Flying Patrols

Vancouver, British Columbia, 1982

Sunday, October 31st, 10:15 a.m.

"Good morning. My name is Robert DeClercq. I hold the rank of Superintendent. I have been assigned command of this investigation."

As he spoke, beginning slowly, getting the feel of once more addressing a task force of officers, DeClercq stood erect with his hands behind his back at the front of the room and moved his gaze from face to face connecting with the eyes. The parade room, like everything else at Headhunter Headquarters, was still under construction, and those who had been unable to find an empty folding chair sat on the top of piles of lumber or leaned against the walls. There were more than seventy officers in the room, two thirds of them dressed in the brown serge working uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the others in plain clothes. Approximately one fifth were women—a change which had come over the Force since DeClercq had retired. It occurred to him now that for its next edition Men Who Wore the Tunic,his first book, would require a change of title.

"The task assigned to this squad is not an easy one," he began. "It would appear, from what we know at the moment, that the object of this manhunt is a random killer—an assassin in the purest sense who kills for the love of killing." DeClercq caught Joseph Avacomovitch's expression of agreement, a brief nod from where the Russian stood at the back of the room.

"You men and women have been specially selected to spearhead this investigation. The purpose of this, our first briefing, is to discuss the operational structure under which this squad will be working. Basically it is this.

"Effective communication is the essence of any teamwork. I therefore hope that each of you will utilize every avenue of dialogue within this group without rank creating a barrier. The bulk of you have been assigned to the Central Corps or general investigative body of this dragnet. Attached to this core as adjuncts will be a Scientific Section under the control of Joseph Avacomovitch, who I am sure you all know by reputation, our own Identification Squad and our guiding brain, a Computer Command under Inspector Chan. This Computer Command will build on the program developed during the Olson investigation to integrate and enhance each bit of information gathered by our hunt. Every member of this Central Corps will receive a daily printout from Inspector Chan listing composites, suspects and developing avenues of inquiry. At the end of each day you are invited—every one of you—to pose questions or assumptions or guesses to Computer Command. You'll have a software-enhanced answer by the following morning.

"In addition, this core group will be working in liaison with those Municipal Police Forces separate from the RCMP, and each of them will appoint a specific liaison officer. I am informed that Vancouver Police coordination will be through Detective Almore Flood of the Major Crimes Squad. He is here this morning.

"The overall command of this Central Corp—our general investigation—has been assigned to Inspector Jack MacDougall. He is the gentleman off to my right frowning over the misrepresentation that I just made of his rank—unaware that for the quality of his work to date on this case Ottawa has accepted my recommendation that he be promoted from Sergeant."

A spontaneous round of applause began, and at this point DeClercq paused both to let MacDougall be congratulated and to let the implication of his promotion permeate the group.

DeClercq then moved off to his left and sat down informally on the corner of a desk. He continued his roving gaze, still connecting with the eyes.

"I think that we must all recognize that any coordinated police investigation works on a base of assumptions—these assumptions being the tentative conclusions that are drawn from the evidence at hand.

"The importance of this is that here is where our greatest danger lies.

"Let me give you an example. In November of 1980 it was commonly believed by the West Yorkshire police in England that the killer called the Yorkshire Ripper had cracked the skulls and mutilated the bodies of thirteen women. Victim No. 2 they thought was a twenty-six-year-old prostitute named Joan Harrison killed in November 1975. There were bite marks on her body—and swabs taken from her vagina and anus indicated the presence of semen deposited by a secretor with the rare blood group B. As with all the Ripper's other victims she had been killed by a hammerlike blow to the head.

"During the course of the investigation, Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, who was in charge of it, received a number of letters signed 'Jack the Ripper.' Saliva on the gum flap of the third letter was analyzed as coming from a secretor of blood group B, and the letter was postmarked Sunderland in the North of England. Then in June of 1979 the police received a tape from someone claiming to be the killer, taunting Oldfield for his lack of progress in tracking him down. The writing on the envelope containing the tape was the same as that on the letters; the saliva that sealed its flap was also from a secretor of blood group B. The tape was of a male voice with a Geordie accent from the Northeast of England.

"Based on this evidence at hand, the West Yorkshire police made certain assumptions about the killer that they were seeking. The result was that people in eleven thousand households were questioned and a million-pound publicity campaign was undertaken on the slogan: 'The Ripper would like you to ignore this.'

"In fact, the man who was ultimately convicted of all the Ripper crimes except that of Joan Harrison was a Bradford truck driver with a Yorkshire accent named Peter Sutcliffe.

"The point of all this is that from the evidence at hand the West Yorkshire police appear to have made an erroneous assumption, and then working on the basis of that assumption acquired tunnel vision. And that tunnel vision may have allowed Sutcliffe to kill again, slipping through the police net until his use of a stolen license plate finally brought him down.

"As I have said—assumptions are where our greatest danger lies.

"Now," DeClercq said smiling and using an easy tone of voice, "the question is, what can we do to counteract this natural human tendency from the very beginning of our manhunt?

"First, we can take as our motto:Watch for tunnel vision!

