Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission slams RCMP for response to April 2020 shooting rampage

TRURO, N.S.-The inquiry into the worst mass shooting in Canadian history has pointed a stern finger at a litany of RCMP failures and inadequacies surrounding the massacre that left 22 victims dead in Nova Scotia three years ago.

In its newly released final report, the Mass Casualty Commission outlines the RCMP's failure to act on previous red flags related to the gunman, its lack of preparedness for a mass casualty event, its response to the incident itself and the force's communication with the public and with victims' families during and after the shootings.

Of the report's 130 recommendations, more than half - 75 of them - are directed at the RCMP. They cover everything from the improving officer notetaking to a comprehensive external review of the RCMP and a subsequent restructuring of the force.

Over 13 hours on April 18 and 19, Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people and torched several houses in northern Nova Scotia, beginning in Portapique with an assault on his common-law spouse, Lisa Banfield, and ending nearly 100 kilometres away when police shot him at a gas station.

The picture painted by the commission in its 3,000-page, seven-volume report, does not cover the national police force in glory.

In fact, in the 317-page executive summary of that report, there are 65 versions of the word failure" and 33 of the word inadequate," most in close proximity to a reference to the RCMP.

RCMP's response flawed from the start: report

The report highlights the Mounties' discounting of the fact that multiple witnesses told them in the early hours of the shooting that the gunman was driving a replica police car, and failed to alert the public about that until almost 12 hours later, and then by social media.

This information should have shaped the command decisions from that time forward," wrote the commission in its findings.

The failure to recognize that the perpetrator had disguised himself in this way was a product of deficiencies in the RCMP's process for capturing, sharing, and analyzing information received during a critical incident response."

Although it lauded the first three officers on scene who went into Portapique hunting for the gunman for acting according to their training, the report castigated their supervisors for a fragmented chain of command, which produced too many cooks in the kitchen, sowing confusion as the team searched Portapique in the night amid explosions and burning buildings.

But reinforcements were told to hold fast at the entrance to Portapique, for fear of officers shooting each other. This despite the GPS tracking system built into the Mounties' handheld radios - a system that had never been activated and which the team searching Portapique did not even know existed.

Despite Ret'd. A/Commr. Alphonse MacNeil's warnings about the importance of being able to track member locations during a critical incident, the RCMP failed to implement the recommendation with respect to geo-tracking Emergency Response Team members in a timely manner," the commission said in its report.

In this regard, RCMP leadership failed its front-line members and the public, both of whom would have been better served in April 2020 if the RCMP had then implemented a recommendation made in the December 2014 MacNeil Report (the review of the 2014 shooting incident in Moncton in which three RCMP officers were killed.)"

The fact that there were only three officers in Portapique for the first 90 minutes of the RCMP's response to the shooting, combined with fragmented leadership and a lack of knowledge of the area they were policing were factors in the killer's escape from Portapique that night, the report concluded.

H Division was inadequately prepared for a large-scale critical incident response in a relatively remote area of Nova Scotia. The uncertainty about roles and responsibilities, and the lack of training and preparedness of front-line supervisors, were the primary reasons for the gaps that arose in containment."

19 hours passed before a door-to-door search was done

The MCC also took the RCMP to task for the amount of time it took that first night to find many of the victims of the shooting rampage.

The RCMP's failure to find the fatalities at Cobequid Court in a timely manner resulted from inadequate RCMP scene management and an emphasis on pursuing the perpetrator at the expense of other police responsibilities," said the report.

A systematic door-to-door search was not conducted until 19 hours after the first 911 call from the Portapique community. This is an unacceptable delay."

It went further, criticizing, among other things, the RCMP's failure to cooperate with other agencies, its poor communication within the force and with both the public and victims' families both during and after the mass shooting.

Unhealthy aspects of the RCMP's management culture'

Despite its recommendations, the final report acknowledges that change in the RCMP is hard to come by.

LESSON LEARNED: Efforts to reform the police can have complex results when they are filtered through the informal norms and values of police organizations. Management culture is an important determinant of the success of efforts at police reform," it read.

To that end, the MCC also recommended having the force having a long, hard look at what it calls unhealthy aspects of the RCMP's management culture."

The report mentions at several points recommendations from previous inquiries and reviews that have been ignored - the comprehensive external review, from the 2020 Bastarache Report, is one of those.

A further three recommendations are dedicated to making sure the next public inquiry has an easier time getting requested evidence in a timely and forthright fashion from the RCMP, something the commission had established was a problem during this inquiry.

Though the report had plenty to say about the RCMP, it also spent a significant chunk of time addressing both gender-based and domestic violence.

The revictimization' of Lisa Banfield

The report made several findings and recommendations relating to both gender-bias and domestic violence.

Notable amongst these was the finding that the way the RCMP treated Lisa Banfield in its investigation was an example of the kind of revictimization" that would make it less likely that female survivors of gender-based violence would seek help from police.

The victim blaming and hyper-responsibilization (holding of an individual to higher standards than what would typically be expected of the average person) to which Ms. Banfield was subjected by community members reflect myths about triggers" in a mass casualty and that a woman is responsible for her partner's actions. This reaction also has a chilling effect on other survivors of gender-based violence," it said.

The report recommended that both federal and provincial levels of government develop programs to counter victim blaming and hyper-responsibilization" of women survivors and also that they create safe space for women to report violence against them.

It also recommended that police and prosecutors be handed extra discretion to lay criminal charges in case of intimate partner violence.

Steve McKinley is a Halifax-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @smckinley1