Jordan
Two weeks ago, after a horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. As details emerged about how the town’s police force failed to protect its children, the usual cries of thank God that kind of thing doesn’t happen here in Canada, were nowhere near as loud as they usually are. That’s because in Nova Scotia, at the exact same time, we were learning new details about what our own police force, the RCMP, did and did not do to protect its citizens during the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.
News Clip
Not a day goes by that I don’t wake up and think about the victims and their families and their kids.
Jordan
We have now learned that during critical hours, while the shooter was at large and killing, the RCMP response was bungled, delayed, misinformed. A commanding officer was drinking that night, even that some members of the force were warning their own families about the killer before any alert went out to the public. So at least in this case, we are no better at all than the United States. And as this inquiry is demonstrating, once a community loses faith in its police to protect them from life threatening situations, that community starts to wonder, well, then why are they even here? So what have we learned so far about the RCMP’s response or lack of it? What questions still need answering? And will any of it result in consequences or change or even closure for the families of the victims?
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Greg Mercer is the Atlantic Canada reporter for The Globe and Mail. He has been covering the Portapique inquiry. Hello, Greg.
Greg Mercer
Hey, Jordan.
Jordan
The last time we talked, I remember that there were questions around this inquiry as to if police officers would even testify. Have they been speaking? Where is the inquiry at now?
Greg Mercer
Yes, we have been hearing from a significant number of officers, both front line and some senior Nova Scotia RCMP officers who directed the police response, and that continues, and there are more to come.
Jordan
How has that testimony gone? And I know in a minute we’ll get into some specific things, but just in general, what’s it been like.
Greg Mercer
Some of it has been quite gripping, especially the accounts from the first officers on the scene in Portapique, where this attack began, describing in detail what they saw and what they were up against. There have been other moments that have been quite eye opening in terms of mistakes made by the police. And I think there’s been some revelations that we’ve been quite surprised at.
Jordan
Give me quickly the big picture on those ones. What are we actually learning as we go through this that we didn’t know in the days, weeks, months following the shooting?
Greg Mercer
I will say the more we learn, the worse it looks for the Nova Scotia RCMP. The more detail we are getting around the response, frankly, has been really disappointing and frustrating for a lot of families, I think, of this tragedy who lost people in this attack. The response by the RCMP in general was disorganized. There was a lot of confusion over who was in charge. There were a lot of decisions that were made by senior RCMP officials that don’t make a lot of sense, that many people feel added to the death toll, quite frankly, that lives could have been saved if they had been more prepared and more organized when this attack began.
Jordan
I’m going to get you to walk me through some of what we’ve heard. But first, the other thing that you’ve reported on is that families, some of them, perhaps even most of them, are boycotting this inquiry. Why is that happening?
Greg Mercer
Some of those families have come back to the process because they’re at a critical point where they want to hear from specific officers. But you’re right. A couple of weeks ago, we had most of the families walk away from this process and they instructed their lawyers to not participate. And that was a response to a decision by the inquiry to allow senior RCMP officials to have special accommodations around how they would be asked to testify. And what it meant was these officers did not have to face cross examination, that the families had to submit questions to be vetted by the inquiry. That didn’t go over very well. And that’s not what people wanted when they asked for the inquiry. And so they walked out and they said, this is not what we were hoping for.
Jordan
Why would they do that? Why would they keep senior officers from cross examination? It seems like that’s something integral to the process of this kind of inquiry.
Greg Mercer
Absolutely. So when the inquiry was created, it adopted what they call the trauma-informed mandate, which meant that they were going to handle witnesses with care. They didn’t want to re-traumatize people. They were concerned about PTSD. They were concerned about people’s mental health after having gone through this horrible attack. Let’s not forget the worst mass shooting in Canadian history. But the argument of the families who lost people in this shooting is that in these cases, the mental health of the police officers trumped their trauma. They’re saying you are allowing them to avoid difficult lines of questioning because they’re claiming they’ve been traumatized.
Jordan
Are they still doing that, or has that ended? And that’s why the family’s returned?
