Juno News - April 22, 2020


Unanswered questions about the Nova Scotia shooter

Mentioned
Gabriel Wartman Justin Trudeau Leo Knight Danforth Gortman Blair Constable Heidi Stevenson Heidi Stevenson Lillian Hislop Malcolm Show Luckey Frank Alert
Misinformation and Mismanagement (feat. Andrew Scheer) Denying notoriety to mass killers

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

175.2

Word count

3,629

Sentence count

229

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Candice and her guest, Leo Knight, discuss the lack of information from the RCMP regarding the shooting rampage in Nova Scotia, Canada, on April 18th, 2019, and the reasons why they refused to answer a simple question.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I'm Candace Malcolm with The Candace Malcolm Show and today I want to talk about the Nova
00:00:11.040 Scotia shooting and really try to unpack some of the questions that remain. So this is what we know
00:00:16.680 so far. The act of evil, the killing, the shooting rampage was carried out by 51-year-old
00:00:23.040 Gabrielle Wortmann. The killing spree lasted for 13 hours from the evening of Saturday,
00:00:27.640 April 18th to the morning of Sunday, April 19th. Wortmann shot and killed at least 22 people.
00:00:34.880 This includes a pregnant woman and veteran RCMP officer Heidi Stevenson. He also set fire to at
00:00:41.560 least five buildings and his killing spree spanned across at least 16 crime zones that RCMP police are
00:00:49.240 currently investigating. So there's a lot of questions that remain. It's going to be a long
00:00:53.040 time before we get answers. But to help sort of fill in some of the gaps and answer some questions
00:00:57.380 that I have, I wanted to bring in True North Fellow and my friend Leo Knight. Leo has an extensive
00:01:03.080 career as a former police officer in investigations and as a security expert. So Leo, thank you so much
00:01:09.760 for joining us today.
00:01:11.620 You're very welcome, Candace.
00:01:13.420 So I think one of the main questions that really stands out at this point, Leo,
00:01:16.800 is the fact that the RCMP on Monday during their press conference refused to answer some pretty
00:01:22.240 basic questions. The main one being whether or not Wortmann had a possession and acquisition
00:01:27.880 license. It's a pretty straightforward question and it would be pretty simple for the RCMP to answer.
00:01:33.460 All it would take, I presume, would be looking it up in a database. And I imagine the RCMP would have
00:01:38.320 done that as soon as Wortmann became a suspect or a person of interest on Saturday night or Sunday
00:01:42.820 morning. So why wouldn't they answer this straightforward question? What's there to hide?
00:01:47.400 You're entirely correct, Candace, in that a simple lookup on the police information computer would
00:01:55.420 give that information quite easily. The commissioner of the RC seems to me to be spectacularly uninformed
00:02:04.180 when she went into that press conference and that surprises me as well. Having said that,
00:02:09.600 the only reason I can think of that they wouldn't give that information up is that if it didn't fit the
00:02:14.720 political narrative, Justin Trudeau has said that he wants to bring in more gun control. And if the
00:02:21.740 weapons that were used on that evening were obtained legally, that just wouldn't fit the narrative.
00:02:27.300 If they were obtained legally, then they would have to try and explain how come they haven't tightened
00:02:33.100 up the acquisition process. And I think they're just politically uncomfortable questions for the
00:02:39.420 Liberals at this point in time. Well, that's a really interesting response. I think you're definitely
00:02:44.140 right. But one of the things that, again, sticks out or raises even more questions is the RCMP
00:02:49.100 commissioner is supposed to be independent. They're not partisan. They're not part of the
00:02:53.380 governing party. They're not liberals. And so that's why it was really bizarre because, you know,
00:02:58.740 you're thinking in the greater scheme of the Canadian gun control regime and whether, you know,
00:03:04.220 the question of whether these firearms were obtained legally or illegally is incredibly important.
00:03:08.660 Whether this individual was licensed or not is incredibly important. And the unwillingness of
00:03:14.120 the RCMP commissioner to answer their question, we have a clip, which I'm going to play right now.
00:03:18.860 And so you can see a reporter asking again, the straightforward question, was this guy licensed?
00:03:23.280 And the RCMP commissioner, this is the second time she's asked a question. The first time she
00:03:27.580 didn't reply. She didn't provide an answer. Then the second time she's asked, it's her being asked
