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Police Missteps Contributed to Canada’s Deadliest Shooting Rampage, Inquiry Says

A commission found there was confusion, poor communication and inflexible thinking among the police during a 13-hour rampage in 2020 in which 23 people died.

A black S.U.V. drives ahead of dozens of officers in red uniforms marching down a street lined with spectators.
A memorial service for an officer killed in the line of duty during a mass shooting in April 2020 in rural Nova Scotia. A commission investigating the killings found a litany of missteps that contributed to the death toll.Credit...Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP

OTTAWA — Poor police command and communication, confusion and rigid thinking among officers contributed to the death toll in Canada’s worst mass shooting — a 13-hour rampage in April 2020 in rural Nova Scotia by a man disguised as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer that left 23 people dead, including the shooter, a public inquiry found on Thursday.

Among other missteps, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a federal force, dismissed eyewitness reports that an armed man was driving what looked like an authentic police vehicle and chose not to transmit emergency warnings to local residents on their cellphones, according to the commission that held the inquiry.

“Individual police officers did the best they could. But the system, the systemic problems were very real,” J. Michael MacDonald, a retired chief justice of Nova Scotia who headed the commission, said in an interview. “What does it take to make Canadians and Nova Scotians safe? That requires a reimagining of the role of policing.”

Michael Duheme, the interim commissioner of the mounted police, said the force had already established a group to look at the inquiry’s recommendations.

“We must recognize where we need to make changes and we are grateful for the commission, for its guidance to make sure we get this right,” Commissioner Duheme said at a news conference.

In addition to documenting the chaos and confusion surrounding the rampage, the commission called for changes in how violence against women is handled, a revamping of the mounted police, tightening of Canada’s gun laws and finding ways to reduce “unhealthy conceptions of masculinity” in Canadian society.

Long before the shooter, Gabriel Wortman, a wealthy maker of dentures from Halifax who was 51, went on his killing and arson spree, there were several worrying signals, the commission found.

Despite not holding a firearms license, he used intermediaries to obtain at least five firearms — most of them smuggled from the United States — as well as a large cache of ammunition and a hand grenade, according to the report.

At least three people reported his illegal stockpile to the police, which led to only a cursory inspection.

Mr. Wortman had also acquired four decommissioned mounted-police cruisers from the federal government’s online asset disposal site; he restored one, complete with the force’s logos and an emergency light bar. Along with the cars, he had also gradually accumulated various parts of R.C.M.P. uniforms.

Mr. Wortman, the commission found, became increasingly agitated as the pandemic spread and public health measures closed his business and shut Nova Scotia’s border to the rest of Canada.

He stockpiled food, withdrew 475,000 Canadian dollars in cash from his bank accounts and moved with Lisa Banfield, his partner, to their cottage in the hamlet of Portapique on the picturesque Bay of Fundy.

At some point on the evening of April 18, Mr. Wortman brutally assaulted Ms. Banfield, placed a handcuff on one of her wrists and locked her in the back of his replica police cruiser.

She was able to free herself from the handcuff and the car, escaping into the woods. But starting about 10 p.m., Mr. Wortman went through the village shooting people, eventually killing 13, and setting fire to several buildings.

The commission found that several witnesses who called 911 identified Mr. Wortman as the shooter and warned the police that he was driving what appeared to be an authentic police vehicle. The commission found that the information about the car was not given to officers heading to the village, nor was it recorded in log books.

Mr. Wortman drove out of the village through an unmarked farm lane. But the commission found that the police continued to discount the idea that he was driving a look-alike police vehicle or that he had left Portapique until 9:40 a.m. the next morning, when reports filtered in of killings far from the village.

The commission blamed the delay on “a flawed decision-making process, particularly the failure to consider alternative scenarios based on the information about the replica R.C.M.P. cruiser and mounting reports about the perpetrator and his firearms.”

The handful of officers on the scene in Portapique knew little of the area’s geography and had to rely on their personal cellphones for maps — a feature not available on phones issued by the police, according to the commission.

Adding to the danger, the commission found, police officers were indecisive about issuing a warning alert that would go to all phones and instead made Twitter and Facebook posts that captured little of the danger. The first one said only that the force was “responding to a firearms complaint.”

Internal communications, the commission found, were also confused and contributed to a brief shootout between officers in two legitimate cruisers. No one was injured in that confrontation.

The commission found that throughout, officers failed to interview witnesses or conduct house-to-house searches. Instead of being questioned, one witness, whose brother was shot and killed, was handcuffed and put into an armored police vehicle.

Mr. Wortman’s trail of death and destruction did not come to an end until 11:25 a.m., when the police shot and killed him at a gas station where he had pulled in to fuel a car stolen from one of his victims.

The replica cruiser he had been driving had been involved in an apparently intentional head-on collision with an actual police vehicle, and Mr. Wortman then killed the officer driving that vehicle, the commission said. He burned both vehicles. In the back seat of the replica cruiser was the body of a passer-by from another vehicle, an S.U.V. that he had stolen.

The commission also faulted the police for their treatment of the victims’ family members, including threatening some by pointing firearms at them. The families were given little information in the weeks that followed the killings, the commission said, and the police ordered officers not to disclose any information about the deaths to them. The commission found this decision to be unjustifiable.

Though the mounted police is a federal force, it patrols rural Nova Scotia under a contract with the province. The commission found that staff shortages meant not only that the Mounties often failed to provide the number of officers called for under the contract, but also that the force paid little attention to rural policing and the needs of rural communities.

“The R.C.M.P.’s career model undervalues rural general duty policing,” the commission wrote. “The approach creates a disconnect between R.C.M.P. members and the communities they serve.”

Several family members of those killed in the rampage said the report’s findings were welcome.

“Nothing will bring my brother back or any of the other people in this horrible ordeal,” Scott McLeod, whose brother Sean, 44, was among the victims, said during a news conference. “If this report makes a positive change nationwide it will be appreciated, I know, by families.”

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto and currently lives in Ottawa. He has reported for The Times about Canada for more than a decade. More about Ian Austen

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Multiple Police Missteps Cited in Canada’s Deadliest Shooting Rampage. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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