Two commanders who led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s response to the April 2020 killings in Nova Scotia said in public inquiry on Wednesday that they were having difficulty accessing important information.
Retired Staff Sergeant Jeff West served as the first Critical Response Commander RCMP to get to the command post of the Great Village., this post was established about ten kilometers from Portapique, where the shooter was traveling in a fake vehicle of RCMP claimed 13 of the 22 victims of the tragedy on April 18 and 19, 2020.
Jeff West told the Mass Casualty Commission that when he took over, he could not broadcast to the police network from his portable radio for four minutes, until he was standing next to ‘a window.
The fact that portable radios do not have the power to allow a critical incident commander to announce his presence is problematic, he said.
Jeff West also testified that when he took over, there were only paper maps to find locations. So he admitted before the commission that he was unaware of the existence of a path crossing a field of blueberries from which the killer, according to the commission, had escaped.
An unencrypted radio
Retired Staff Sergeant Kevin Surette stressed how difficult it is to communicate over the radio with field officers, because everyone is speaking on the airwaves at the same time.
Kevin Surette also had difficulty getting the intervention of a helicopter.
He told the commission that on one occasion, a member of the command post gave him another radio to contact the pilot of the helicopter borrowed from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources. According to him, communication is difficult and not encrypted.
The issue of road barriers
When the two commanders later realized that the killer had left Portapique and was moving into the center of the province, the question arose about putting up roadblocks in an attempt to arrest him.
But Staff Sergeant Kevin Surette objected. We knew it was possible to have a shootout and we didn’t want it to happen in front of stopped motoristshe said.
Mass Casualty Commission hearings will resume on May 25.
With information from The Canadian Press
Source: Radio-Canada
