Vancouver police placed a low priority on missing per-sons reports, especially missing "hookers," two former civilian workers told the Missing Women inquiry today.

Rae-Lynn Dicks, a former 911 call operator, recalls one Vancouver police officer, Sgt. Ron Joyce, saying years ago: "Who cares? It's just another hooker."

Another officer referred to missing sex workers as the "scum of the earth" and said, "We're not going to use valuable time looking for them."

Dicks, who worked as a 911 operator from 1995 until 2004, said the same officer, Sgt. Ted Yeomans, would also imitate drunk aboriginal women to try to get laughs from his male colleagues.

That sexist and racist attitude was common among most male officers, Dicks said.

She recalled she was instructed not to take a missing report from someone who didn't have a fixed address in Vancouver. That would mean rebuffing a person who wanted to report a homeless person missing, or a person with no fixed address.

Dicks recalled taking one call from a young woman who had been attacked and was calling from a pay phone.

"She gave me a partial plate number and she was sounding weaker and weaker and passed out - I heard her fall," Dicks testified. She added one of the responding officers said: "It's just a hooker. Hookers can't be raped."

Dicks added that police did catch the attacker, who raped the victim with a tennis racquet. She recalled later meeting the girl - a 14-year-old at the time who had lost her daughter because of her heroin addiction - when they both testified at trial.

"The system worked. They got the guy," Dicks recalled.

"They need to break down the old boys' club," she suggested to inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal when asked what needed to change in the Vancouver police department.

Sandy Cameron, the civilian who worked in the Vancouver police missing persons unit from 1979 until 2001, said she never received any training.

The inquiry has heard the testimony of many people who complained that Cameron was dismissive of relatives trying to report their loved ones missing.

Dorothy Purcell recalled trying to report her daughter, Tanya Holyk, missing but said Cameron suggested Holyk was just a cokehead who wanted a holiday from looking after her baby.

Purcell said Cameron later closed the file.

Cameron testified that she did close the file after the mother called to report a hang-up phone call. The mother had traced the number, which Cameron called. She spoke to a woman who thought she had seen Tanya at a party.

Holyk, however, was not found and serial killer Robert Pickton was charged with her murder.

Cameron denied calling Holyk a cokehead and being dismissive of her mother.

"Maybe I wasn't polite to them but I wouldn't make derogatory statements," Cameron said.

"I cared about these files," she added.

She said the unit needed detectives who had the passion to investigate the files. Many of the cases were homicides, but without any bodies, she pointed out.

"I don't believe the Vancouver police department took missing persons seriously enough," Cameron said, adding she felt she was made a scapegoat for the failure of the VPD to properly investigate the dozens of missing women cases.

She said she believes she was targeted after a staff-sergeant came to her house drunk one night and she wouldn't let him in.

"I feel I have been used and it's unfair," Cameron said, briefly losing her composure.

The two witnesses are part of a panel that will continue today.

The inquiry is probing why Pickton wasn't caught sooner. He was convicted of six murders in 2007 and once confided that he killed 49 women.

nhall@vancouversun.com