October 6, 2024

RCMP ‘did their best’ in Nova Scotia mass shooting response: federal Justice Department

Nova Scotia #NovaScotia

By Staff The Canadian Press

Posted September 23, 2022 12:33 pm

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The federal Justice Department says the RCMP’s response to the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia was far from perfect but says police did their best.

Lori Ward, general counsel for Department of Justice Canada, told the federal-provincial inquiry into the mass shooting that there’s always room for improvement for all policing agencies.

Ward says that while hindsight is a valuable tool when used to learn lessons and make changes, it also impedes a fair and objective evaluation of decisions that were made in real time.

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On the night of April 18, 2020, a man disguised as a Mountie and driving a car that looked exactly like an RCMP cruiser started killing neighbours and strangers in rural Portapique, N.S.

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Ward says she is aware of the criticism levelled at the RCMP for allegedly dismissing witness accounts of the marked police car that the gunman was driving during the 13-hour rampage that left 22 people dead.

She says that critique is not fair because the idea that the killer could have built such a car himself was “beyond reasonable comprehension.”

© 2022 The Canadian Press

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