RCMP declined 2016 offer to issue alerts
HALIFAX — The RCMP and the two largest municipal police forces in Nova Scotia were offered the ability to issue alerts independent of the provincial Emergency Management Office (EMO) almost four years before a mass shooter killed 22 Nova Scotians in April 2020.
The offer was made due to the fact that these police services had 24/7 staffing via their
911 public safety communications centres and “therefore were better positioned to respond to quickly unfolding events,” according to a foundational document presented at the public inquiry in Dartmouth.
At a June 2016 meeting, EMO explained it is not staffed 24/7 and doesn't have a duty officer on call.
“Law enforcement having the capacity to issue alerts independently could give police more operational flexibility to deploy the system without having to share operational information with an external body,” EMO stated in its memorandum.
The offer was not accepted by any of the police services that included the RCMP, the Halifax Regional Police and the Cape Breton Regional Police Service.
The police services confirmed they would continue the existing practice of requesting an alert from the EMO if they determined that an alert would assist in their response to an event, according to the public alert foundational document presented Tuesday.
No alert was issued during the 13-hour rampage by Dartmouth denturist Gabriel Wortman, who was killed by RCMP members at the Enfield Big Stop in the late morning of April 19, 2020.
Questioned by Young on Tuesday morning, Paul Mason, executive director of EMO, confirmed the 2016 offer to the three police agencies.
“EMO had interest in sharing the technology platform with the three large police agencies that we dealt with
through 911 because of their 24-7 capacity and their situational awareness,” with regard to policing events, Mason said.
ABILITY TO ISSUE ALERTS
He said there was an ongoing dialogue with the police agencies over the years since 2012 about the alert system that later evolved into conversations about the ability to issue alerts.
“We were offering them direct access,” Mason said of issuing alerts that would include Amber alerts and other emergency management notifications.
“They were not interested in direct access at that time,” Mason said of the three largest Nova Scotia police agencies.
“There were some subsequent emails afterwards and where it landed was they would continue to request an alert, which was the practice at that time.”
Mason said the rampage would have warranted the issuing of an alert.
“We didn't,” he answered when asked if had received a request from the RCMP or Halifax police to issue an alert on April 18 and 19, 2020.
“We reached out to them and there were discussions,” Mason said of the RCMP.
“They expressed an interest in issuing an alert at approximately 11:25 a.m. on April 19.”
The gunman was killed moments later.
“We were just kind of getting started on that,” Mason said of an alert message when EMO learned the killer was in custody.
‘OVERWHELM THE SYSTEM’
Mason said he saw a photo of the replica RCMP cruiser during the morning of April 19 and had contacted Dominic Fewer, the emergency management planning officer in Shubenacadie, sometime shortly after 10:30 a.m. to request that he call RCMP to ask if they needed assistance.
Mason said he later learned that Fewer called the RCMP but wasn't able to speak to anyone directly and subsequent text messages were exchanged with a technical person with the RCMP who was to run the idea up the chain of command to determine if the RCMP wanted to issue an alert.
Mason said the RCMP and Halifax police now have direct access to issue an alert but, with or without that access, the police force that has jurisdiction in an area where an event is occurring has to make the initial decision as to “whether or not the event is critical enough in nature” to warrant mobilization of the Alert system.
If the police force involved does not have direct access to issue an alert, it then has to go through EMO.
Mason addressed the concerns that a public alert would result in a large number of 911 calls from civilians that would overwhelm the system.
“We developed our own policy on alerting in 2017,” Mason said, and it includes advising the public safety communication centre before issuing the alert to give that centre the ability to get staff in place to handle those call volumes. There are four primary and two backup communications centres in the province, he said.
“We haven't had a situation with regard to 911 where we've been overwhelmed,” he said.
Mason said an alert about the mass killer would have been issued in the civil emergency category.
The foundational document that Young presented contained a long list of threatening situations that could result in the Alert Ready system being activated, including civil emergencies, terrorism, fires, hurricanes and other storms and drinking water contamination.
‘THEY NEED TO WARN PEOPLE’
Summarizing the foundational document, Young said the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in a 2021 resolution recognized that “police in Canada have a common law-based duty to warn a narrow and distinct group of potential victims of a specific threat.”
That means, “if the police know there is a certain threat coming, they need to warn the people who would be affected,” Young said.
The alert system comes under the regulation of the provincial Emergencies Management Act, the federal Broadcasting Act and the Canadian Radio-television and Communications agency.
Young said the Alert Ready system was first made available in Nova Scotia in 2011 but the first time the system was used for a true alert, not a test message, was early in April 2020, before the mass casualty. That alert was about COVID-19.
Before April 2020, an Alert Ready notification could have been requested by any number of sources, including police, to EMO senior management. Management would gather information and make a decision about if an alert was warranted based on the criteria for the different categories of emergencies.
The entity that requested the alert would craft the emergency message.
After April 2020, the system changed in that an authorized alert requestor must call the Dispatch Office in Shubenacadie and submit a completed Alert Ready request form via email.