(Published in 24 Hours Jan 11, 2012)
Editorial not painting full picture
By
Leo Knight
A lead editorial in the Victoria Times Colonist recently took the Lower Mainland’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team to task, stating, “It’s probable that IHIT only solves around one in three murders.”
The capital’s lone daily made the statement because last year the IHIT had a clearance (solved) rate of just under 40%.
The newspaper editorial ended by saying solving only one in three murders isn’t good enough.
It used, as a comparative, four US cities that clear 60% or higher of the murders they face. There was a veiled tone to the piece that seemed to suggest IHIT murder investigators were somehow incompetent or didn’t care enough.
Anyone who knows anything about homicide investigators – self-described as “murder police” – knows how much they care. These officers speak for the dead and they’re deadly serious about the responsibility.
More importantly, cases referred to as “last year” are still open files and still being worked on. Many will undoubtedly be cleared in 2012.
Any comparisons between a Canadian jurisdiction and any US city are grossly unfair. In a weekend discussion about the newspaper’s editorial position, Bob Cooper, a former Vancouver homicide cop, said, “They may have the Miranda rule, but believe me, we got the worst of the deal with the Charter.”
The administrative burden in the US is vastly less than Canada, primarily because of the ordeal the police need to undergo to obtain a search warrant or wiretap warrant.
Then there’s the disclosure burden put upon the police by the Supreme Court of Canada with the decision in R v Stintchcombe in the early 1990’s. That flawed decision alone adds hundreds of man-hours to any serious investigation.
To illustrate the administrative burden Cooper said, “I recall a time when we’d put the average domestic murder down in eight hours, be in the pub by quitting time. The entire case would be in a manila file folder a quarter-inch thick at most. Now, the same case would take weeks and fill six or seven three-inch binders.”
That administrative burden was put upon Canadian by the courts and translates as well into the burden of evidence then borne by the Crown to prosecute. None of this exists in south of the border.
Equally, most American murder cases tend to be street-corner shootings by relatively unsophisticated people. Drug corner denizens are quick to point fingers – less competition that way.
But here, many of the murders are gang related that tend to be planned and more sophisticated “hits” and those in the know don’t talk.
Criticism of the police is fine, but one should at least have the full picture.