Two RCMP tactical officers testifying on Monday during an investigation into the Nova Scotia mass shooting in 2020 say the response has become more challenging due to a lack of a staffed staff, night air support or technology to determine their location.
The head of the emergency response team, Capt. Tim Mills, who decided to retire six months after the shooting, and Capt. Trent Milton, who took over as team leader, answered questions together in a group of witnesses.
In his testimony, as well as in his behind-the-scenes interview, Mills said he was proud of his team’s efforts, but did not refrain from criticizing his former employer, calling it a “broken organization.”
“The RCMP as an organization wants to give the impression that they care about their members … Commissioner Brenda Lucky said herself: ‘We will do what we can. We can’t do enough. “The way we were treated after that was disgusting, absolutely disgusting – that’s why I left the RCMP,” he said Monday morning.
He said senior officials had failed to support tactical officers in the weeks following the mass shooting, rejecting a request for time for joint questioning.
Mills said he was proud of his team’s efforts, but did not refrain from criticizing his former employer. (Andrew Vaughn / Canadian Press)
Mills said he had offered the team to work on administrative tasks at the plant for two weeks, hoping it would help them work through the trauma they experienced together.
But despite initial support from psychologists who met with the team, he said the eight members of the part-time group were told to return to their regular front-line duties in their home units or take sick leave.
“Today members are excluded because of Portapique, they do not work, it did not see what we do [saw]Said Mills. [They] we did not experience what we experienced. We were at many sites, many victims, and they forced our boys to return to work, our part-time employees to return to work, a week and a half later. “
Milton, who is still working, was more measured, but testified that the recommendation for a joint interview was in line with what he had learned in the SWAT team leadership course.
He said the instructor shared best practices in mental health support developed after other mass shootings, such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in the United States, where large numbers of first aid workers left.
“They were told that teams need to keep busy, you need to be together and be with people in unison. And that’s all we wanted at the moment,” Milton said.
Members of the RCMP emergency response team traveled in a tactical armored vehicle, as well as trucks and suburbs during the mass shooting. Police block the Debert, NS highway on Sunday, April 19, 2020 (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)
IN his interview with commission investigatorsMilton said the weeks after the mass shooting were difficult due to the refusal to allow part-time members to set aside two weeks from the front line.
“It was kind of a huge blow… you’re telling me that now I have to go home and sit alone in my basement and try to handle it myself,” Milton said in an interview. He stayed at work, but others took time off.
cap. Tim Mills, far left, had 20 years of experience in the Nova Scotia RCMP emergency response team when he led the tactical unit responding to the April 2020 mass shooting. Trent Milton is second from the left. Days later, they stood out as the body of their colleague Const. Heidi Stevenson, who was among the 22 people killed, passed. (CBC)
While some senior officers supported, Milton said there were “huge gaps” that “transcended disrespect” and reflected “ignorance” of what they were going through.
He said, for example, that the division’s commanding officer, retired commission aide Lee Bergerman, had never met ERT directly after the mass shooting. He said Chief of Staff. Chris Leder, who eventually came to oversee the tactical team, did not show up for a mental health strategy meeting.
“The RCMP is very good at speaking and announcing that we have all these mental health strategies, but the implementation of the action is seriously lacking,” Milton told commission investigators.
An RCMP dog handler and ERT member shot and killed a gunman at a gas station in Anfield, NS Other tactical officers arrived to provide support. (Tim Krochak / Canadian Press)
There is no way to track phone locations
Both Mills and Milton testified that the role of the 13-nation emergency response team was five members less than previously recommended.
Milton, in a previous interview with the investigation, said the lack of access to a phone app the team had previously used to see each other’s locations “certainly reduces” their ability to quickly determine where police officers are, especially when they started. to search for a suspect in a vehicle that looked identical to a marked RCMP cruiser.
During the night in Portapic, NS, where the shooting began on the night of April 18, 2020, they had to rely on dispatchers to explain the instructions orally on the radio.
In April 2020, the tactical team had five full-time members and eight part-time officers assisting in high-risk situations in Nova Scotia. After learning of an active gunman in Portapic around 10:45 p.m., they gathered at the RCMP headquarters in Dartmouth and rushed to Colchester County.
The investigation established that they arrived at the scene between 12:35 and 1:15
The commission’s report, released Monday, summed up the team’s activities in Portapic, Glenholm, Debert, Schubenakadi and Anfield.
During the night in Portapik, ERT took the lead in the field from the general officers on duty, who were first on the scene. The tactical team spent the early hours of the morning tracking the shooter’s possible observations, including nearly two hours – between 1:20 and 2:20 a.m. and then again from 3:25 a.m. to 4 p.m. – clearing properties just west of the unit. where the shooter killed 13 neighbors.
They also took Clinton Ellison, a man who had been hiding in the woods for hours after finding his brother Corey’s body, checked the victims’ vital signs and inspected the shooter’s burning property.
For more than three hours, beginning at 12:45 a.m., Mounties communicated on an unencrypted radio channel, which meant that anyone with a scanner could tune in to hear broadcasts between ground officers, their commanders, and the dispatch center. The Commission found that the use of this public channel was a mistake, but did not explain why this was the case.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19. Top row left: Gina Gulet, Dawn Gulenchin, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchin, Sean McLeod, Alana Jenkins. Second row: John Hall, Lisa McCully, Joey Weber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from the top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joan Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom line: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corey Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
In the morning, they began evacuating their homes when 911 called after a 40-kilometer shooting in Wentworth, NS. They spent the next two hours frantically trying to track the shooter, who had been traveling between rural communities until then, driving a replica of an RCMP cruiser killing strangers.
By the time a dog handler and tactical officer shot and killed Gabriel Wortman at a gas station in Anfield, NS, 22 people, including a pregnant woman, a teenager and an RCMP officer, had been killed. Others were injured and several houses were destroyed by fire in the 13-hour villa.
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