CANADA - shooter in RCMP vehicle and uniform, 23 killed - Portapique, NS *suspect dead*

[susiQ]

Why would they believe he was contained if they hadn't caught him and had no idea where he was?

Just because it was a terrible night for them and they didn't intend for this to happen, doesn't mean that they can't be blamed for not stopping him. (I could make a COVID-19 comparison here, but not sure if that would cause a huge argument, LOL.) Although, I'm pretty sure nobody is blaming the firefighters or EMS...it wasn't their job to capture the guy.



Well...good luck with THAT one.

Let's just say there was a LOT going on and along with trying to locate the monster they had to deal with the victims they located and getting them to the staging area to keep paramedics safe when there was an active shooter around. It's easy to play armchair quarterback when you're not the boots on the ground.

Obviously, there were mistakes made, especially higher up, no question there. Since SIRT is investigating the firehall incident, I hope that part will be totally transparent. JMHO

 

[ab01]

updated article
N.S. shooter handcuffed, assaulted his girlfriend before mass killing

TORONTO -- The shooter involved in a mass killing in Nova Scotia began his attack by handcuffing and assaulting his girlfriend before she escaped and hid in the surrounding woods, CTV News has learned.

Gabriel Wortman’s girlfriend, who has not been identified, was badly beaten, but survived the assault and later informed officers of Wortman’s fake police cruiser, which the shooter used to evade police for several hours as his rampage continued through central Nova Scotia.

It was the shooter’s girlfriend who also provided officers with an image of the vehicle, which was shared on the Nova Scotia RCMP’s Twitter page.

 

[MassGuy]

Disaster analysis is part of sleuthing. Also, we are the public. It happened in Nova Scotia this time, but without a transparent acknowledgment and correction of failures, who's to say it can't happen anywhere else next time? Any discussion of a rampage attack would be incomplete without discussing the factors that led to it happening.

Yup, we learn something from every crime.

From Columbine (huge mistake), law enforcement changed their protocols. They now immediately enter a building where there is an active shooter.

From child kidnappings, we’ve learned the value of an amber alert.

Hell, from 911 we learned that our intelligence apparatus was a disaster.

In a spree killing situation, communication is paramount. Alerting people through social media and the media is great, but if you have the capability to sent an emergency alert to people’s phones, then nothing compares.

That did not happen, and it was a mistake. I had a similar criticism during last year’s spree killing case, when the public wasn’t notified immediately.

As bad as that was though (it probably didn’t cost any lives), this is off the charts.

Reuters published a story yesterday where a grieving husband said that he would not have let his wife leave the house if he had known what was going on:

But some of the families and friends of the victims said a provincial warning system, which would have sent out text, radio and TV warnings, might have saved the lives of their loved ones.

"I don't use Twitter, and I don't know anyone that does use Twitter," Nick Beaton said in an interview broadcast by CTV News. Beaton's wife, Kristen, a nurse and mother from Debert, was shot dead on Sunday while on her way to work.

Beaton said he would have never let his wife leave the house that morning had he known the gunman was still at large.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN22435H
Canada police accused of poor communication during Nova Scotia mass shooting

This is something that authorities need to learn from. If you don’t even recognize this as being an error, then you can’t correct this going forward.

I do think the outcry will see to that. I hope so anyway.

 

[NJSleuth91]

Let's just say there was a LOT going on and along with trying to locate the monster they had to deal with the victims they located and getting them to the staging area to keep paramedics safe when there was an active shooter around. It's easy to play armchair quarterback when you're not the boots on the ground.

Obviously, there were mistakes made, especially higher up, no question there.

Well, if they really did the best they could, then they can get rid of the criticism by releasing a sufficient quantity of information to indicate exactly why it took that long. Until then, many people are going to continue to criticize them, including many of those affected, apparently.

But, I don't think it's out of line to question what went wrong. First of all, this case is highly anomalous. Second of all, in the 2019 northern BC spree killings, the RCMP also had significant delays in both gathering evidence and disclosing information to the public, which led to the perpetrators being able to target additional people and run halfway across Canada.

Since SIRT is investigating the firehall incident, I hope that part will be totally transparent. JMHO

Sadly, the RCMP doesn't have the greatest track record with transparency. Especially not with Canadian media laws being the way they are.

That did not happen, and it was a mistake. I had a similar criticism during last year’s spree killing case, when the public wasn’t notified immediately.

As bad as that was though (it probably didn’t cost any lives), this is off the charts.

It probably cost Professor Dyck's life. And the police were very lucky that Kam and Bryer decided to stop killing people for whatever reason, because they could have killed any number of people between July 19th and 23rd.

