Missing women deemed 'just hookers,' British Columbia inquiry told

**Dale_M** · #1 Apr 24, '12, 5:32 pm

Quote:

Rae-Lynn Dicks, testifying Monday at the inquiry into the Robert Pickton police investigations, said 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.

Quote:

[According to Dicks] "As far as I was getting from the department, I was told to 'stop being a bleeding heart,' and to 'grow up, these people are scum of the Earth."'

Both women 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.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...n-inquiry.html

Most of the women were aboriginal, which I believe means First Nations (or in US terms, Native American.) However, the article is unclear whether race was a factor.