Police Probe A Matter of Timing: One Man's Opinion

Monday, June 05, 2006 03:56 AM

I would like to raise a question today regarding how police investigate matters.

On June 21st, the RCMP will release the results of their investigation into the so called, "Highway of Tears", the disappearance of about 22 women over the past dozen or so years along highway 16 .

That investigation was sparked by the Highway of Tears Symposium held in Prince George at the end of March. It has been completed in about three months.

Now taking into account that we do not know who committed these crimes, what happened to the women in question, because in many cases no body was discovered, that investigation came in near record time.

Now let’s switch gears for a moment and consider the case of Ian Bush of Houston.

In his death we know where Bush was at the time of his death, we know the officer who was in the room at the time, but we don't know with any certainy how the gun was fired. That death occurred late last fall and yet, not a peep from the police on their investigation beyond the initial comments that Bush died following a violent confrontation with a police officer in Houston while being released from custody.

It took some digging before police admitted that the monitor had been turned off, for what ever reason, and till today no one has commented on why this happened. Bush was shot Bush in the back of the head, how in fact this could happen and the fact that no other police officer was present at the detachment.

If Bush had a violent outburst (which I am sure we will be told given that the only person who is around the testify is the officer who was alone with Bush when the gun was fired) why did a young fellow with no violent history resort to this type of behavior?

Have the police raised this issue and if so, why in the world are the people of this province not being told?

We know that to give an absolute accurate picture of what took place that fateful night will be a chore indeed given the circumstances, but if a final report on nearly 2 dozen disappearances can be hammered out in three months, surely the probe into the Bush case should have been wrapped up by now.

I’m Meisner and that is one man’s opinion

Previous Story - Next Story

Email |

Print |

Facebook |

Twitter |

Digg |

Del.icio.us

Posted on Monday, June 05, 2006 03:56 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

Return to Home

Comments

Posted by: Chadermando on June 5 2006 9:46 AM

This highway of tear label does serious damage to our tourism industry. I recently talked to a person in Washington state who was planning a trip to Alaska and said they would only travel through our region once they could get assurance that they could bring their shotgun for protection.

IMO its sad that 9 people in an area the size of France have gone missing over 16 years, but I in no way think we have a serial killer on the lose. Rather I think we have an education issue that needs to be dealt with. If I'm not mistake all of these missing women were engaging in very high risk activities like hitchhiking, and prostitution. I would argue that the stats would be no different per capita for these kinds of activities in any other part of Canada without the so-called highway connection.

Yes we should be investigating every single disappearance as a priority of our law enforcement, but more importantly we need to be taking action to curb the high risk behavior of the community involved.

Lets not make the tourism industry a collateral damage because we refuse to educate our young adults.

Its sounds harsh, but I'm getting tired of my community being labeled with this horrible label. It seems the big media likes to sell the slogan because they feel they can sell more papers.