Two people were killed in the time it took Canadian police to get internal approval to tweet a warning to the public about the suspect in the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre, a public investigation said on Wednesday.
Lia Scanlan, former director of strategic communications for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Nova Scotia, spoke at length on Wednesday, a day after a witness appeared saying she was “glad” that no alert had been sent across the province. during the 13- an hour-long explosion warning the public of a gunman driving a replica of the police cruiser.
If an alert had been sent, many more police officers could have died, Scanlan told commission investigators in a February interview that was submitted to the proceedings this week.
The national alert system, commonly used for emergency weather and amber alerts, could have been used to send emergency alerts to Nova Scotia mobile phones.
It could also have been used to broadcast emergency alerts on radio and television.
When asked why the alert system was not used, Scanlan said during his interview, “My gut? Would you have more dead cops, because that’s rural police.”
Instead of using the alert system, members of the communications team relied on Twitter and Facebook to circulate information about the gunman, his vehicle and his whereabouts. They also faxed to the newsrooms, the commission learned.
On Tuesday, now retired Corporal Jennifer Clarke, who responded to Scanlan, told commissioners that it took nearly half an hour on the morning of April 19, 2020 to approve a tweet that provided some details of the cruise replica and the suspected of driving him.
By then, the gunman had been stopping for hours, stopping at the homes of several victims and killing the occupants.
Clarke said tweeting this information before was “an unnecessary risk,” as it could have made targets for uniformed officers.
Twenty-two people died during the attack on rural Nova Scotia on 18 and 19 April 2020, including a police officer.
Lia Scanlan at Wednesday’s hearing. Photo: Canadian Press / Rex / Shutterstock
“If I could go back and let those minutes go away, I would,” a tearful Scanlan said on Wednesday, referring to the time it took to approve the tweet. His testimony was based on delays and mistakes in communicating details about the shooting to the public.
Members of the communications team blamed several factors, including Twitter’s 140-character limit, on why certain details that could have identified the gunman and his car were withheld.
Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2017, three years before the shooting.
Transcripts and documents indicate that the communications team participated in several meetings and emails to finalize their “multimedia messaging.”
Prior to the proceedings, on 31 May, RCMP Sergeant Andy O’Brien told the committee that the use of the alert system “had not crossed my mind”.
He also said there was “no magic solution” to resolving the RCMP’s communication gaps and rejected the idea of renovating the infrastructure to respond “once”. [in] lifelong mass shootings, when the current system runs “the other 99.99% of the time”.