00:03:32.800 directly. She turns to Minister Blair, a partisan liberal appointee by Justin Trudeau. And he jumps in,
00:03:40.380 which again suggests the politicization of this question.
00:03:45.260 If you could release, tell us whether or not that individual did have or did not have a firearm license.
00:03:55.440 Tim, as we've indicated, the RCMP are in the earliest hours and days of this investigation. And it's a complex one.
00:04:02.220 And I think it's quite appropriate for them to be careful about the release of information until they've had the opportunity
00:04:08.160 to verify it and confirm it. And so it is, I think, inappropriate. And the commissioner would quite naturally be very reluctant
00:04:15.120 to reveal details of that investigation until it is complete. And so I would urge Canadians to be patient with the RCMP as they do
00:04:23.220 a very difficult but very important job for us in getting all the facts, in confirming their evidence,
00:04:29.500 making sure that all of the steps to preserve that evidence are taken. Canadians need to deserve answers.
00:04:35.400 The families and the victims of these terrible crimes deserve accurate answers. And so let us be patient
00:04:41.100 while the RCMP conducts their investigation, confirms their evidence, and then I am absolutely confident
00:04:46.980 they'll be transparent and forthcoming with that once that important work has been done.
00:04:51.900 Okay, so this is starting to feel like it's being politicized, Leo. Why do you think that is? And why is it that the RCMP
00:04:59.400 commissioner can't feel this simple question?
00:05:03.900 Why? The only reason I can come up with, and when the question is asked and she immediately turns to Minister Blair,
00:05:10.660 it's almost as though she's seeking some sort of permission to answer, which struck me as very odd.
00:05:16.700 She should not be that much under the thumb of the minister for sure. The second part of that is why do I
00:05:24.120 think it's been politicized? I think because whatever happened here, whatever the circumstances were
00:05:29.720 that have yet to become public, it doesn't fit the political narrative.
00:05:35.420 Well, you know, you know, regardless of the political narrative that they were trying to put out on Monday,
00:05:40.040 we did have some, we saw some investigative reporting from news outlets across the country.
00:05:45.100 So the Toronto Star reported that Wartman did have priors for assault and for speeding.
00:05:50.140 He also had run-ins with the police over a property dispute with a relative and a sort of bizarre incident,
00:05:55.520 which I think everyone should take with a grain of salt because it was reported by Frank magazine,
00:05:59.320 which is a tabloid known for lying. But it was reported also in the Toronto Star that there was a bizarre incident
00:06:05.580 where he basically tried to lock police officers into a parking lot that apparently he owned,
00:06:11.580 and he tried to chain them in, and they had to call for backup. That was just in February of this year.
00:06:15.960 So really, the story that we're starting to see of this individual is someone who has had, you know,
00:06:23.720 certainly some run-ins, some concerning things. The Toronto Star also reported that because of a 2001 assault,
00:06:32.840 which was carried out against a 15-year-old young man, where Gabrielle Wartman was allegedly drunk
00:06:38.340 and assaulted him outside of Wartman's denture clinic in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which admittedly was over 20 years ago.
00:06:44.360 But still, because of that, he was required not to own, possess or carry a weapon, ammunition, or explosive substances,
00:06:51.180 and that he was required for assessment and counseling and anger management.
00:06:56.780 So this does provide a window, Leo, into who this guy was. And so, you know, I guess I just keep coming back to this question,
00:07:05.740 but, you know, it seems like at some point, he was prohibited from owning firearms. Would that have influenced his PAL application,
00:07:15.620 his licensing application?
00:07:17.840 Totally. The other thing that's interesting to note here is that he received a conditional discharge for that conviction,
00:07:25.280 which typically means that the judge will assign several conditions to his probation period, his release period.
00:07:31.760 And as long as he fulfills those conditions, then he can take his discharge, and then there wouldn't be a formal record of the conviction.
00:07:42.640 We don't know how long the firearm prohibition was for Wartman.
00:07:49.320 We do know that, for sure, that the judge ordered the firearm prohibition at that time.
00:07:55.120 Now, years later, even if he gets the conditional discharge, that information is still available to police.
