Free Republic

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia - A Canadian pig farmer confessed to killing 49 women and was caught before he could reach his goal of making it an even 50, prosecutors told jurors at the start of his murder trial Monday. Robert William Pickton, 56, has been charged with killing 26 women, mostly prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s. Prosecutor Derrill Prevett stunned the courtroom by saying that Pickton told investigators, including an undercover officer planted in his jail cell, that he had slain 49 women. "I was going to do one...

Vancouver police break laws in policing the poor: report VANCOUVER (CP) - City police routinely break the law and abuse the very rights they are supposed to protect in the country's poorest postal code, says a report released Tuesday. The conduct of Vancouver police in the drug ghetto of the Downtown Eastside meets the legal definition of abuse of authority and, in 12 cases, met the United Nations definition of torture, according to the Pivot Legal Society. "A police culture that ignores, if not permits, police misconduct makes us all potential victims and condones police practices that demean both the...