Greg Mercer
That has ended this week. We have not seen those special accommodations. I believe that the Commission has heard the message loud and clear from some of these families and through the protest that they’re not going to stand for that. They will walk away from this inquiry. And for an inquiry that needs the trust of the public, they need people to believe they’re being as transparent as possible. They have to do everything they can to regain that trust. And so I think that’s why families have begun to come back and participate again.
Jordan
I want to get you to walk us through some of the details because, as we discussed before we started recording this show, it hasn’t really generated quite as many, like, screaming national headlines as you would expect, an exploration of, to your point, the worst shooting incident in Canadian history. Maybe start with the first response, like when word got to RCMP command, what did they do and how did the response take shape from the beginning?
Greg Mercer
So we now know through the inquiry that within minutes of this attack, beginning when this gunman began to go to his neighbours home, going house to house in the community of Portapique and murdering people, that those people were calling in to the RCMP and describing in detail 911 calls who was doing the shooting. They were describing his vehicle. And we know that the RCMP did not take those calls seriously. They thought that this was perhaps a mental health call, that people were imagining things, that they were misunderstanding what they were seeing. And that belief stuck around for a long time in the early stages of this response that the RCMP did not believe this guy actually had a lookalike RCMP patrol car, even though they had been told that by people who were under attack. And it just shows how they were skeptical of the information they were getting.
Jordan
How did they justify that at the inquiry to just not take these things seriously?
Greg Mercer
So what they say is, on a typical Saturday night in rural Nova Scotia, we get an awful lot of mental health calls, right. Someone may believe that there is someone outside their door with a gun, and that’s not based in reality. They thought this was another case like that. And every officer, one after the other, has said, I’ve never seen anything like this in my career. I never imagined this could actually happen. And so that perception that this kind of thing cannot happen, unfortunately, it clouded their response because they just didn’t believe it.
Jordan
When did that begin to change and what happened then?
Greg Mercer
I think it began to change once they got to the scene and realized how significant the death toll was, and they began to get information from people who were telling them in uncertain terms, no, my neighbour has built a police car that looks exactly like yours, and he has been spending months and months preparing for this event. They began to change their tone and realize what they were dealing with.
Jordan
I guess my next question is trying to make the leap between when they realized what they’re dealing with and how long it took to warn the public and get the word out. And are we delving into that right now?
Greg Mercer
We are. This week in particular, there was a lot of focus on repeated delays by the RCMP, not just in decisions to alert the public, but also once they had decided we’re going to send out a photo of this police car that this gunman had made. It took a half an hour to get that approved right. This very bureaucratic, top down response to critical sharing of information that has exposed a lot of the flaws in the way the RCMP even just alert the public in general when these kind of things are happening. But we know one of the big things, Jordan, was that they took 12 hours to alert the public that the gunman was driving this police vehicle. For 3 hours they had it confirmed and had a photo and could not share that with the public for a variety of reasons.
Jordan
Why not?
Greg Mercer
Well, they say, well, this was a chaotic event. We could not get approval from senior officials that the communications people were waiting for people to respond, emails were missed. I mean, it was a very clumsy effort to get the message out. There was also among some of the people directing the response a concern that alerting the public that this guy was driving a lookalike police car could cause some vigilanteism. They were genuinely worried that if the public knew there was a person driving in a lookalike police car, they might start shooting at all marked police cars that civilians would and they were once again worried about protecting their own over the public.
Jordan
This is not a critique of the way you’ve been answering these questions, but I’ve noticed as we go, you’ve said senior officers or people in charge, who was in charge? Was there somebody that actually took command of this incident response?
Greg Mercer
That’s the problem. There were too many people who had jumped into this. At one point, there was a senior RCMP staff Sergeant who early on in the attack phoned his colleagues and said, no, I’ve been drinking. I’ve had three or four or five rum drinks. I should not be involved in this. He had his wife later drive him to his detachment to get his police radio. And then within an hour, he has inserted himself into the response and is directing officers making some key decisions that we now know were very problematic. This is someone who an hour earlier said, I can’t work, I’ve been drinking. And there were other officers who were issuing contradictory directions. And so the Mounties on the ground have testified it was very confusing to know, who do we listen to, who’s in charge? What is the chain of command here?
