t do it, but it was heard regularly by staff throughout the building,” Cameron said.
But Cameron denied making similarly callous remarks herself when speaking to family members of missing women, although several family members have told the inquiry that was their experience with Cameron.
Among them, the mother of missing woman Tanya Holyk complained in 1997 that Cameron had called her daughter a “cokehead” who had abandoned her child, and then threatened to call social services to take the baby away.
Cameron, who is now retired, teared up several times speaking about work she said she loved because she sometimes helped people reunite.
“I was in there for 22.5 years. Not everyone that I spoke to was polite to me and quite possibly I wasn’t polite to them. But I would never make derogatory statements of any nature,” Cameron said.
She noted family members were often agitated or even swearing because they were so upset.
“These are people that were reported missing because someone loved them, someone wanted to find them,” Cameron said.
She said she received almost no formal training for her position, which at first only involved answering telephones but later saw her making phone calls to friends of missing people and closing files if someone confirmed seeing the person.
She said was only spoken to once by a manager about complaints levelled against her by family members of victims when they were convened around 2000 by Project Evenhanded, a joint Vancouver Police and RCMP investigation into historical cases of missing women.
Missing women
VANCOUVER — A former 911 operator alleges uniformed superiors repeatedly brushed off calls reporting the disappearance of sex trade workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the late 1990s, while a civilian clerk agrees there was prejudice across the police department but has denied being dismissive herself.
Rae-Lynn Dicks says she was repeatedly told by her sergeants they weren’t going to spend “valuable time and money” looking for prostitutes when she worked for the Vancouver Police Department’s call centre.
She described an atmosphere of rampant bias that considered the women to be “just hookers,” which was corroborated by Sandy Cameron, who worked for the missing women’s unit for 22 years.
Dicks said if callers had no fixed address for the person they were reporting missing, the file could get blown off. Cameron added there was an unwritten policy of no body, no homicide.
911 operators were often the first line of contact for the public, later being routed to Cameron.
"They didn’t care. It was systemic. It didn’t matter. They were marginalized women, most of them were aboriginal,” Dicks told the missing women inquiry on Monday.
“As far as I was getting from the department, I was told to ’stop being a bleeding heart,’ ‘grow up, these people are scum of the Earth.“’
The pair both took calls from family members of women who were vanishing at the same time Robert Pickton was hunting sex workers in the impoverished neighbourhood. The inquiry is examining why the serial killer wasn’t caught sooner.
Dicks said officers would mock prostitutes around the office, and Cameron agreed she heard statements like “a hooker can’t report getting raped,” suggesting instead the rape report was made because the woman wasn’t paid for sex.
“To name a name to it, I couldn’t do it, but it was heard regularly by staff throughout the building,” Cameron said.
But Cameron denied making similarly callous remarks herself when speaking to family members of missing women, although several family members have told the inquiry that was their experience with Cameron.
Among them, the mother of missing woman Tanya Holyk complained in 1997 that Cameron had called her daughter a “cokehead” who had abandoned her child, and then threatened to call social services to take the baby away.
Cameron, who is now retired, teared up several times speaking about work she said she loved because she sometimes helped people reunite.
“I was in there for 22.5 years. Not everyone that I spoke to was polite to me and quite possibly I wasn’t polite to them. But I would never make derogatory statements of any nature,” Cameron said.
She noted family members were often agitated or even swearing because they were so upset.
“These are people that were reported missing because someone loved them, someone wanted to find them,” Cameron said.
She said she received almost no formal training for her position, which at first only involved answering telephones but later saw her making phone calls to friends of missing people and closing files if someone confirmed seeing the person.
She said was only spoken to once by a manager about complaints levelled against her by family members of victims when they were convened around 2000 by Project Evenhanded, a joint Vancouver Police and RCMP investigation into historical cases of missing women.
Missing women
