Perhaps the killer had a PAL at one point and owned guns legally. If he let the PAL expire without renewing, it doesn’t mean he gave away his firearms.
Of all the mass shootings that I have experienced from afar, this one has made me the most angry. I didn’t think a shooting would affect me more than the Sandy Hook shooting. This ####### used a pandemic and people’s trust of police to commit mass murder.
Perhaps the killer had a PAL at one point and owned guns legally. If he let the PAL expire without renewing, it doesn’t mean he gave away his firearms.
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This is my initial thought too. RCMP have only said he did not have a PAL, I have not heard them mention a POL but I may have just missed that.
Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
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So this all now looks like it was a domestic violence incident that then went completely out of control.
The shooter and his girlfriend were at a party Saturday night when they gt into a dispute and went home. Thats where he became violent and a fight started. She was tied up by him at one point but she managed to escape and ran and hid in the woods.
He then went back to the house where the party was still ongoing and started his killing spree.
She was not discovered until 7AM and that was the point in time where the RCMP learned he was dressed as one of them and driving a replica cruiser.
Detailed RCMP briefing this morning. Just an insane series of events. Should be a number of articles later this morning setting out the chronology and marrying it with the anecdotal stories previously published.
Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
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Originally Posted by Weitz
The RCMP really dropped the ball on this one, and the province for that matter with the emergency alert.
Too early to tell IMO.
Im thinking the detachment for the RCMP in that area is likely very very small.
Like...maybe a dozen officers max? And probably only 4 or so of them on duty when this started.
In the dark of night they find a grisly crime scene and at least 3 structure fires....they are overwhelmed beyond comprehension in a matter of minutes.
Then more and more emergency calls come in over the next few hours. It had to be like swimming through mud to try and cobble together some sort of plan to address it all.
I read somewhere that they had cordoned off Portapique almost right away, but he was gone by that time.
The whole thing was so insane, Im not sure there was any dropped ball perse as that ball kept changing shape and colors by the minute.
As for the emergency alert...what would it have said? "There is an active shooter out there"...OK...but who would have assumed that shooter was dressed like a cop and driving a replica police cruiser?
I imagine anyone who got an alert would have been relieved to see an RCMP officer around/approaching them. It seems like he was aware of this and used that cover to execute people. Including those he pulled over and then executed as they sat in their vehicles.
I hate to frame it this way...but dude was really smart in his ability to get the maximum carnage out his delusional spree.
Last edited by transplant99; 04-24-2020 at 09:03 AM.
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I’ve lived most of my life in rural Canada, and police resources have been stripped bare in rural Canada over the years. This incident could have happened anywhere in rural Canada. I feel just awful for the affected families and responding police, fire and EMS personnel. They were faced with the worst nightmare imaginable and did their best to respond. Aggravating the whole thing as Transplant points out is that the killer knew how to exploit all the loopholes. He struck on a Saturday night in rural Canada during COVID, impersonating an RCMP Officer. That is the worst scenario I can envision.
I don’t think there should be anything but support and gratitude for the frontline personal who responded to this nightmare. That said, it seems apparent that there were breakdowns in the incident command and communications structures. It would be better for everyone if the RCMP would take ownership of those problems. Just admit that using Twitter rather than the provincial alert system was a mistake. Denying it only makes things worse for the RCMP and the families involved. But, two things people seem to find hardest to do are admit making a mistake and apologizing.
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Has a policing agency dealt with this kind of scenario before?
Has it been game planned and practiced?
I suppose it should have been, but real events often differ from the mock up, especially if it is novel.
The steps and resources of smaller detachments might vary as well. What if the officer in charge of communicating with the Emergency Response System was on the front line? I don't know.
Its early to lay blame (even if your gut ends up being correct).
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I’m sure they have planned for similar events but probably not to this scale in incidents nor the ground area. Several years ago, I spoke with an RCMP officer about school shootings and readiness. We were in a small town of 4500 people with 6 rcmp members. He said the rcmp has a plan but it was wishful thinking that it would work. He said they didn’t have enough officers to cover all of the high school entrances let alone buddy up and go into a situation safely. The next town was over an hour away.
Yah criticizing the RCMP or any emergency responder in this incident does absolutely nothing in my opinion. A tiny RCMP detachment was just faced with something that even a massively resourced operation like Vancouver PD or Toronto PD would find extremely challenging.
I feel so bad for those responders as within the first moment of this incident they were instantly overwhelmed. 3 adjacent structure fires in Vancouver would use at the very least 10-12 apparatus, a dedicated specialized command truck, a dedicated BCAS truck or two, BC Hydro staff amongst other things like effective radio dispatching, repeaters in place to make sure radios stay working etc. The volunteer firefighters that took on those fires had a sliver of the response capability of a major city and in my opinion are nothing short of heroes.
I also can't imagine the challenges faced by the RCMP as this seemed like it crossed jurisdictions and you have multiple agencies trying to communicate priorities. Incident command is not easy when you're working with one agency for even a small incident, add multiple agencies working together and that makes things extremely complicated.
The absolute last thing any of these responders need, imo, is to feel bad about what they did. Lessons can be learned from any emergency response scenario. But those people on the front lines did nothing wrong, they did their job, and thankfully they shot this monster down before he was able to inflict any more damage.
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Has a policing agency dealt with this kind of scenario before?
Has it been game planned and practiced?
I suppose it should have been, but real events often differ from the mock up, especially if it is novel.
The steps and resources of smaller detachments might vary as well. What if the officer in charge of communicating with the Emergency Response System was on the front line? I don't know.
Its early to lay blame (even if your gut ends up being correct).
I would surprised to hear if an outfit of this size had trained for a scenario of this scope. Liasing with volunteer fire departments, paramedics, to coordinate a time to train for something this big would require money, and budgets for these municipalities are tiny.
I think the RCMP would be trained in active shooter responses in larger events like concerts, or schools. But a mass casualty incident of this scope is fairly unprecedented for a region of this size. Just my opinion.
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I have a little insight into what training first response agencies might have for a situation like this. I have published a national magazine for paramedics in Canada for the last 30 years, and for a period I also published a disaster management journal. Mods can PM me if they want verification of those claims.
All the the first response agencies...fire, EMS and police...would have certainly held training days where they jointly respond to major incidents, so they would have had some form of inter-agency communication and cooperation structure. Not for something of this scale, but they would have at least had a basic structure figured out. That mock training would have likely consisted of both table top scenarios and field simulations.
How complex the scenarios they may have trained for is another story, especially in a small rural community. I was discussing that with a friend who is highly placed with Corrections Services Canada, and the various scenarios they mock train for surprised me. They have plans in place for scenarios I would have never even considered. If any of those events occur they quite literally have guides they can pull off the shelf to go by.
I also know a lady who was part of a team commissioned to write a national pandemic response plan for Canada following the SARS outbreak. It was actually quite fascinating for me to watch and identify parts of that plan going into action back in early and mid-March.
I doubt the level of complexity was very high at the local level in Nova Scotia, but it is beyond imaginable to me that such a plan did not exist at the RCMP provincial level in Nova Scotia. If there wasn’t then that’s a huge fail. Or, as is more likely, there was such a plan, it broke down somewhere in the command hierarchy. I think that’s where the failure was and that’s what has to be identified and rectified for the future.
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