 

[MistyWaters]

Not sure if this was posted yet -

Military called in to help RCMP investigate shooting rampage in Nova Scotia

“The Canadian military has been called in to help the Nova Scotia RCMP investigate one of the largest mass murders in the country's history.

The military issued a statement saying it has provided personnel, modular tents, lights, tables, chairs and generators to a number of locations in the province.

Photos from Portapique, N.S., show a large military truck and a number of other smaller vehicles parked along the entrance to Portapique Beach Road, where the shooting rampage started late Saturday.....

.....A retired high-ranking Mountie says the police investigation will tax the resources of the Nova Scotia RCMP...”

 

[susiQ]

Well, if they really did the best they could, then they can get rid of the criticism by releasing a sufficient quantity of information to indicate exactly why it took that long. Until then, many people are going to continue to criticize them, including many of those affected, apparently.

But, I don't think it's out of line to question what went wrong. First of all, this case is highly anomalous. Second of all, in the 2019 northern BC spree killings, the RCMP also had significant delays in both gathering evidence and disclosing information to the public, which led to the perpetrators being able to target additional people and run halfway across Canada.



Sadly, the RCMP doesn't have the greatest track record with transparency. Especially not with Canadian media laws being the way they are.



It probably cost Professor Dyck's life. And the police were very lucky that Kam and Bryer decided to stop killing people for whatever reason, because they could have killed any number of people between July 19th and 23rd.

I see your point, and I'm not above criticizing when it's needed. Are you from Canada? If not, try to remember we inhabit a very large land mass and have one tenth the population of the US. There's a lot of land to cover with a small tax base

 

[ab01]

I hadn't seen this either(rather alarming but not surprising):

The Nova Scotia shootings began with an act of domestic abuse — and there were red flags that came before

"John Hudson and his wife had been friends with Gabriel Wortman for more than 15 years.

About 10 years ago, their group of friends used to have bonfire parties down on Portapique Beach Road. It was during those parties, Hudson said, that some concerns began to emerge about Wortman’s behavior.

“Back in those days, he was making a few threats here and there every once and a while but nothing serious and I just took it as, ‘Well Gabe, he’s just had too much to drink,’ ” Hudson said.

On one of those nights, at one of those parties, Hudson recalled, Wortman was having a fight with his girlfriend.

She wanted to leave, but Wortman had taken the back wheels off her car and thrown them in a ditch.

Hudson and another man took her to Wortman’s house, where she asked to come in and get her belongings.

“He said, ‘You’re not coming in here.’ And she said, ‘I just want my stuff.’ He said, ‘No.’ And he went back in the house.”

Wortman’s girlfriend asked Hudson to go into Wortman’s house to pick up her things.

Hudson obliged, and Wortman came back to the door.

“He said, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘(She) just wants me to come in and get her stuff so that way she doesn’t have to come in.’ He says, ‘I don’t want anybody at my house.’ And I said, ‘It’ll only take me a second, Gabe.’ And he said, ‘Nobody’s coming in my house. And I want you to know, I’ve got some guns in this house.’ ”

Hudson and his friend took the woman back to the bonfire, where the woman called some friends from Dartmouth, who drove the hour and a half to Portapique to pick her up at 1 a.m.

He said Wortman and the woman reconciled after that and remained together."

 

[lucidtx]

I see your point, and I'm not above criticizing when it's needed. Are you from Canada? If not, try to remember we inhabit a very large land mass and have one tenth the population of the US. There's a lot of land to cover with a small tax base

Sending out an emergency alert costs practically nothing and requires only a single person to type out a brief message. It's an ideal tool for those circumstances.

 

[NJSleuth91]

She wanted to leave, but Wortman had taken the back wheels off her car and thrown them in a ditch.

Everything I read about this guy is almost like a cartoon villain. Stealing peoples' houses, beating up a teenager, going to a party during a pandemic, removing wheels off his girlfriend's car...like, who does that??

 

[susiQ]

Sending out an emergency alert costs practically nothing and requires only a single person to type out a brief message. It's an ideal tool for those circumstances.

Absolutely! I did mention that in a couple of my posts up thread. I strongly believe that should have been done in the wee hours just past midnight, because they already knew it was so much worse than just a "firearm complaint." I find it unbelievable that it wasn't done seeing someone saw fit to send out an emergency alert a number of weeks ago at midnight to tell us to stay at home because of Covid 19 after having flooded us with news media for the previous week already with that information.
eta: and that was a stupid alert in my mind seeing that I was at home, in bed, sleeping until they woke me up

 

[Vern]

Thank you all for the posts and concern expressed.

