CHANCES MISSED TO STOP GUNMAN
OTTAWA • The RCMP missed multiple opportunities to stop Michael Zehaf-Bibeau from storming through the front doors of Centre Block on Oct. 22, 2014 — with a garbled radio signal and a frightened woman pushing a baby stroller contributing to the security breakdown, says a stinging OPP review.
A series of reports into the events of that day at the National War Memorial and on Parliament Hill were released Wednesday.
They found the RCMP was not prepared to deal with the attack due to “lack of planning, training and resources” and added that the country still remains “ill-prepared” to prevent and respond to terrorist assaults.
Just seconds after Zehaf-Bibeau killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the War Memorial, a tourist pushing a baby stroller spotted the lone gunman racing on to Parliament Hill. She ran towards an RCMP officer sitting in her police cruiser on the northwest side of the East Block.
Afraid for her life, the woman tried to jump into the back seat of the car. The RCMP officer stepped out of her vehicle to speak to the woman, then noticed a man had commandeered a black limousine — normally used by cabinet ministers and parked in front of East Block — and was speeding past her cruiser.
By the time the officer got back in her car, it was too late to block the vehicle Zehaf-Bibeau was driving to- ward the Centre Block.
The Mountie announced over her police radio that there was a man with a gun at the East Block, then radioed that he was driving a black car toward the Centre Block.
But the message was not clearly received by an RCMP officer stationed in his vehicle directly in front of the Peace Tower on Top Drive.
“Unfortunately, the details of the gunman being behind the wheel of the commandeered vehicle did not come up clearly on the air,” RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud told reporters.
“It came out all garbled, unfortunately. What came out, basically you could not make any sense of it,” he added. “The member on Top Drive had no clue that the vehicle that was coming his way was the vehicle where Zehaf-Bibeau was in.”
The problems with the transmission weren’t due to the quality of radios, but the message itself, he said.
“It’s very stressful, it’s time-limited … and those type of errors may happen,” he said.
A couple of other RCMP officers stationed in their vehicles on Lower Drive near the Centennial Flame also missed a chance to stop the shooter.
The officer in the first car was assigned to a different unit and was reading a report to prepare for a demonstration on the Hill. The officer didn’t see the gunman.
Another officer in a vehicle behind that cruiser also didn’t see Zehaf-Bibeau because the view was blocked by the first vehicle.
All told, the RCMP had 28 seconds to react from the moment they first discovered Zehaf-Bibeau on Parliament Hill to the time he ran through the doors of the Centre Block, Michaud said. “It would have certainly been different if he hadn’t had a car and had to walk.”
The review of the RCMP’s response on Oct. 22, prepared by the Ontario Provincial Police, identifies several issues with the Mounties’ preparedness that day, some blamed on federal government budget cuts announced in 2012.
“The response was limited because of pre-existing deficiencies in training, pre-incident planning, and equipment,” says the OPP report, which includes 66 recommendations for the Mounties.
“One of the main issues raised by persons interviewed during this review was the fact that the RCMP was not prepared to deal with this type of threat due to lack of planning, training and resources.”
Maintaining a proper security posture on Parliament Hill “has been challenging for the RCMP” due to limited resources available, it said, “which are reflective of budget cuts in 2012.”
Michaud disputed the notion that budget cuts prevented officers from adequately protecting the Hill.
“I firmly believe that the staff that we had in place that day was sufficient to address the threats that we had to deal with,” he said.
The government’s budget bill officially creates a new police force for Parliament Hill, called the Parliamentary Protective Service.
(Her message) came out all garbled, unfortunately