"Secondly, while it is fairly obvious that we are hunting for one killer or set of killers in all three cases, we can make sure that we look at each case as both separate and connected. Just in case life is throwing us some bizarre coincidence.

"And thirdly—our greatest protection—we can learn from history."

At this point Robert DeClercq stood up and loosened his uniform tie. It was a small gesture, in many ways out of character, but he did not want his audience to feel that they were being given a lecture. He wanted them to sense instead that this was a dialogue. That they were truly a team.

"I'm sure that most of you will agree with me that it is our sense of history which is this Force's strongest asset—that because we record it in such detail, revere it, and build upon our past foundation year after year, we have constructed the most integrated policing unit the world has ever had. We deserve our reputation: it's founded on fact.

"I sometimes feel, however, that we don't look far enough in the past—that we revere the early years for our pageantry, but study the techniques of later years for skill in investigation. This squad is going to rectify that fact.

"Now if you'll bear with me a moment, I'd like to illustrate what I mean by an excursion into our past.

"In 1886 Lawrence Herchmer was appointed Commissioner of this Force and it was he who transformed us from a military organization into a civilian police force. In doing this, Herchmer's most important contribution was in setting up the patrol system. Under this system members of the Mounted Police were distributed in small detachments throughout the Northwest Territories. These detachments became the operational centers of the policing system.

"Herchmer then introduced the patrol report form. This was a document to be prepared by each member as he performed his mounted patrol.

"Copies of these patrol reports from each and every detachment were then forwarded to divisional headquarters where they were assembled to give a complete and comprehensive picture of all activities within Mounted Police jurisdiction.

"Now you will see the organization that I have outlined as our Central Corps, our general investigative body, is the modern computerized parallel for this patrol system. There is nothing new in that. A similar organization was used to hunt the Yorkshire Ripper and for the Atlanta child killings.

"Commissioner Herchmer, however, was not content to stop there—and this is the part of our history that I fear, in our modern desire for centralization, we tend to forget.

"For in 1890, in order to prevent evasion of the patrol system, Herchmer introduced the additional system of flying patrols. These flying patrols did not follow the regular trails of the patrol system, but instead they functioned totally on their own, independent of the main centrally organized system. They were, if you like, the commando guerrillas of the Northwest Mounted Police."

DeClercq paused for a moment, then said: "In our manhunt for the Headhunter I intend to bring back the flying patrol.

"These flying patrols will be seven in number. Each patrol will consist of a male and female member.

"The flying patrols will be our third line of defense against tunnel vision. They will counteract the possibility that we might err in our assumptions—for they will work totally independent from the Central Corps of this squad which I have already outlined. These patrols will follow their own instincts, and the members who will be involved have been selected for self-starting initiative. In order to prevent the taint of a possible faulty assumption, no member in the Central Corps will discuss any aspect of the case with a flying patrol member. Each patrol will receive all facts collated by Computer Command—but without any enhanced conclusions, theories or assumptions. Liaison with the main group will be through Sergeant James Rodale. He is the man who just entered through the rear door and who, like Inspector MacDougall, is unaware that for his work to date on this investigation he has also been promoted."

Again there was a spontaneous round of applause, but the frown on Rodale's face in no way abated. In his right hand he was carrying a brown manila envelope and he was making his way to the front of the room through the crowd.

"In closing," DeClercq continued, "I'd like to add three comments.

"The first is to caution all of us against creating a copycat killer. Any and all information going out to the media for public consumption goes through Jack MacDougall.

"The second is to tell you that any interrogation of a possible suspect will be put on videotape. These tapes will be reviewed once a week by each flying patrol. This gives us a guarantee of independent assessment, and also of female perspective. We are dealing with a killer who has a perverted passion for women. No one can know the hunter to the same degree as the hunted.

"And the third is to advise you—and I mean this—that my door is always open. As I said at the beginning, my goal is effective teamwork—and teamwork to be effective requires open communication. If something is important, or you need direction, discussion, resources, you only have to climb those stairs and knock. For let's be certain about one fact: we're working against the clock. Believe me, there is a ground swell of panic out there in this city and all it might take is one more murder to bring out uncontrolled mass hysteria.

"It took the English police more than five years to catch the Yorkshire Ripper.

"It took the Atlanta police twenty-two months to arrest a suspect later convicted on two of those twenty-eight black child killings.

"It took this Force thirteen days to nail Olson for eleven murders.

"Let's get this Headhunter—and shorten our own record."

It was as DeClercq ended the briefing that Sergeant James Rodale handed him the envelope. It was addressed to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, having been dropped in the mailslot of the central Post Office during the night and delivered this morning. After copying it for broadcasting, the CBC had dispatched it to the Vancouver Police Department by special courier. The envelope and contents were coated with fingerprint powder. A police Xerox copy was also enclosed.

"You'd better look at this," Rodale said. "Before you adjourn the meeting."

The Superintendent opened it and removed a Polaroid print sealed in a clear plastic VPD evidence pouch, plus a note constructed from cut and pasted newspaper headlines, also plastic sealed.

The Polaroid picture was of Joanna Portman's severed head stuck on a wooden pole.

The note read:Welcome aboard, Robert. Do you think you're up to this?