Since the 2020 shootings, police have faced intense criticism for not sending an alert to people’s cellphones and for relying mainly on Twitter to distribute advisories about the active shooter
The Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission heard testimony that the Mounties had a near complete lack of organizational awareness about cellphone-alerting capabilities. That left them fumbling at their first attempt to issue such a warning – which they never got to send, and which they started crafting only about 10 minutes before the Nova Scotia gunman was shot dead.
The civilian RCMP employee, emergency planning co-ordinator Glenn Mason, said that until the morning of the mass shooting he had viewed Alert Ready only as a conduit for weather warnings and notifications about abducted children. “It was ‘shelter in place’ for high winds, tornadoes – something like that,” he said.
The inquiry has heard that the Mounties made no mention of Alert Ready in their communications with each other when the attacks erupted, even as police were looking for better ways to warn the public about the gunman. By 7:30 the next morning, RCMP officers were circulating photos of the suspect and his replica cruiser among themselves, the commission document said. But this information did not reach Nova Scotia RCMP’s Twitter account until hours later.
Lawyers representing family members have said delays in communicating such vital information cost lives. Nine of the 22 victims were killed on the Sunday morning, most of them after 10 a.m. – including a Mountie who confronted the gunman.The Mounties didn’t come up with the idea to use cellphone-alerting technology. “It appears that the use of Nova Scotia’s ‘Alert Ready’ public-alerting system was first considered at approximately 8:19 a.m.
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