My family have made it through unscathed although not un-scared. Our unaccounted for was hiding in the woods for hours upon hours. He wasn't the only one out there hiding and were just terrified to come out. I can't say as I blame them. The McCulley's are good family friends and we are heart-broken for their loss of Lisa. Then, over in Wentworth we lost a retired military fire-fighter who my brother, also a military fire-fighter was friends with. We recognize most of the victims. We are just crushed as to how it could happen in the heart of such a peaceful place.

I've cried an awful lot of tears this week. My head is still aching. I just can't. I'm especially proud of two boys, 10 and 12, who braved that madness and managed to escape to another home to warn them and to hide with those children. I am thankful that -51 did not set fire to that house. Stories will come out of this once the anger has been addressed. So angry at the lack of 911 system being used. Just so angry at many things.

-51 is what we are calling him. "Perpatrator of Shooting - Aged 51" or "Piece of S..., Aged-51" - take your pick. I go with the latter.

 

[Vern]

Quite possible that she had already heard gunshots.

It started with gunshots.

Well, if they really did the best they could, then they can get rid of the criticism by releasing a sufficient quantity of information to indicate exactly why it took that long. Until then, many people are going to continue to criticize them, including many of those affected, apparently.

But, I don't think it's out of line to question what went wrong. First of all, this case is highly anomalous. Second of all, in the 2019 northern BC spree killings, the RCMP also had significant delays in both gathering evidence and disclosing information to the public, which led to the perpetrators being able to target additional people and run halfway across Canada.



Sadly, the RCMP doesn't have the greatest track record with transparency. Especially not with Canadian media laws being the way they are.



It probably cost Professor Dyck's life. And the police were very lucky that Kam and Bryer decided to stop killing people for whatever reason, because they could have killed any number of people between July 19th and 23rd.

Please; Just no.

We went through this last summer during the manhunt. This is Canada and not the USofA.

We'll get info when the investigation is completed. In as much as that pisses us off, that is the way it happens here. I am OK with that. I'd rather get factual, correct answers on their failures at notifications etc.

Population of Nova Scotia by the way is ~ 100K. See the landmass it covers? BC and NS are not comparable. We and the US are not comparable so please stop trying to do so.

 

[Kaley Smith]

They aren't responsible for the murders themselves, but they are responsible for letting the guy run around killing people for 12 hours, not sending out an emergency alert for 12 hours, shooting at innocent people, and withholding information from the public who want to know what happened. But don't take my word for it, that's how the affected people feel about it: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-nova-scotia-shooter-acted-alone-during-rampage-rcmp-say/

Not that easy given the area the RCMP had to cover, the victims and fires they were dealing with, and the fact that the guy running around shooting people was in a police uniform and car. Not to mention this was happening in a rural area at night, not a city where you can dispatch 50 officers in 15 minutes to any given street. I understand the anger of the locals. In hindsight, an alarm may have saved a few lives. However, bad news travels fast, so neighbors were phoning relatives and friends.

 

[LovesPeace2]

Yup, we learn something from every crime.

From Columbine (huge mistake), law enforcement changed their protocols. They now immediately enter a building where there is an active shooter.

From child kidnappings, we’ve learned the value of an amber alert.

Hell, from 911 we learned that our intelligence apparatus was a disaster.

In a spree killing situation, communication is paramount. Alerting people through social media and the media is great, but if you have the capability to sent an emergency alert to people’s phones, then nothing compares.

That did not happen, and it was a mistake. I had a similar criticism during last year’s spree killing case, when the public wasn’t notified immediately.

As bad as that was though (it probably didn’t cost any lives), this is off the charts.

Reuters published a story yesterday where a grieving husband said that he would not have let his wife leave the house if he had known what was going on:

But some of the families and friends of the victims said a provincial warning system, which would have sent out text, radio and TV warnings, might have saved the lives of their loved ones.

"I don't use Twitter, and I don't know anyone that does use Twitter," Nick Beaton said in an interview broadcast by CTV News. Beaton's wife, Kristen, a nurse and mother from Debert, was shot dead on Sunday while on her way to work.

Beaton said he would have never let his wife leave the house that morning had he known the gunman was still at large.
Canada police accused of poor communication during Nova Scotia mass shooting

This is something that authorities need to learn from. If you don’t even recognize this as being an error, then you can’t correct this going forward.

I do think the outcry will see to that. I hope so anyway.

This was crazy rcmp should of sent out a alert. Most city’s have their own le now. The rcmp seem so outdated now . All these lives lost that didn’t need to be.

 

[Vern]

Not that easy given the area the RCMP had to cover, the victims and fires they were dealing with, and the fact that the guy running around shooting people was in a police uniform and car. Not to mention this was happening in a rural area at night, not a city where you can dispatch 50 officers in 15 minutes to any given street. I understand the anger of the locals. In hindsight, an alarm may have saved a few lives. However, bad news travels fast, so neighbors were phoning relatives and friends.

