Searching landfills: the reason why is clear

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/05/2024 (539 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mackenzie Lee Trottier has been missing in Saskatoon, Sask. since Dec. 21, 2020.

And in Saskatoon, like the cases of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris here, police have compelling evidence to believe her body might be in a landfill.

Police say they have narrowed in on a small section of the Saskatoon landfill after finding new evidence in the case, and started looking on May 1, using police officers and specially trained cadaver-locating dogs.

It’s a much smaller search than will take place at Winnipeg’s Prairie Green landfill. In total, with the overburden removed, police expect to search 930 cubic metres of landfill, a search that they will do directly on the landfill. It is estimated that the search will take 33 days if all of that landfill material has to be searched, and will involve $200,000 in staffing and equipment costs, compared to the up to $90 million estimated to search Prairie Green.

The Saskatoon search has one big advantage: “The investigation gave officers an indication of which garbage trucks to track, and police were then able to access those trucks’ GPS tracking co-ordinates from the city,” an SPS spokesman told the media.

There are, of course significant differences between the Saskatoon search and the one proposed for the Prairie Green landfill. The costs for a full search of Prairie Green are much higher, because the area is much larger: 72,000 cubic metres, because data on where dumpster-loads were deposited at Prairie Green was limited. As well, the landfill contains hazardous waste, primarily asbestos.

But both are searches to bring victims of violence home.

And what, some people say, if you spend all that money and still don’t find the bodies of the missing?

Well, the Saskatoon Police Service can answer that, too — just because you might not find something, doesn’t mean that you don’t search.

After all, the SPS has searched the Saskatoon dump for a missing person before — after they collected evidence suggesting that Kandice Singbeil’s body had been disposed of in a downtown dumpster, they unsuccessfully searched the landfill.

“One of those (surveillance) videos included a view in the back alley behind the Traveller’s Block. And, at one point during that week, we became aware of a person in the back alley appearing to carry something large in a white sheet… And throw it into a dumpster,” SPS major crimes investigator Tyson Lavallee told the CBC. “If there was any possibility that Kandice was under that sheet, investigators soon realized … they’re going to have to search a landfill.”

If there’s any chance, you search. Seems plain enough.

Mackenzie Lee Trottier’s father, Paul Trottier, puts the need for searches quite clearly:

“That’s what I want people to remember,” he said. “This is a family, this is a human being. All missing people, no matter what their past is, they’re human beings, and they deserve our attention.”

In the end, it very much looks as though there has always been only one determinant in past decisions that were made not to search Prairie Green.

Not whether or not there’s a guarantee of success — not whether the police did or didn’t need to find the missing women to complete their investigation.

Not whether there was clear-cut evidence of how and when at least two of the women’s bodies were taken to the landfill.

No, the rationale used to undertake other landfill searches retrospectively proves the one issue here was price.

We shouldn’t ever put a price on humanity.