Jordan
I think the infuriating part for me, no doubt for the families and for anybody who’s been following this inquiry, is there’s a repeated sense that officers had critical information that they didn’t share with the public? And I believe last week we even heard and I want you to explain this a little more because again, it didn’t go in very much depth that some officers were warning their family members, despite not sending like a full public alert, is that true.
Greg Mercer
So that actually came out in the early stages of the inquiry. And yes, it came up again last week. But the allegation is that they were calling their family members, calling loved ones, saying, hey, this guy is on the loose and sort of giving people a heads up before the public were notified of this guy’s movements. And you can appreciate that that is causing a lot of anger among Nova Scotians and particularly among families who lost loved ones on the second day of this attack, when people were out for a walk had no idea that there was a gunman on the loose. And the argument is if they had known, they likely would have stayed home or locked their doors.
Jordan
Have we reached the point yet where we have an understanding of when and why the alert was eventually issued? And yes, what took so long, but also why was that call made at that particular moment?
Greg Mercer
So it never was issued. They made a request to use the provincial ready alert system. He was stopped and killed before they alerted it. So on the second day, they were primarily informing the public through Twitter. That’s how they shared the photos.
Jordan
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. Right.
Greg Mercer
So once they realized that he had escaped for a large part of this attack, they believed they had him pinned down in the community of Portapique. That’s not true. We know he escaped and went and hid away. He slept, and then he continued killing people in other parts of Nova Scotia. Once those 911 calls came in the next morning, that’s when the RCMP realized, no, he’s gotten away, we don’t have him pinned down, we need to start alerting the public. So they believe there was not a risk to the public because there was this theory that was being spread among them that he perhaps he’d committed suicide. We now know that’s not true. So just a series of assumptions and mistakes that added to this tragedy.
Jordan
If the purpose of this inquiry is to determine what really happened here and who made which mistakes are we getting at that you’ve talked about trauma-informed response and not cross examining some of the officers. Is the real truth emerging? And I’ll ask you this, as somebody who covered it while it happened,
Greg Mercer
I think that we are, awkwardly, clumsily, as this thing stumbles along. We are getting, with each passing day, a clearer picture. There have certainly been bumps in the road. There have certainly been moments that have angered the families who are participating, especially around how they’ve handled key RCMP witnesses. But I do think if you take a step back and you look at what we’re learning through this process, we are getting a better picture. And what it’s revealing, frankly, is a very stumbling response by the RCMP to a tragic event. And I think there’s going to be a lot of questions that come out of this about how do we prevent this from ever happening again.
Jordan
What questions do you have watching this and what do you want to get answered that hasn’t been yet?
Greg Mercer
Well, a lot of people would like to hear from the gunman’s common law wife. She has not spoken publicly at all about what happened. And there are family members who feel that she kind of watched him prepare for this attack and did nothing to alert anyone. We just would like to hear from her. And I think that people are curious about what she saw, what she knew on the day that his attack began. He appeared to be tracing the route that he would later take that evening, or sorry, the next morning when he escaped the police and continued his rampage. It appears that she was helping him clear an escape path through the brush on one of his properties that he, we believe, used to flee from the police. So she’s a key figure and people would really like to hear from her.
Jordan
Why aren’t we?
Greg Mercer
She is still sorting out her own criminal proceedings. She’s been charged with providing him ammunition in this attack, the police have said, and her lawyers have said, she had no idea what it was, what he was intending to do with this. But while that worked its way through the courts, her lawyers have said she cannot participate. What has happened, though, is that she has been redirected to another course through the courts where she’s not going to be charged criminally. Once that happens–and this is the restorative justice program–once that happens, they say she will be freed up to testify with this inquiry. We just aren’t there yet.
Jordan
You can tell me if you think I’m dumb for even asking this or not, but I want to pick your brain about the reports that I’ve seen, and reports are a very loose term for them. I guess the rumours that have been circulated that one of the reasons the police response was so slow was because this guy had ties to the RCMP, was an RCMP informant, and that’s why they were hesitant to go in. Now, I’m not trying to give credence or non credence to that, but I’m wondering if the inquiry is even trying to address it or if we’re learning anything about that potential angle.
