Testimony at the Pickton inquiry centred on why their superiors criticized two Vancouver police officers who were "early adopters" of the theory that a serial killer was preying on women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Two Vancouver police officers who have been accused of compromising the missing women investigation were among the first to recognize that a serial killer was preying on women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the Pickton inquiry has heard.
However, Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who reviewed the Vancouver investigation of the missing women, did not commend Doug Fell and Mark Wolthers as "early adopters" of the serial killer theory, the inquiry was told on Thursday.
Instead, the officers were castigated for their work while they were members of the missing women review team, including for concentrating almost exclusively on a suspect who was not Robert Pickton and for not sharing vital information about Mr. Pickton in April, 2000, with other investigators on their team.
The officers' lawyer, Kevin Woodall, suggested at the missing women inquiry on Thursday that a response to a memo they sent to police chief Terry Blythe pointing out problems in the missing women investigation was the first time that they were criticized in a written report.
In cross examination that was at times extremely testy, Deputy Chief LePard confirmed that reports critical of the two officers came after the memo to the then police chief.
But he dismissed the suggestion that there were no issues with the officers' work before the critical reports were written. Writing a complaint about someone in the workplace is "a significant thing to do," Deputy Chief LePard said. "So those things were being handled, to extent that they were being handled, verbally," he said.
Mr. Woodall suggested that if people were annoyed or bothered by what the two officers were doing before their complaint to the police chief, no one considered it serious enough to merit a report.
Deputy Chief LePard said he "completely disagreed" with Mr. Woodall. "People will try to put up with a fair amount and be reluctant to put something in writing," he said. "That does not mean it is not occurring. … I don't agree people did not consider it serious. I do agree they did not document it," Deputy Chief LePard said.
In an internal review of the Vancouver Police Department's missing women investigation released last year, Deputy Chief LePard stated that every other member of the unit provided detailed criticism of the two officers' conduct.
They described the officers as loud and abusive, refusing to share information, inserting themselves into investigations assigned to others and failing to complete investigations of assigned tips, Deputy Chief LePard wrote in his review.
The inquiry has heard that the two officers were convinced early on that a sex offender known to police was responsible for the missing women. The sex offender, who was not identified, was later convicted of sex crimes against women from the Downtown Eastside.
Mr. Woodall pressed Deputy Chief LePard on why he did not commend the two officers for recognizing at an early stage of the investigation that the missing women were victims of a serial killer. If he had approached the review of the investigation in a more even-handed manner, he would have commended them for being "early adopters," he said.
"I'm not sure how important it was that I compliment them for being early adopters. There were many people that believed in the serial killer theory," Deputy Chief LePard said.
"I agree with you now, they certainly were early adopters. [They had an]absolute belief in the serial killer theory and an absolute belief that Suspect 1390 was the killer," he said, referring to the sex offender by a pseudonym used in Deputy Chief LePard's review.
Earlier, Deputy Chief LePard said he did not see any documents written contemporaneously to events where the officers were alleged to have done anything that compromised the Pickton investigation, which was the responsibility of the RCMP. The officers compromised the work of Vancouver police by making it more difficult for the missing women investigative team to do its job, he said.
Deputy Chief LePard confirmed that the two officers were cleared of charges of misconduct after an internal investigation and he saw no documents that alleged misconduct against the officers that were written contemporaneously with events. The officers were members of the missing women review team from May 1, 1999, to June 1, 2000.