Revisiting missed calls and wayward e-mails, communications manager recalls bottlenecks and wishes she could ‘make those minutes disappear’
A communications manager for the RCMP broke down on the witness stand on Wednesday when pressed about delays in warning the public about an active shooter, including that he was driving a replica police car during his 2020 rampage in rural Nova Scotia.
Nine victims were killed on the morning of April 19, most of them after 10 a.m., and the inquiry has been examining police communications in this period. At 8 a.m., Ms. Scanlan sent out a Twitter alert that said police were contending with an active shooter. The only RCMP tweet sent the previous evening described events as a “firearms complaint.”
But an e-mail to her with a photo of the suspect’s car appears to have been misdirected by the Mountie who wrote it. “It is presently unclear to the commission whether a subsequent e-mail, with photographs of the perpetrator’s replica RCMP vehicle attached, was sent to Ms. Scanlan,” according to a document published this week by the inquiry.At 9:40 a.m., an RCMP corporal in the communications unit received another copy of the photo and drafted a tweet.
When commission officials pressed her about the nearly half-hour delay between the draft tweet and the actual tweet, Ms. Scanlan teared up. She said the RCMP needs better standard operating procedures for police communications.
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