00:08:00.760 And I would think would certainly have a bearing on any independent application, even years later, for a PAL.
00:08:10.580 So, again, you know, perhaps are the RCMP being defensive because his application should have been rejected, but it wasn't?
00:08:19.200 Or do you think that, again, they're just being tight-lipped because, I mean, we've seen it so many times, Leo.
00:08:25.660 You know, after the Danforth shooting that was carried out by someone who seemed to be a radical Islamist, you know, ISIS took responsibility.
00:08:33.520 The police wouldn't even release the name of the suspect.
00:08:36.300 You know, they wouldn't comment at all.
00:08:37.880 And we saw it again with another shooting that happened in the Maritimes where they refused to release any information.
00:08:44.880 Is this just part of this kind of routine act that the RCMP kind of don't trust Canadians and they don't want us to have information?
00:08:52.980 Or do you think that there is something like a cover-up, like, you know, this guy's application should have been rejected, but somehow it wasn't?
00:08:59.460 Or maybe he never had a license in the first place?
00:09:02.240 And, again, they're just playing politics.
00:09:04.480 All of those things are possible.
00:09:06.240 But in my opinion, I think what it really comes down to is the Liberal government's gun policy and what they're planning to do and how this doesn't fit their narrative.
00:09:19.740 And they're trying to figure out how to message it.
00:09:21.820 That's my best guess.
00:09:23.140 Having said that, and just to clarify, the Danforth shooting was the Toronto Police Service, not the RCMP.
00:09:29.100 But the RCMP are notoriously tight-lipped.
00:09:31.560 And I've had countless battles with them on their media relations strategy and why they don't just stand up in front of the cameras and Canadians and tell them the truth, what they know.
00:09:43.420 Nobody will ever come back.
00:09:44.700 All you have to do, in fact, if you say something wrong, just say, upon further investigation, we've determined that this initial information wasn't accurate and here's the accurate information.
00:09:55.020 It's not hard.
00:09:56.580 But they're just so reluctant to do that.
00:09:59.160 And, again, the force has been politicized.
00:10:03.240 There's no question.
00:10:04.360 I think Commissioner Luckey is firmly under the thumb of the minister.
00:10:08.920 And I wish that weren't the case.
00:10:11.060 But I think that is exactly the case.
00:10:13.440 Yeah, this has become like a big pet peeve of mine.
00:10:16.700 And, yeah, you're right, it was Toronto Police Services.
00:10:18.580 But there have been many instances where the RCMP have done the same.
00:10:22.420 It's part of a culture, I believe, in Canadian policing.
00:10:26.120 Because, you know, when something happens to the United States, I mean, you could say maybe they go the opposite way, where they release too much information.
00:10:34.340 Well, they'll release things like body cam video the next day or two days after the shooting.
00:10:40.460 Yeah.
00:10:40.760 And it's so much different.
00:10:43.580 It's so transparent.
00:10:45.040 And I really appreciate it, especially as a journalist, trying to, you know, piece the puzzles together myself, you know, pieces together.
00:10:53.620 But really, I mean, I think it does come down to the fact that they don't trust Canadians.
00:10:59.400 And I hear from sort of rank-and-file cops, you know, anonymously sending me Facebook messages or WhatsApp messages complaining about this and saying that they wish that they could speak publicly because there's so much the public doesn't know and deserves to know.
00:11:12.440 I want to loop that into another question that I had, Leo, because one of the critiques that's been popping up is about the lack of communication with the public over this active shooting situation.
00:11:25.140 Like I said, it spanned over 13 hours.
00:11:27.020 So one of the things that sort of popped up is, you know, the police services have this system, the emergency alert system or Amber Alert system, where they can instantly send text messages to everybody in a region.
00:11:40.760 We get them here in Ontario with some frequency, you know, for missing people's, missing persons' reports and that kind of thing.
00:11:48.960 You know, we even got them with coronavirus saying, hey, stay inside.
00:11:51.960 You know, the whole system is designed to protect public health or public safety and to prevent deaths.
00:11:59.260 And so the question is, you know, why wasn't that system used in this case?
00:12:04.380 Why not get as much information out to the public as possible?
00:12:08.200 Do you have any idea as to why they weren't using the Amber Alert system to warn people in Nova Scotia?
