Missing persons cases have been a chronically low priority for the police services tasked with such investigations, the civilian review of disappearances linked to Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur has repeatedly heard in ongoing public consultations. “This has been an issue that so many people — police officers and civilians — have raised with us: the lack of priority of missing persons cases,” said Mark Sandler, lawyer for the Independent Civilian Review into Missing Person Investigations, in a sit-down interview with the Star on Monday.And despite Canada’s tragic familiarity with high-profile disappearances, including British Columbia serial killer Robert Pickton and the history of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, national research on missing persons “leaves much to be desired,” Sandler said.“There’s a lot more that has to be done, and it will undoubtedly form part of our recommendations,” Sandler said.Commissioned in the wake of controversy over Toronto police handling of missing persons cases — including the disappearances of eight men from the Gay Village now known to be McArthur’s victims — the review headed by retired Ontario Court of Appeal justice Gloria Epstein, has spent the last 14 months quietly examining all aspects of how officers have, and should, tackle disappearance cases. The review’s mandate: to probe an array of Toronto police policies and practices concerning missing persons investigations, determine if they were hindered by systemic bias or discrimination, and produce recommendations.That work will be done in part through unflinching scrutiny of past cases, including disappearances linked to McArthur.After the 67-year-old former landscaper pleaded guilty in January to first-degree murder in the deaths of eight men from 2010 to 2017, Epstein and her review team got full access to a trove of Toronto police files connected to the serial killer and hi ...
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