Juno News - April 26, 2020


The RCMP did a commendable job in Nova Scotia


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

144.98933

Word Count

952

Sentence Count

64

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Like many of you, I got up last Sunday morning to the news of what was
00:00:08.240 unfolding in Nova Scotia. The RCMP there had put out a photo of a suspect and a
00:00:13.920 photo of a fake police car that they believed he was driving within about an
00:00:18.000 hour of learning about it from Gilbert Wortmann's girlfriend who herself had
00:00:22.560 been assaulted and tied up by him before he went on his rampage. She managed to
00:00:27.960 escape and hid in the woods until she was located by police. She provided the
00:00:34.980 RCMP with much-needed information which they then shared through their Twitter
00:00:39.600 feed. This was a volatile, fluid, fast-moving situation since the first call
00:00:45.840 came in around 10 30 p.m. Saturday night. The RCMP has taken a huge amount of
00:00:53.820 criticism for not using the provincial emergency alert system to alert the
00:01:00.360 public. The criticism by the armchair quarterbacks on social media and in the
00:01:05.820 mainstream media frankly has been outrageous given the totality of the
00:01:11.400 circumstances as we now know them, but more on that later. Policing is a tough
00:01:16.920 job. I have long described it as 95% routine and 5% sheer terror. In the RCMP
00:01:24.240 members work alone one member to a car. If a member is assigned a call he or she
00:01:30.240 goes there alone. In urban areas other members hearing the call may attend as
00:01:35.520 backup. In that part of rural Nova Scotia backup was miles away and many many
00:01:41.760 minutes away from the first member on the scene. The first member on the scene
00:01:45.640 found multiple structure fires, several car fires, and multiple homicides in a yard
00:01:51.420 and in that residence. What a daunting scene.
00:01:56.880 Before long they have discovered 13 victims at eight locations in that small
00:02:02.220 town and area. The cavalry was called in and the RCMP worked feverishly to
00:02:08.000 establish a large perimeter and to try and figure out what happened and who and
00:02:14.000 where the shooter was. It was also in the dark of night in a sleepy little
00:02:18.860 village. There were no bright lights. It took several hours for the RCMP to
00:02:24.440 figure out their suspect was on the move and committing more more homicides, more
00:02:31.060 murders. Through the night he traveled about a hundred and fifty kilometers, generally
00:02:37.760 moving south towards Halifax. RCMP members from all over Nova Scotia, assisted by
00:02:44.240 members from New Brunswick and members of the Halifax Regional Police Service, sped
00:02:50.000 in to help out. At 10.49 a.m. local time, Constable Chad Morrison was at the
00:02:55.880 intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 224 where he was awaiting Constable Heidi
00:03:00.980 Stevenson, who was on her way to meet him as they formed part of this of the
00:03:05.540 manhunt. Morrison saw what appeared to be a marked RCMP police vehicle coming
00:03:10.640 towards him, thinking it was Constable Stevenson. It wasn't. It was Workman.
00:03:16.460 And Morrison was shot on his vehicle. Stevenson undoubtedly heard his radio call
00:03:21.420 in distress and spotted Workman's vehicle a short distance away. She rammed his
00:03:26.500 vehicle trying to stop him and he fired several shots into her chest and neck area.
00:03:31.160 He then dragged the wounded officer out of her patrol vehicle and executed her in
00:03:37.220 cold blood as she lay on the ground. He then took her sidearm, two magazines, and
00:03:43.460 fled the scene in a hijacked car. He was located less than a half hour later at an
00:03:50.000 Irving gas station on Highway 102 in Enfield where he was engaged by ERT members
00:03:55.220 and the threat was eliminated. The courage shown by Constable Stevenson in trying to
00:04:01.580 stop the threat is remarkable. Jill Warmington of the Toronto Sun called for
00:04:07.480 her to receive the Cross of Valour posthumously. At the very least that
00:04:12.080 should happen. That or the Silver Star of Courage, our nation's highest honour.
00:04:17.020 Lastly, a few words about the criticism about the RCMP not using the Provincial
00:04:23.020 Emergency Alert System. I did an interview with CTV News this week to try and
00:04:29.480 dispel some of that misinformation. In Nova Scotia, a province with less than a
00:04:35.080 million people, the emergency centre is not staffed after hours on weekends. Even if
00:04:41.140 the RCMP had wanted to put out a provincial province-wide alert, they
00:04:45.040 couldn't. There was no one in to do it and they had precious little information to
00:04:50.680 tell people other than there was an active shooter situation. They didn't get
00:04:55.720 the information from Wurtman's girlfriend until she was interviewed
00:05:01.600 between 7 and 8 Sunday morning. They released further information shortly
00:05:07.300 after 8 and then provided the suspect photo and photo of the fake police car at
00:05:11.860 8.54. At about 10.15 a.m., the Provincial Emergency Alert people contacted the RCMP
00:05:18.820 media, said they had called in a couple of people should the RCMP want to use the
00:05:23.140 alert system. The media members did not have the authority to green light so they
00:05:28.540 called at the Incident Command who was, as you might well imagine, very, very busy. In the
00:05:35.020 interim, their media staff began crafting a message to be broadcast. As this was going on,
00:05:41.840 the ERT members located and shot the suspect. Reality may not fit the media
00:05:48.920 narrative, but that is the reality. The RCMP performed that night in
00:05:56.520 exceptionally chaotic circumstances. They aren't trained for multiple homicides
00:06:01.880 and, as we later learned, 16 different crime scenes, but they dealt with it as best
00:06:07.220 they could. And in a little over 12 hours after the first call, they had located, shot
00:06:12.920 and killed a serial killer. A great job, in my view, in exceptionally trying
00:06:19.340 circumstances. Especially after learning they lost a member of their own. Rest in
00:06:26.960 peace, Constable Heidi Stevenson. For True North, I'm Leo Knight.