RCMP -- Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- Can Their Reputation Ever Be Redeemed?

"The overarching approach and response by the RCMP as an institution had many shortcomings. This must be addressed."

"The RCMP must finally undergo fundamental change that previous reports have called for."

Commissioner Leanne Fitch, Mass Casualty Commission, Portapique, N.S. Mass Shooting 

"The RCMP command group wrongly concluded that Portapique community members were mistaken when they reported seeing the perpetrator driving a fully marked RCMP cruiser. They were too quick to embrace an explanation that discounted the clear and consistent information that several eyewitnesses had provided independent of one another."

"Key information conveyed by 911 callers from Portapique was not accurately or fully captured within the RCMP incident activity logs, nor was it fully conveyed to first responders and the RCMP command group."

"The RCMP public communications during the evening of April 18, 2020, seriously understated the threat presented by the perpetrator and the associated risks to the public."

"As commissioners, we believe this lesson [gender-based, intimate-partner and family violence] to be the most important one to be learned from this mass casualty. Let us not look away again."

Report, Mass Casualty Commission

Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O'Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)

 

Links were drawn by the commissioners in the report, between the mass shootings and the abuse of women by the killer. The first step, according to the report, in preventing mass violence is the recognition of danger in escalation inherent in all forms of violence, including gender-based, intimate-partner and family violence. Such forms of violence is to be declared an "epidemic". In that many mass violence events are initiated with an attack on a specific woman. 

 

The rampage that left 22 people dead around the small community of Portapique, extending to other nearby communities was carried out by a Halifax denturist, Gabriel Wortman, who owned a summer home in Portapique. He was well known to his neighbours and had fractious relationships with them. They knew him as a braggart and a wife-batterer. In the two days that comprised the murderous assault on people known to him, as well as with complete strangers, Gabriel Wortman faced little organized opposition.

The RCMP had failed to respond properly, professionally to the shooting of 22 people, among whom was an RCMP officer. On the afternoon of the second day of a continued mass slaughter, Gabriel Wortman was finally shot by two Mounties at an Enfield, Nova Scotia gas station, a full thirteen hours into his rampage. He had made use of a replica RCMP cruiser and wore the uniform of an RCMP officer. All information relayed by witnesses to the investigating RCMP officers, and all shrugged away.

 

After police shot and killed the gunman at a gas station in Enfield, N.S., they found five firearms in his possession, three handguns and two rifles. He obtained three of them in Houlton, Maine. (Mass Casualty Commission)

 

Considerable confusion  marked the event which began on April 18, 2020 and ended on April 19. Information reported to 911 failed to reach the officers consistently or quickly enough to be useful. Startlingly, though a system existed to alert the population, the RCMP failed to warn the public about the danger of an at-loose murderer. Random killings could have been averted had people been warned to remain indoors and not respond to any strangers or unknown knockers at the doors of their homes.

The commission concluded that the current 26-week training period is insufficiently adequate given the complex demands of policing. The training academy in Regina should, they recommend, be replaced with a three-year, degree-based model of education, similar to what exists in Finland for federal policing. The recommendation was made for the federal government to pass a law whose guiding principle would be "a prevention-first approach to public safety" with police as "collaborative partners".

Increased funding for rural mental health centres and front-line workers who deal with intimate-partner violence, another recommendation. An example was made of the experience of Brenda Forbes, a neighbour in Portapique who reported to the RCMP Wortman's violent abuse toward his common-law wife, Lisa Banfield. Despite that report nothing of any consequence ensued.

On the other hand, there were consequences for Brenda Forbes, with Wortman stalking, harassing and threatening her for years. Which eventually prompted her to leave the province for security to be found elsewhere. All five firearms found in Wortman's possession -- two semi-automatic handguns, a police-style carbine, a semi-automatic rifle and an RCMP-assigned pistol taken from the officer he killed -- were illegally obtained.

There was, as well, reference to the disturbing interactions between Nova Scotia senior RCMP officers and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki who pressured them for the release of information about the types of weapons used in the shooting rampage to be publicly released. The local RCMP officials declined, citing the ongoing investigation. Commissioner Lucki informed them that the Public Safety Minister, Bill Blair urged that the information be made public.

The Nova Scotia RCMP personnel rankled at their impression of political interference in RCMP operational investigations.The commission found commissioner Lucki's comments to represent an error in judgement that constrained the relations between herself and senior provincial RCMP officials.

"Luki's audio recorded remarks about the benefits to police of proposed firearms legislation were ill timed and poorly expressed, but they were not partisan and they do not show that there had been attempted political interference", they commented nonetheless. Commissioner Lucki has since resigned her position. It will be a new commissioner who will doubtless shelve the report. 

 

The RCMP is badly in need of a resolute, intelligent chief operative to move it from its current state of incompetence to one that resurrects the force to a semblance of its former well-earned reputation of excellence in policing.

Friends, family and supporters of the victims of the mass killings in rural Nova Scotia in 2020 react at the beginning of the final report of the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry in Truro, N.S. on March 30, 2023. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)