“Missing Women Commissioner wants answers to RCMP officer’s sexually explicit photos”

Vancouver Sun

Missing Women Commissioner Wally Oppal wants quick answers about the Coquitlam Mountie, his X-rated Internet exploits and any relevance they may have to the Robert Pickton serial killings.

But he is refusing to reopen his one-man inquiry into the investigations of the crimes and where police went awry, prolonging the heinous murder spree.

Oppal said he had asked for a full explanation from the federal Department of Justice Thursday after reading a Vancouver Sun story about an RCMP code-of-conduct investigation into the officer who posted disturbing torture and sexually explicit photographs on the Web.

That didn’t satisfy Cameron Ward, who represents families of missing and murdered women.

He demanded Oppal interrupt writing his final report and reopen his just-wrapped hearings.

“This particular officer, given his personal involvement in the Pickton investigation and the role he played three years before Pickton was apprehended is critically important,” Ward said.

The graphic Internet images show Cpl. Jim Brown — who has been placed on administrative duties — posing in kidnap-and-torture scenes reminiscent of the pig-farm slayings.

In one, a naked woman hangs with her hands tied above her head while the self-styled “Kilted Knight” appears to slash her with a large butcher’s knife.

Late Thursday, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Randy Beck said in a media statement that the force actually found “some graphic staged photographs” on a memory stick belonging to Brown in December 2010.

But at that time, no investigation was begun, Beck said, because the officer in charge of the Coquitlam detachment “did not believe it met the threshold for a code-of-conduct violation.”

In March 2012, during an investigation into a complaint by a woman about Brown, the photos on the Web were discovered. As a result, a code-of-conduct inquiry was ordered and is being conducted by the Richmond RCMP.

“In keeping with the RCMP’s commitment to hold our members to a higher standard, I am taking the unusual step of asking an external police agency to independently review our internal code-of-conduct investigation,” Beck said. …