Greg Mercer
I think there have been some questions in general around that, and I know that people are asking those questions among themselves, and certainly there’s a lot of folks who put a lot of credence in that. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that there’s any truth to that. I think the truth is far less interesting. It’s that the RCMP were simply not prepared. They were just simply disorganized and scrambling to prepare for this awful attack. But this idea that he was one of them, and that’s why the response was different. I don’t see a lot of hard evidence to back that up.
Jordan
I thought a lot about this story last week in the wake of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and what we’re learning about how the police there reacted while the shooter was inside the school. Do you see similarities? Maybe not in the attacks themselves, but in terms of the response and the emotions, I guess, that it generates from those connected to them?
Greg Mercer
Definitely. I mean, in both cases, you have a horrific mass shooting where the public rightly expect the police to go in and protect them. And in both cases, there’s a lot of evidence that the police were hesitant, that they were worried about their own safety. And in some cases, they prioritized protecting themselves over protecting the public. That perception is deeply damaging to police services whenever it happens. And it is the case in Nova Scotia, and it’s the case in Texas. And I think that in both cases, those police services are going to have a difficult job of recovering from that.
Jordan
It kind of sounds over the course of this conversation that the inquiry is going along okay, but there’s still an awful lot that we don’t know. And correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth, and it’s still pretty infuriating to the families of the victims, what could happen next to make this meaningful, both in terms of addressing reform for the RCMP and also for the families to feel that we’ve dug at the truth enough, I guess.
Greg Mercer
Well, I think the families have been very clear that they want to have the opportunity to cross examine all of these witnesses. They do not want any more special accommodations, regardless of who it is. They have lawyers who are representing them because there are questions they want to get to the bottom of, and they want that opportunity. So that’s one first step that I think the Commission is hearing that loud and clear that these accommodations are causing a lot of problems. So that could go a long way to restoring some of the trust in this process. But certainly there are people who have already thrown their hands up and have walked away and have decided that this inquiry is not going to give them what they want. And I don’t know how you repair that.
Jordan
What happens when a community completely loses trust in its police force like this?
Greg Mercer
Well, it’s deeply problematic. And, in fact, we’re seeing that conversation in that debate in Nova Scotia and other parts of Atlantic Canada right now that there are communities where people are openly saying, do we want the RCMP to protect us anymore? Would we be better off with another kind of police force, with another municipal police force to protect us? Because they simply, many people appear to have lost faith, particularly in rural areas, in the RCMP’s ability to protect them when they need them the most.
Jordan
Last question, is anything about this process binding? Like, are there consequences that we know will come from this or is this just let’s get the truth out. Let’s get a report and then the institutions involved will have to make their own moves.
Greg Mercer
No, unfortunately, nothing will be binding. So the inquiry is tasked with producing a report that’s going to have recommendations for government and likely the RCMP on how to try to prevent these kinds of tragedies in the future. But they have no ability to enforce that. And it’s up to the institutions. It’s up to different levels of government who are paying for this inquiry, to take it seriously and to adopt those measures. But all this inquiry can do is recommend.
Jordan
Greg thank you for this, as always. We’ll check back in with you as this keeps going.
Greg Mercer
My pleasure, Jordan. Thanks for having me.
Jordan
Greg Mercer of The Globe and Mail. That was The Big Story.
For more head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can hear our previous episodes on both the shooting and the inquiry. You can talk to us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. You can email us [click here!]. And of course, now you can call us and leave a voicemail. That phone number is 416-935-5935. We are coming up to our 1000th episode. We’re putting together something a little special just for fun. But if you want your question or comment or anything you’d like to say to be featured, you got to get it in soon. 416-935-5935.
Joseph Fish is the lead producer of The Big Story. He takes over for Stefanie Phillips who is now our showrunner. Ebyan Abdigir and Braden Alexander produce this show with Joe. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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