RCMP display ‘pure cruelty’ in charging shooter’s wife

The RCMP, arguably the meanest and most incompetent police force in Canada, really outdid itself before, during and after the mass slaughter of 22 people in and around Portapique, N.S., in April. That’s because it’s Nova Scotia, a have-not province where it’s easier to disdain the population you police and get away with it.

You’re far from big cities where en masse people notice, report, complain, sue and demand explanations and reparations. Your politicians are cemented in place, there are fewer journalists to make a noise about institutional secrecy, and the dead are unlikely to have had money and power.

But understand that every province in Canada saw what you did in Portapique that night and is in awe of every duplicitous and cowardly thing you have done since the killer, Gabriel Wortman, first attacked his common-law wife in a frenzy, certainly in preparation for killing her and everyone else he could find.

So what did you do on Friday? You made sure that the wife, the only woman to survive that night with the killer — she untied herself and hid in the chilly woods as blood and fire took over the neighbourhood — would face charges.

Lisa Banfield, along with two male relatives, has been charged with providing bullets to her violent, woman-hating, conspiracy-minded massacreplanning common-law husband. Imagine what would have happened to her if she hadn’t done as he asked.

She had been beaten senseless by him so many times, whenever he got drunk and often while locals watched and did nothing. She knew what he was like. She didn’t think she could escape. Indeed, one neighbour moved across the country to escape the man she was sure would kill her one day, and even far away still wasn’t confident of her safety.

Wortman, a denturist and apparent drug dealer, hated all women, from the ones he saw socially, to the woman he worked with and lived with. Banfield was that unfortunate person. The idea that she would be the first to be tormented by criminal charges is pure cruelty. Always punish the woman first.

I don’t know if Canada has ever seen a police force fail as badly as they did that night. The RCMP knew how dangerous Wortman was, always had over the years. They knew he had said he wanted to “kill a cop,” that he was stocking weapons, beating Banfield and terrorizing his neighbours. Many people knew he had replica police cars. Did they think it was a harmless hobby?

On the night of the murders spreading out across the province, the RCMP gave him 13 hours of freedom, bungled their response so badly that it leaves one mystified. Were they scared, disorganized or stupid?

Worse, did someone on the force think Twitter was cooler than old-fashioned province-wide alerts, which was why I in Toronto found out a killer was on the loose well before some of his victims did?

Worse than that, did he have some kind of pull with the RCMP that made them turn a blind eye to his presence in the drug trade?

There was a point where it looked as though there wasn’t going to be a public inquiry, not even the feeble one that is being conducted now by people who are more or less police and government insiders.

Everyone attached to this police catastrophe has to come clean. Here in Ontario, where we are well-acquainted with brutal and incompetent policing, we expect no less.

What do Nova Scotians want and will they fight for it?

Why should they have to?

The massacre stripped the skin off a rural province populated by good, friendly neighbours living a blissful oceanside life, but fatally surrounded by venality and cowardice. You owe the victims so much, the deeply loved pregnant woman who went out for a walk because she thought it was safe, the young man who went looking for his brother in the darkness and found his corpse.

He could see a light tracking him as he ran for his life.

Why couldn’t the RCMP have seen it too?