You nailed it. Population of NS ~ 100K. Mostly volunteer fire departments in the affected areas. An overwhelmed couple of people at the Provincial 911 call centre I'm sure.

 

[Vern]

This was crazy rcmp should of sent out a alert. Most city’s have their own le now. The rcmp seem so outdated now . All these lives lost that didn’t need to be.

Pull out a map. City? Nova Scotia is a Province with a city (Metro Halifax) that's on the other side of the province and that would hardly classify as a "city" anywhere else.

Look at the size of Canada. 33 million people. (4 people per square kilometers.
Canada as a whole has a population density of just 4 people per square kilometers, which makes it the 228th most densely populated country.)

Look how small the USofA is comparatively speaking … 328 million. (Population density (people per sq. km) in United States was reported at 35.77 sq. Km in 2018)

See the difference? Each town in Canada have it's own Police Force? That's a fail right from the start. East Coast Canada is pretty rural throughout. Over half the education budget in New Brunswick for example goes just to transportation costs for bussing kids to/from school (Usually with budgets, wages take up most of the funds available). There's kids there that are on a bus for over an hour each way just to get to a school.

The RCMP is a National, HIGHLY trained and highly skilled Police Force. We got some of my fellow military folks in helping them at scenes securing … because they can't be everywhere at once. Did you see how many RCMP responded in any video footage? Those guys and gals showed up from across the Province and from off-duty too.

They didn't issue a 911 alert (which I have issues with too), but that's a Lesson Learned for a next time that will hopefully never happen.

 

[Kaley Smith]

I know Vern because I grew up in a very rural, isolated part of Canada, and have an RCMP friend who spent much of her career in rural detachments. There would be 2 officers on with 2 back-up RCMP 2o mins away. Back-up from a large detachment would be an hour away. Further north, detachments are hours and hours apart. I think the officers in Nova Scotia acted very bravely. It was someone higher up that should have issued a phone alert, but the boots on the ground were doing their best given the horrendous circumstances.

The RCMP are definitely not outdated. They serve rural Canada well, communities that are way too small to have a police force of their own. The training is very tough and continues regularly throughout their careers.

Our cities have their own police forces.

 

[wattie_72]

Absolutely! I did mention that in a couple of my posts up thread. I strongly believe that should have been done in the wee hours just past midnight, because they already knew it was so much worse than just a "firearm complaint." I find it unbelievable that it wasn't done seeing someone saw fit to send out an emergency alert a number of weeks ago at midnight to tell us to stay at home because of Covid 19 after having flooded us with news media for the previous week already with that information.
eta: and that was a stupid alert in my mind seeing that I was at home, in bed, sleeping until they woke me up

I don't think they had sufficient information to issue the alert until the morning after, once they'd spoken with the GF. Before that conversation, did they even know who the perpetrator was? And even if they'd known who they were looking for, they every reason to believe he was contained within the two perimeters they'd set up around the area - they hadn't caught him and as far as they were aware, no civilians had been allowed to leave. Obviously we know now that he'd escaped in his homemade cruiser, but at the time, that would have been inconceivable to the officers at the scene.

With this in mind, it's understandable why the alert would have been viewed as unnecessary at that point. This is purely speculation on my part, but with no other apparent reason for the gunshots to have halted, maybe they thought the perp had died in one of the structure fires? Maybe they thought the perp was one of the "several" victims in the area? They would have needed more time to investigate all the different crime scenes, but they had no reason to believe he was outside their grasp.

However, with all that said, once the info from the GF came that morning, everything changed. I personally feel it was very ill-advised and irresponsible to rely on Twitter alone rather than issue an emergency alert. The alert would absolutely have reached more people more quickly, and almost certainly would have saved several lives. I hope that many people around the world have learned from this horrible situation.

 

[susiQ]

This was crazy rcmp should of sent out a alert. Most city’s have their own le now. The rcmp seem so outdated now . All these lives lost that didn’t need to be.

In what way are the RCMP outdated?? City police are just that, they cover their cities and when needed assist with RCMP who cover the rural areas. I live in a county that is policed by the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police). Our town is 12-15 minutes away from a city in either direction. I’m a bit cheesed with their lack of concern recently, given there were a couple of idiots impersonating OPP officers and they didn’t bother telling us until this carnage happened, but otherwise they are there when you need them. Who do you think is going to serve the rural areas in the other provinces if we eliminate the RCMP?

 

[Kaley Smith]

One good thing that may come out of this is that there may be more of a spotlight on a huge problem in this country which is domestic abuse. The CBC started tackling this a couple of months ago. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cana...nce-crisis-cbc-examines-the-problem-1.5477392