Two people died 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 mass shooting, a public inquiry was told 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 testimony surfaced in which she said she was “glad” no province-wide alert was sent out during the 13-hour rampage warning the public of a gunman driving a replica police cruiser.
Had an alert been sent out, many more police officers could have died, Scanlan told commission investigators in a February interview that was introduced to the proceedings this week.
The national alert system – typically used for emergency weather situations and Amber alerts – could have been used to push emergency alerts to Nova Scotians’ mobile phones.
It could have also been used to air emergency broadcast warnings on radio and TV.
When asked why the alert system was not used, Scanlan said during her interview: “My gut? You would have more dead police officers, because this is rural policing.”
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 newsrooms, the commission heard.
On Tuesday, now-retired corporal Jennifer Clarke – who answered to Scanlan – told commissioners that it took nearly a half hour on the morning of 19 April 2020 to get a tweet approved providing some detail of the replica cruiser and the suspect driving it.
By then, the gunman had already been on a rampage for hours, stopping at various victims’ homes and killing the occupants.
Clarke said tweeting that information sooner was “an unnecessary risk” as it could have made targets out of uniformed officers.
Twenty-two people died during the rampage through rural Nova Scotia on 18 and 19 April 2020, including one police officer.
“If I could go back and have those minutes disappear, I would,” said a tearful Scanlan on Wednesday, referring to the time it took to get the tweet approved. Her testimony hinged on the delays and failures 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 multiple meetings and emails to nail down its “media messaging”.
Earlier in proceedings – on May 31 – RCMP Sgt Andy O’Brien told the commission that using the alert system “didn’t occur to me”.
He also said there was “no magic solution” to solving the RCMP communications gaps, and rejected the idea of revamping the infrastructure to respond to “once [in] a lifetime” mass shootings – when the current system works “for the other 99.99% of the time”.
