A brief note on Pickton
When listening to the CBC this morning it was hard to hear a debate on whether it would be money well spent on an inquiry into the official handling of the Pickton case. Discrimination was at the heart of the Pickton debacle to begin with and here it is again.
Surely if this brutal tragedy happened in any other community other than the DTES then there would be no question of whether an inquiry was necessary or not. Of course it is.
We need to document what went wrong and what can be done in the future to protect people in our city, no matter their demographics. The terms of reference for the inquiry are simple: we need to find out if women in the DTES are any safer today than they were before the acknowledged missteps by authorities; and if they are not safer what can be done to keep them safe?
I for one do not want to endure any more mention of Pickton in the media but we owe it to the women who are still at risk in the DTES. Locking up Pickton is not an end to the problem. Lives could be saved by an inquiry and if those lives we are talking about were being lived in Kerrisdale by affluent Vancouverites then there would be little discussion on what needed to be done.
Comments
4 Responses to “A brief note on Pickton”
Leave a Reply
At very least, Brad, your concern re the safety of women/everyone on the DTES is of greatest priority. I would hope an inquiry would at least determine some kind of understanding in that area and address the shortcomings.
I would hope that through such an inquiry we see how policing could be co-ordinated throughout the region. The patchwork of RCMP and city police departments (something like 19 different orgs from English Bay to Hope BC) is counter-productive and has resulted in this ridiculously protracted case going much further and becoming much more tragic than it should ever have been.
D.
Well put Dennis. And also just making sure all can be done so that women on the street have the confidence to go to the police. Although the apology was a step in the right direction the VPD has to regain the confidence of people in the DTES. That’s not an easy task and this could be facilitated by an inquiry where women on the street and people in the DTES felt they had a voice.
Evelyn Lau wrote a poem about the Pickton Trial – something that she shared at Word On the Street Festival on Sept 26th, 2010.
I was hosting the Poetry Tent event titled “Words of Paradox” and Evelyn shared that she had been asked by a newspaper to write something about how she felt about the trial, given her association with the DTES. Instead of prose, Evelyn felt that poetry was the best medium for her to express herself. She read her poem… very moving.
As a new and creative, writer, conceptual thinker,,
How can I have some of my work assessed for its, design content and distinguished, writing style.
I have written, thousands of captions, poems and numerous short page stories. I have signed up for the Port Moody creative writing group.
I believe my work is the only style of its kind.
Thought provoking, artistic and captivating.
I look forwar to hearing from you. Joseph
778 882 4019