No time for rash judgment

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Winnipeg is reeling from the news a serial killer is believed to have murdered three aboriginal women since September. Shawn Cameron Lamb's arrest in the slayings of Carolyn Sinclair, Tanya Nepinak and Lorna Blacksmith has confirmed the suspicions of many who have demand answers in relation to a long string of missing and murdered women.

The demand, however, for a provincial inquiry in response to suspicion investigations have been bungled, is premature.

A joint task force of Winnipeg and RCMP officers is now broadening the investigation into Mr. Lamb's past for evident reason. He has moved about the country, leaving a trail of more than 100 criminal convictions, many for violence, including a sexual assault in Alberta in 1991. He has been known to Winnipeg police since first landing here in the 1980s.

Manitoba is believed to have almost 80 missing or murdered women, and family and advocacy groups have demanded police give greater attention to them. Some claim police diminished pleas for help from family, or too quickly filed away fruitless efforts to solve disappearances or deaths.

On Monday, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak said police have been slow and clumsy in their investigations of the missing and murdered women.

The AMC and the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak are calling for a provincial inquiry into the "travesty." They believe systemic discrimination is at the root of why aboriginal women are disproportionately the victims of violence. The groups say the 1991 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, which looked into the issue of systemic discrimination within the Winnipeg Police Service, did not cover the problem in sufficient depth.

The demands for an inquiry are premature and counterproductive. Police are appropriately speaking with authorities in other jurisdictions to retrace Mr. Lamb's trail and his encounters with the law. But they are also not convinced, due to a lack of evidence, that there have been serial killers at work in Winnipeg through the years.

The possibility there may be connections among homicides and stones unturned in investigations of murdered or missing women is what led to the establishment in 2009 of the joint task force. That task force has produced no hard results of yet.

But it is rash to suggest -- as some have done -- that police are less dedicated to uncovering evidence in the murders or disappearances of aboriginal women than they would otherwise be in matters affecting any other group.

Ordinary people are free to conclude from what they hear or know that a serial killer is at work; police must have sound grounds on which to pursue such thinking.

What police, and Winnipeg at large, need most is the goodwill and trust critical to investigations -- people who will talk and the co-operation of families, friends and community leaders who can do real good or considerable damage with imprudent comments in emotionally charged times.

Indeed, the fact that many of the missing and murdered were involved in the sex trade and living desperate lives marked by addiction makes police work more difficult. In addition to the difficulty of tracing victims' last contacts, those acquaintances who last saw them before they disappeared or died are often most hesitant to co-operate with police.

The investigation into Mr. Lamb's connection to the cluster of recent slayings may lead to greater involvement of the joint task force. It will be seen whether threads were dropped, and the concerns of family and friends that police haven't acted professionally in listening to their pleas for help will be tested.

But no good comes of the rash judgment and accusations that poison the well at the same time investigators take to the streets, retrace old leads and seek out new witnesses, and that is what demands for an inquiry risk.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 27, 2012 A10