00:12:12.960 Well, Amber Alert, for one thing, is designed for missing children.
00:12:17.280 So it would go separate from that through the emergency management people.
00:12:22.120 Most provinces have such a system.
00:12:24.760 In B.C., where I live, for example, it's, you know, everyone's been talking for years about earthquake preparedness.
00:12:31.180 So they've got that system in for earthquakes or tsunamis or anything along those lines.
00:12:36.740 But it can be used for anything that's considered urgent that the public needs to know about it.
00:12:42.620 My understanding is that the emergency management folks in Nova Scotia knew what was going on.
00:12:48.480 They even called an extra staff to deal with it.
00:12:52.240 And they can't initiate until they get the police request and they never received a police request.
00:12:57.240 Interesting, because one of the things that stuck out to me was the fact that the RCMP Nova Scotia Twitter account was very active.
00:13:06.900 And they were sending out information to warn the public.
00:13:09.800 They sent this tweet out, which we can put on the screen.
00:13:13.720 This one went out at 9.20 in the morning on Sunday.
00:13:17.440 And it said, Gabrielle Wartman may be driving what appears to be an RCMP vehicle and may be wearing an RCMP uniform.
00:13:23.340 There's one difference between his car and RCMP vehicles.
00:13:27.740 The car number, the suspect's car number is 28B11 behind rear passenger window.
00:13:32.960 If you see 28B11, call 911 immediately.
00:13:35.920 Well, that seems like a pretty urgent call.
00:13:37.780 But why put it on Twitter?
00:13:38.580 No one's on Twitter.
00:13:39.300 No one's going on Twitter.
00:13:40.840 You know, a small portion of the population is using that.
00:13:43.940 And perhaps if they had put that out through a text message, one of the victims, for instance, Lillian Hislop,
00:13:51.940 was out walking her dog.
00:13:53.800 Now, perhaps if she'd gotten a text message saying, you know, there's a crazy killer in your area, stay inside.
00:14:01.280 And she could have avoided some of those really unnecessary casualties.
00:14:05.620 Not to blame it on the police because obviously hindsight is 20-20.
00:14:08.840 But, you know, do you think using Twitter was the best way to get the message out?
00:14:14.040 Or, again, do you think that they should have acted quicker and used that emergency alert system?
00:14:17.900 Well, they didn't get the message out per se using Twitter because media picks up on that and they'll rebroadcast.
00:14:24.340 And certainly the photograph of the suspect was readily available on Sunday morning.
00:14:29.280 So they did somewhat get the message out.
00:14:31.780 But you're entirely correct.
00:14:33.440 They didn't use all available tools.
00:14:35.680 Why?
00:14:36.460 Well, I don't know.
00:14:37.060 I can speculate a little bit.
00:14:38.520 I mean, certainly we both know, Candice, that there's been a couple of actuations of the Amber Alert system in Ontario in the middle of the night.
00:14:46.080 And people have complained about it, saying, why do you need to wake us up?
00:14:49.260 Or, you know, like my cell phone went off at, you know, two o'clock in the morning sort of thing.
00:14:53.620 So maybe the RCMP are a little gun shy about doing that type of thing.
00:14:57.660 And that would have been the operation or incident commander who made that call.
00:15:02.340 Was that, in fact, what a concern was?
00:15:04.420 I don't know.
00:15:05.040 I'm speculating a little bit.
00:15:06.260 The other thing I will say is that any time you've got multiple crime scene incidents like this, especially one where people are being shot and killed, the response is very fast moving.
00:15:20.940 And it's trying to keep, for an incident commander, trying to keep track of everything that's going on and, you know, make the decisions he has to make is very, very trying and very stressful, as I'm sure you will imagine.
00:15:33.260 It might have simply been something, a step he overlooked or she had.
00:15:39.040 Interesting.
00:15:39.600 Well, maybe they'll be more, you know, willing to use that system in the future if, you know, hopefully, God willing, there's not an incident like this ever again in Canada.
00:15:49.080 But, you know, I think that is something that would be worth looking into.
00:15:53.980 Just to touch on some of the content in that tweet, reports said that Gortman was essentially impersonating a police officer, pulling people over.
00:16:03.240 He was wearing what looked like an authentic police uniform and driving a cruiser that we saw in that picture.
00:16:08.920 It looks exactly like a police cruiser, especially to most people who don't spend a lot of time looking at police cruisers.
00:16:15.500 So I think one of the questions is, you know, this, this, these uniforms in this police car, obviously, you know, they're not easy to come by.
