Former VPD chief defied mayor to spend on missing women case

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A former Vancouver Police chief says the force worked hard to find women missing from the Downtown Eastside and claims he spent money he wasn’t authorized to in order to further the case, even after the mayor and city manager told him no.

Speaking at the Missing Women Inquiry, retired VPD Chief Const. Terry Blythe said the force had a good working relationship with the community on the Downtown Eastside in the late 1990s when he was a deputy chief, despite suggestions otherwise.

Blythe said the VPD were working hard to curb street violence in the area.  His lawyer, well-known defence attorney Eddie Greenspan, asked him about accusations of a lack of effort for missing women.
    
“So when you hear a suggestion made in this inquiry that somehow the police didn’t try hard enough to find the missing women because they were from the Downtown Eastside, what do you say about that?” asked Greenspan.

“I do find it offensive,” said Blythe, “for all the good work we did in this area and the commitment we made in a troubled neighbourhood.”

Blythe testified Vancouver Police were short 100 officers just before 2000 and also suffered from a shortage of dozens of police cars.

He became Chief Constable in July, 1999 and retired in August, 2002, several months after now-convicted murderer Robert Pickton was arrested in February of that year.

Blythe testified he asked then-Vancouver city manager Judy Rogers for more money for the VPD-RCMP Joint Missing Women Task Force, but in November, 2001 was told no by Rogers and then-mayor Philip Owen.

Blythe said he was disgusted and decided to act anyway.

“We actually went out on a bit of a limb in that we did create some expenditures which were not approved by the city, which we were hoping in the end would be covered off with extraordinary costs within our organization,” he said.

“When the mayor found out about it, what did he do to you a year later?” asked Greenspan.
    
“[Owen] didn’t like it, he was pretty upset by it. One of the comments that he made to Deputy [Chief John] Unger was the fact that we should not be outside of Vancouver doing anything, and he was pretty upset about that.”

Blythe said it’s fair to say Owen “chewed [him] out,” but said he spent the unauthorized funds to try to catch the person[s] preying on missing women.

“That was our ultimate goal,” he said.  “A necessity… to work toward a final resolution in this case.”

When called this afternoon, Owen told News1130 he cannot comment on Blythe’s claims he “chewed him out” because of overspending, and is not yet sure if he will testify at the Missing Women Inquiry.

Despite being on some officers’ radars for years, Blythe claimed he didn’t really hear of Pickton until his arrest.

Pickton was originally charged with 26 counts of murder and in 2007 was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The DNA of numerous missing women was found on his Port Coquitlam pig farm.

The Crown dropped the other 20 charges and Pickton eventually lost an appeal in the Supreme Court of Canada.