SaltWire E-Edition

‘Thank God it didn’t go out’

CHRIS LAMBIE THE CHRONICLE HERALD clambie@herald.ca @tophlambie

After an RCMP dog handler shot Gabriel Wortman dead, one of Nova Scotia’s top Mounties was thankful the Alert Ready system had not been used to send out a public warning.

The RCMP’S failure to employ the system to warn people the Dartmouth denturist was dressed up as a cop and driving a fake police car has been a bone of contention since his April 2020 murders of 22 people, including a pregnant woman.

“Thank God it didn’t go out,” Insp. Dustine Rodier, the officer in charge of H Division’s operational support and communications centre at the time, said after the killer was shot dead at the Enfield Big Stop.

That comment comes from Rodier’s newly released August 2021 interview with the Mass Casualty Commission.

“In this particular case, we were hammered on the 911 side of the house,” Rodier said.

The inquiry has heard the alerts to mobile phones can cause an influx of calls from the public that could overwhelm emergency dispatchers.

While Mounties did not use the Alert Ready system that day, they have employed it since for other emergencies. “Our 911 phones lit up like a

Christmas tree,” said Rodier, who started working with the RCMP as a civilian dispatcher in 1994.

‘THIS IS NOT THE MAGIC PILL’

Police also appeared to fear vigilantes might get involved in the hunt for the mass killer.

“We know that there were members of the public deciding that they were going to go look for the suspect and perhaps arming themselves,” Rodier said.

It seems unlikely that a public alert would have saved any lives in Portapique, where Wortman killed 13 people over 45 minutes on the night of April 18, 2020, before slipping away from the seaside community. But many have questioned the RCMP’S failure to use the Alert Ready system the next morning over about five hours, when he murdered another nine people between West Wentworth and Shubenacadie before Mounties killed him at the Enfield Big Stop at 11:25 a.m.

“A huge piece of this has to be public ... awareness that this is not the magic pill,” Rodier said of the public warning system.

“It is not the end all, be all. There are so many risks that come with deploying Alert Ready. It works off cell towers and people’s phones. And if you’re in a position … or if you’re in an area where the cell coverage is not good, guess what, your phone is not going to go off.”

‘COULD HAVE BEEN CATASTROPHIC’

People don’t understand what the alerts can do to public behaviour, Rodier said.

“If we sent out an alert, it potentially could have been catastrophic,” she said.

“Real victims may not have been able to get through,” Rodier said, noting it could have also “caused confusion” with the public and how they perceived genuine RCMP officers.

Like other senior Mounties, Rodier said the public alerts that can be sent to mobile phones were not something the RCMP used or she was even aware of at the time of the mass killings.

“Prior to April 19, 2020, I knew nothing about it,” she said.

“We certainly had never used it.”

‘THAT’S NOT OUR BABY’

Her understanding was the system – then controlled by the province’s emergency management office -- was meant to be used to warn people about natural disasters.

“That’s not our baby,” she said.

Though Rodier seemed to know by the time she was interviewed that the province had used the Alert Ready system a week before the mass killings to tell Nova Scotians to stay home during the pandemic. “Certainly not a tool that was on our radar.”

Rodier recalled an April 19, 2020, exchange around 10:40 a.m. when Glen Mason, a civilian with the RCMP’S emergency management section, called Staff-sgt. Steve Ettinger, one of the risk managers on duty, to offer the use of the Alert Ready system to send out a warning about the mass killer.

Rodier was the ranking officer at the operational communications centre at the time. So Ettinger bounced it off her.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yes, yes, do it. Keep it basic,’” Rodier responded at the time.

She knew the RCMP’S media relations team -- known internally as strategic communications -- had been using the social media platform Twitter to warn people about the killer.

Then she heard Mason was trying call her directly.

“I yelled, ‘Go through strat comms.’”

That message wasn’t picked up on recordings, but Rodier said she is certain that’s what she said at the time.

“Hundred per cent … I unequivocally said it. I know it doesn’t come across in the recording. … But it’s in my notes and I know I said it.”

Her thinking at the time, Rodier said, was the messages should be the same.

“All of a sudden, my phone’s ringing and it was Michael Bennett from (the province’s emergency management office),” Rodier said.

“It didn’t make sense to me because I … in my mind, I had said, ‘Don’t call me, I’m busy.’”

At the same time, “things are really ramping up on the radio,” she said. “We’re getting reports that he’s headed you know, south towards Halifax, but then all of a sudden, we’re getting sightings that he’s at the Sobeys in Truro.”

Rodier was trying to sort out which report was false.

“It didn’t make sense that Michael Bennett would be calling me,” Rodier said, noting she didn’t answer the phone.

‘WEIGH THE RISKS AND WEIGH THE BENEFITS’

The decision to use the Alert Ready system should have gone through the RCMP’S critical incident commander, Rodier said.

“The CIC has overarching command of the entire operation,” she said.

“Their job is to … gather information, weigh the risks and weigh the benefits.”

When asked if she could foresee any situation where issuing one of the public alerts would be workable, Rodier said “whatever message we put out there, the public gets it, but the suspect also has a cellphone. And whatever messaging we send out, could that change his behaviour or affect operations or our tactics or all of that? It’s all case by case.”

According to multiple accounts, Wortman did not carry a cellphone.

Mounties got direct access to the Alert Ready system and training in how to use it after the April 2020 killings.

“Our decision-making doesn’t change, but it allows for a more efficient process in actually rolling out a message,” Rodier said.

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2022-05-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

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