Canada's national police force failed to give community members warning that a killer was stocking the province of Nova Scotia, eventually killing 22 in the country's worst mass murder, according to a commission report released Thursday.
The seven-month, 3,000-page inquiry into the 12-hour murder spree in April 2020 slammed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) response and called for a complete change in the way the force carries out its duties.
"More than two years after the event, RCMP leadership had done very little to systematically evaluate its critical incident response to the deadliest mass shooting in Canada's history," the commissioners said in the report, titled "Turning the Tide Together".
"In our process, it was apparent that the organizational structure of the RCMP both contributes to these failings and makes it challenging to hold the organization accountable for its work."
The commission's look into the horrific killings was exhaustive, with interviews, examination of medical records and forensic evidence. "The perpetrator" Gabriel Wortman murdered 13 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia in just 45 minutes on April 18.
The commission found that the RCMP failed to comprehend eye witness reports on that night in Portapique, including the fact the killer was driving a vehicle made to look like a police car and he was disguised as a police officer.
"In particular, the RCMP discounted the clear information coming from Portapique community members that the perpetrator was driving a fully marked RCMP vehicle … a false conclusion that the eyewitness accounts were mistaken."
There were three 911 (emergency) calls from Portapique telling police of a shooter on the loose, but responding officers and the public were not alerted to the danger, the commission found.
"The RCMP had not prepared for how to best notify community members and execute a large-scale evacuation of civilians from a hot zone while an active threat was in progress," the report stated, and that resulted in "a significant failure to implement the priority of preserving life."
There was no emergency operational plan in place contrary to RCMP national policy, the report said, and that hampered efforts to stop him when Wortman began killing again the morning of April 19.
Wortman was finally shot to death by two RCMP officers at a gas station in Enfield, Nova Scotia, 93 kilometers from where the killings began.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was at the news conference when the report was released Thursday.
"There is no question that there needs to be changes and there will be," Trudeau said.
