Bystander Apathy

There is a classic story from the 1960s of how a woman in New York City was brutally attacked, raped, and killed as at least a dozen people, probably more, heard her screams and cries for help but did nothing to intervene. This was the tragic end to Kitty Genovese.

In Vancouver this story has been repeated but with a cruel twist. It isn't apathetic neighbors who stood buy and let her die. In this case, it was an ineffective and apathetic police force that inadequately investigated and let the victim die. From an article in the Vancouver Sun:

In late 2002, people were outraged to hear that a 19-year-old Port Coquitlam woman was murdered after people who heard her screams declined to call for help. The incident prompted an extended discussion of "bystander apathy" and led people to ask if anything could be worse.

As it turns out, the answer is yes: What if bystanders do call for help, yet it is the police who fail to follow through? This is precisely what appears to have happened in the case of Mission's Lisa Cheryl Dudley.

We say "appears" here because it is not entirely clear whether the police discharged their responsibilities appropriately. It won't become clear until there is a thorough, independent investigation of the matter, and the investigation must begin now.

The details of the Dudley case, as discovered by Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan, are as follows: Two of Dudley's neighbours were standing in a driveway directly across from the residence shared by Dudley and her boyfriend, Guthrie Jolan McKay.

Shortly after hearing shots fired, they went to their respective homes, where one called the non-emergency RCMP number, conveyed details of the shooting, was transferred to a 911 operator and repeated the details in abbreviated form.

Three RCMP officers drove to the area, looked around and left. They apparently didn't discover that a back sliding glass door to Dudley's home had been shattered and didn't contact the neighbour who called them, even though he waited between 10 and 20 minutes outside his home.

Had police conducted a more thorough investigation, they might have discovered that McKay had been shot and killed, and Dudley, while also shot, was still alive. She remained alive for four days, sitting in a chair, until she died while being placed in a medevac helicopter.

These horrific details led the RCMP to conduct an internal investigation, which concluded that there were errors in how the matter was handled by the 911 operator and one of the officers. Yet the RCMP report raises more questions than it answers. The report does not, for example, reference the original call to the non-emergency number, and it's not clear if that call was taped.

This raises once again the issue of permitting the RCMP to investigate itself.

This is an ironic twist on the Kitty Genovese story. In this case it was apathy by the police that resulted in death. The citizens tried hard to get police to come to Lisa Cheryl Dudley's, but to no avail. Clearly the police failed in their duty.

For decades I've watched as citizens have demanded that the charade of police "investigating" themselves be brought to an end. A real outside investigation is needed. When an organization is asked to "investigate itself" there is overwhelming pressure to cover up and ignore wrong doing. In short, you get a farce. So for decades police misconduct has gone unchecked because the police are not properly regulated in British Columbia. It is a tragedy.