A former 911 operator alleges uniformed superiors repeatedly brushed off reports of sex trade workers disappearing 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,' 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.
Dicks said officers would mock aboriginal prostitutes as "drunk" 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 was refused pay 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 her.
Among them, the mother of missing woman Tanya Holyk complained in 1997 that Cameron had called her daughter a "coke head" 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," she 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 she 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.
But she heard informally through friends who were at those meetings she should "watch my back," she testified.
"I'm going to be the easiest person to blame," she said she was told after being warned she may become a scapegoat.
She also contradicted earlier testimony from Det. Const. Laurie Shenher that she had made racist remarks and misrepresented herself as a police office while on the phone.
She said she asked superiors to tape her phone calls to protect herself. The inquiry heard a review of one tape discredited a complaint that she had called herself a detective and confirmed she had conducted the call professionally.
Cameron admitted she did refer to a woman as a "hooker, oops sorry, sex trade worker" in an email in 1999.
She expressed great frustration that the force appeared to regard the unit as a low priority. It was often staffed by only one detective, who frequently changed every six months because it was a "backdoor" to the more prestigious homicide unit, she said.
"You have to have someone in there who has a real passion and wants to do that work," she said when asked by the inquiry's lawyer for recommendations for improvement.
She broke down on the stand when asked by her own lawyer if she had anything else to add.
"For myself, this is something I will probably get over. It's never going to go away for the families," she said through tears.
She noted her reputation has been dragged through the mud and the Vancouver Police department has made unfounded accusations against her that have been repeated in the media.
"What they've done to me has been really unfair and it feels like I've just been used and it's easy to blame me," she said, as some family members of victims who were watching from the gallery left the room.
Pickton was arrested in 2002 and eventually charged with the murder of 26 women, including Holyk.
He was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder. The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his suburban pig farm.
Meanwhile, the inquiry announced Monday it will hold a series of six public policy forums starting May 1 to ask the public to contribute ideas "for practical reform and implementation strategies" related to the phenomenon of missing and murdered women.
The inquiry has been asked to deliver its report by end of June.
