RCMP Say Cell Phone Alert ‘Wasn’t On Our Radar’ In Nova Scotia Mass Shooting Investigation

Nova Scotia Mounted Police say they didn’t know how to use Canada’s Alert Ready cell phone warning system before a gunman killed 22 people in a 13-hour shootout.

Testifying Tuesday in an investigation into the nation’s deadliest mass shooting, two RCMP officers and a civilian employee described the communications chaos that unfolded as police struggled to warn the public about a man who was dressed as Mountie and he was driving a replica of the RCMP patrol car. .

Since the 2020 shootings, police have faced intense criticism for failing to send an alert to people’s cellphones and relying primarily on Twitter to distribute active shooter tips.

The Nova Scotia Mass Victims Commission heard testimony that the Mounties had an almost complete lack of organizational awareness of cell phone alert capabilities. That left them groping in their first attempt to issue such a warning, which they never got around to sending, and which they began crafting only about 10 minutes before the Nova Scotia gunman was shot dead.

The Alert Ready system “was not on our radar. He was not on any police radar in the entire country,” RCMP Superintendent Dustine Rodier told the investigation.

“The only conversation I ever had with anyone about Alert Ready was in the days afterward,” former RCMP Corporal Jennifer Clarke testified.

RCMP civilian employee Emergency Planning Coordinator Glenn Mason said that until the morning of the mass shooting he had viewed Alert Ready only as a conduit for weather alerts and notifications about kidnapped children. “It was a ‘shelter in place’ for high winds, tornadoes, something like that,” he said.

The mounted policemen who testified worked on public communications during the attack, which began in the late afternoon of Saturday, April 18, 2020, and ended when the gunman was shot dead by mounted policemen around 11:30 a.m. the next day.

The Alert Ready system is available across Canada for public officials to send emergency warnings via television, radio and, since 2018, cell phones. The technology is deployed from coast to coast, but statistics show that provincial governments, which control access, use the system at markedly different rates and for different types of threats. British Columbia, for example, had never used it before last summer’s deadly heat wave and wildfires.

Nova Scotia mass shooting investigation faces criticism for allowing police to avoid cross-examination

This spring, the RCMP published Alert Ready protocols for its officers that included the formal creation of national and provincial alert coordinator positions.

The investigation heard that the Mounties did not mention Alert Ready in their communications with each other when the attacks broke out, even as police sought better ways to warn the public about the gunman.

A commission document reads: “At 10:47 p.m. on April 18, 2020, the RCMP District Commander for Colchester County, Staff Sergeant Al Carroll, contacted Dispatch Supervisor of Operational Communications Center (OCC) Jen MacCallum to ask if community members in Portapique could be contacted by 911 and advised to shelter in place.”

But such technology did not exist, so Mounties searched RCMP crime reporting databases for phone numbers they could use to call residents of the region.

By 7:30 the next morning, RCMP officers were circulating photos of the suspect and his replica among themselves, according to the commission document. But this information did not reach the Nova Scotia RCMP Twitter account until hours later.

At 8:02 a.m., nearly 10 hours after the gunman killed his first victim, the RCMP issued the first tweet indicating there was an “active shooter situation” in Portapique.

The first tweet to the public that included the 51-year-old suspect’s photo went out at 8:54 a.m. And it wasn’t until 10:17 a.m. that the Nova Scotia RCMP tweeted a photo of the cruise ship replica.

Lawyers representing family members have said that delays in communicating such vital information cost lives. Nine of the 22 victims were killed on Sunday morning, most after 10am, including a RCMP officer who confronted the gunman.

During the attacks, the RCMP issued 12 Twitter posts, five Facebook messages and a press release.

The Mounties didn’t come up with the idea of ​​using cell phone alert technology. “It appears that the use of Nova Scotia’s ‘Alert Ready’ public warning system was first considered at approximately 8:19 a.m. on April 19, 2020 by employees of the Nova Scotia Office of Emergency Management. [EMO]”, says an investigation document.

Commission records show that EMO officials began calling RCMP officers at 10:32 a.m. to ask if they wanted an alert. The police lines were flooded, but the EMO finally made it through. That, in turn, led to broken phone conversations involving Mr. Mason and the officers.

“If they want to issue a Ready Alert, they can do it in a matter of minutes,” Mr Mason told a colleague at 11:17am, relaying the EMO offer.

“Okay, so you have what, a helicopter, ready,” responded Staff Sgt. Steve Ettinger, RCMP risk manager.

“No, they don’t have a helicopter, they have Alert Ready, which is a cell phone alert,” said Mr. Mason, a civilian member of the RCMP.

“Oh,” replied the sergeant. Ettinger, “a cell phone alert. Oh yes, that’s fine.

The conversation involved shouting messages at nearby commanders to gain their approval, and ended with a vague plan to have other armed policemen draft the text of the message.

But RCMP officers shot the suspect dead minutes later, shortly before 11:30 a.m.

With a report by The Canadian Press

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