00:16:23.420 You'd have to sort of, I think, know someone who had had a police uniform in order to get one.
00:16:28.080 So what are you hearing?
00:16:29.800 How did Gortman obtain these, this uniform in this police car?
00:16:33.800 What I'm hearing is that he was an RCMP aficionado, as even a mention of it in his high school yearbook.
00:16:46.040 I believe, from what I've been told, that he was a collector of memorabilia, RCMP police, shoulder patches, shirts, you can get decommissioned things.
00:16:56.520 And certainly, the RCMP has licensed a whole lot of products, sweatshirts and hats and all that sort of stuff.
00:17:04.960 He could simply walk online by, you know, by a police ball cap with the RCMP insignia in the front of it, and that would look like a police hat.
00:17:14.940 He, if he's collecting this stuff over the years, that would seem to me to be what that was he was wearing.
00:17:22.740 Interesting.
00:17:23.160 Yeah, and if he's, if you're a collector, you can go and go to any police agency, pretty much anywhere, and ask them if they've got somebody who, you know, collectors trade patches and all that sort of stuff.
00:17:36.160 Getting RCMP shoulder patches would have been quite easy.
00:17:39.000 And then just getting a khaki shirt and putting them on, the instant RCMP officer shirt.
00:17:46.560 Interesting.
00:17:47.000 Yeah, I do wonder if there will make these kind of things harder to obtain or try to crack down on them in the wake of this, just because, obviously, part of the reason he was able to take so many lives was because people thought that they were dealing with an actual, legit police officer, not a deranged, evil individual on a killing spree.
00:18:08.020 Well, Leo, thank you so much.
00:18:09.060 I feel like we've, you know, you've helped me understand a little bit more about the investigation and what's going on behind it.
00:18:15.300 I hope, I hope that the liberals don't try to politicize this too much and turn this into a gun grab against law-abiding Canadians.
00:18:22.540 Because, I mean, just a cursory look at the story shows this individual was not someone who was a law-abiding person.
00:18:29.400 He broke just absolute huge number of laws.
00:18:35.100 And so punishing law-abiding gun owners doesn't seem like the right response.
00:18:39.100 And hopefully there's not a knee-jerk reaction.
00:18:42.320 You know, just final word to you.
00:18:43.640 Do you think there will be or do you think that this will pass?
00:18:46.480 You're a lot less cynical, perhaps, than I am, Candace.
00:18:49.580 I think that's exactly what they'll do here.
00:18:51.480 They're going to bring in some sort of legislation.
00:18:54.780 And it's going to be, the only thing it'll target is our legal gun owners.
00:18:58.100 And they're not the ones who are committing these crimes and problems.
00:19:02.700 Especially if, in this case, he obtained weapons illegally.
00:19:06.060 There's not a statute you can write anywhere that could prevent that.
00:19:10.420 The other part of that, I suppose, is that the, it seems that he had several weapons.
00:19:16.560 But one of the weapons we know he did get was Constable Stevenson's sidearm after he killed her.
00:19:22.400 He took her sidearm and two magazines full of ammunition with him.
00:19:27.600 And I believe that was the weapon he had in his hand when he engaged police at the Irving gas station in Enfield.
00:19:34.280 So, but we don't know more than that in terms of what other weapons he might have had or type of weapons.
00:19:41.620 I think, I suspect, the weapon he engaged Constable Stevenson with was a long-barreled weapon.
00:19:46.900 Because even though she was wearing ballistic nylon protection, you know, by way of a pest, she was shot in the chest.
00:19:54.420 So, it had to go through the ballistic nylon, which would suggest a long-barreled weapon.
00:19:59.720 Interesting.
00:20:00.300 I know I said last question, but, but, so, a long-barreled gun, would that be what proponents of gun control would typically describe as an assault weapon?
00:20:09.360 Or would that just be any, any long-form shotgun?
00:20:13.660 My Louisville Slugger in my closet can be an assault weapon. 0.99
00:20:17.980 It's, it's a ridiculous description used by people who are themselves ridiculous. 0.99
00:20:22.740 They know nothing about the subject, and they just, they knee-jerk all the time. 0.99
00:20:28.060 And Justin Trudeau is just such a person.
00:20:30.320 All right, Leo Knight, thank you so much for joining us.
00:20:33.080 Leo is a Trumor Fellow and a former police officer.
00:20:36.420 Leo, we really appreciate your time.
00:20:38.540 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:20:40.140 This has been The Candace Malcolm Show, and I am Candace Malcolm.