The RCMP must be held accountable for mistakes police made in April 2020 when they failed to stop a Nova Scotia gunman from killing 22 people during a 13-hour rampage, an inquest into the massacre heard Tuesday. Lawyers representing most of the victims presented their closing oral arguments to the commission of inquiry, which began public hearings in February and is expected to submit a final report with recommendations to improve public safety by March 31. “Now is not the time to avoid assigning responsibility for fear that it might have the appearance of responsibility,” said Sandra McCulloch, whose firm represents the majority of the victims’ families. “Our customers deserve a frank and honest assessment of what went wrong.” The federal-provincial investigation cannot lay charges or find criminal or civil liability. Rather, it is an investigative body that will issue non-binding recommendations to prevent similar tragedies. McCulloch said the record of evidence shows the RCMP were unprepared for what happened on the night of April 18, 2020, when a man dressed as a Mountie — and driving a car that looked exactly like an RCMP cruiser — began killing neighbors and strangers in rural Portapique, NS The inquest heard that Gabriel Wortman, a 51-year-old denture maker from Dartmouth, NS, evaded police and killed nine other people the next day before being shot dead by two Mounties who spotted him at a gas station north of Halifax. . “The (RCMP) had not prepared itself and its members for such a large-scale event and we observed a widespread inability to think outside the box, with tragic consequences,” McCulloch said. “Our clients argue that this total failure in preparedness led to a number of fundamental mistakes. These are not mistakes that should be hidden behind a lack of funding or when they look at the event as a whole and call it unprecedented…. in the view of our customers, key mistakes that contributed to the unprecedented nature of the event.” Attorney Tara Miller, whose firm is representing a relative of victim Kristen Beaton, who was pregnant when she was killed, said public confidence in law enforcement has been shaken by what happened in northern and central Nova Scotia. “The deaths of 22 people and Baby Beaton were at the hands of a monster,” Miller said. “When such evil reigns, we turn to those who trust public safety to protect us. However, in this case, a cascade of failures, mistakes and errors by the RCMP fundamentally affected Nova Scotians’ trust in the RCMP to maintain public safety. safety.” McCulloch said the Mounties failed to recognize troubling events before the killings that should have flagged Wortman as a person of concern. Among other things, the investigation showed he had a long history of smuggling drugs and alcohol from the United States and had assaulted a teenager in 2001, threatened to kill his parents in 2010 and told someone he wanted to “kill a cop” in 2011. The inquest also heard from a woman who said she was told by an eyewitness that Wortman had choked his wife in 2013. Brenda Forbes also testified that she spoke to two police officers about the attack, but nothing was done. “We submit that the RCMP … had the offender on their radar, and yet that radar seems to have been turned off time and time again,” McCulloch said. “Whether that was because he was a rich white guy who cleverly presented himself as pro-police … or the RCMP … just didn’t take the time to really note and investigate these red flags, the result is the same. The perpetrator was not subjected to real scrutiny and was set free to destroy our communities.” McCulloch also suggested that when the killing began in Portapique, the Mounties who responded were poorly trained, poorly supervised and lacked the tools necessary to track down a killer in the dark. The lawyer pointed to what she described as multiple failures of communication within the RCMP’s “disorganized command structure” and with the public. The inquest heard that the RCMP used Twitter to warn the public that a killer was on the loose about 10 hours after the shooting began in Portapique. The inquest also heard evidence that Mounties initially rejected the use of the Alert Ready system to send intrusive warnings to most radios, televisions and mobile phones, even though they had been encouraged to use the system years earlier. On another front, Miller cited evidence that the Mounties had received a photo of the killer’s police car at 8 a.m. on April 19, 2020, but it took them more than two hours to relay that critical information on Twitter. “At 9:37 a.m., (Kristen Beaton) knew the shooter’s name, had a picture of him and knew he was the suspect in the Portapeak shooting,” Miller said. “What he didn’t know and didn’t find on social media was that the shooter was driving a (replica) RCMP vehicle.” Beaton was fatally shot shortly after 10 a.m. as she sat in her parked car in Debert, NS The tweet about the replica car was sent at 10:17 a.m. Lawyer Josh Bryson, who is representing relatives of victims Peter and Joy Bond, said the RCMP chain of command was “unwieldy” because decisions about additional resources required multiple layers of bureaucracy. “It’s not responsive and it’s not timely,” he said, adding that his clients believe it took too long for the Mounties to establish a so-called critical incident command structure. Also, Bryson noted that an off-duty RCMP officer, Sgt. Andy O’Brien, was issuing orders via two-way radio on the evening of April 18, 2020, despite being “unable to make decisions” and having consumed four to five drinks of rum earlier that evening. “From a lay person’s perspective that sounds absurd,” Bryson said. “If I turned up today and told you that I had four to five drinks of alcohol before I made my remarks, you would be seriously worried.” Bryson also pointed to testimony confirming that the RCMP failed to secure crime scenes in Portapique, which explains why Bonds’ bodies were not found for 18 hours. Meanwhile, McCulloch said her clients have called attention to the Mounties’ apparent dismissal of several witnesses who accurately described the killer’s vehicle. He also suggested the RCMP refused to acknowledge key shortcomings in its response, including evidence that two of its officers opened fire on an emergency official when they mistook him for the killer. He also cited failures to collect evidence, delays in notifying victims’ next of kin and protests that erupted when some RCMP officers called to testify before the inquest were exempted from direct cross-examination. Also, some of the decisions made by the three commissioners overseeing the inquiry have left some of the victims’ relatives feeling marginalized, he said. “For many, their faith in this process is diminished if not lost,” McCulloch said. “They need to know they’ve been heard.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published on September 20, 2022.
