‘There were failures’: N.S. shooting inquiry report slams RCMP response to 2020 tragedy
Global News
The Mass Casualty Commission’s final report into the 2020 Nova Scotia shooting is calling for systemic changes to the RCMP, beginning with an external, independent review.
The long-anticipated Mass Casualty Commission’s final report into the 2020 Nova Scotia shooting highlighted significant systemic issues within Canada’s national police force and called for widespread changes.
“The future of the RCMP and of provincial policing requires focused re-evaluation,” said the report titled Turning the Tide Together. “We need to rethink the role of the police in a wider ecosystem of public safety.”
The broad, wide-ranging report examining the tragedy was publicly released in a series of volumes Thursday, totalling more than 3,000 pages.
It touched on a variety of issues, including the police response, the killer’s access to firearms, the role of gender-based violence and the steps taken to inform the public as the rampage unfolded.
The report detailed the RCMP’s various failures in preventing, responding to, and reacting in the aftermath of the tragedy, and said the institution as a whole needs to be re-examined.
“There were many warning signs of the perpetrator’s violence and missed opportunities to intervene in the years before the mass casualty. There were also gaps and errors in the critical incident response to the mass casualty as it unfolded,” the report said.
“Additionally, there were failures in the communications with the public during and in the aftermath of the mass casualty.”
Over the course of 13 hours on April 18-19, 2020, a gunman killed 22 people, including a pregnant woman, across three Nova Scotia counties. He was at times dressed like a Mountie and driving a replica RCMP vehicle.
