Two members of the Vancouver police missing women team boasted that they poured a bag of flour on a Vietnamese drug dealer and told him, "Now, you're white," according to testimony from a fellow officer.

Detective constables Mark Wolthers and Doug Fell also withheld information about a key suspect, referred to the women as "whores" and hatched a plan to track the missing women after they were dead, Det. Const. Lori Shenher told the missing women inquiry Thursday.

"They told a story about how they were arresting a Vietnamese man," she said. "They were going through kitchen cabinets and pulled out a bag of white flour, and dumped it on the man's head. They said, "There you go, now you're white. What do you think of that?" They were laughing."

She added that she and other officers were "stunned."

"The other constables were shocked that they would do this. But that was the climate in the room," she said.

Shenher said the attitudes of Wolthers and Fell caused divisions in the unit that made it harder to work together. The pair didn't share information they had learned from women that Robert Pickton had been seen in the area, she added.

They also suggested ideas that Shenher found abhorrent.

"They came in and said let's put these GPS and give them to the, I apologize for the term, 'whores' and then when they go missing we can track the body, find the lighter," she told the inquiry.

"I was concerned."

Fell's lawyer, Claire Hatcher, told the inquiry that a suspect -- Barry Neidermeyer -- was arrested and charged because of the pair's work and that they were acting in the best interests of the investigation. Both Fell and Wolthers are expected to testify as the inquiry continues.

Shenher testified that she never complained or confronted the pair at the time, because they outranked her.

"What we've been trying to get at is the underlying indifference that those sorts of attitudes played in an investigation, and when you see time delays, investigative steps missed, you have to ask yourself why," said lawyer Robyn Gervais, the inquiry lawyer looking into aboriginal issues.

Grand Chief Ed John of the First Nations Summit says any derisive attitude against non-whites is unacceptable.

"The pattern of behaviour is quite disturbing and the underlying attitude leaves a lot to be desired," he said.

Vancouver police Const. Lindsey Houghton said the force was aware of some allegations against the pair, and they were mentioned in the department's report on the investigation.

"That conduct, if it is true, is completely unacceptable now just as it was then," he said.

The VPD didn't receive a complaint about the incident with the flour at the time, and didn't investigate it then, he said. Now, the VPD is leaving any discipline for the officers in the hands of the inquiry.

Wolthers has retired, but Fell is still with the force.