Ten years after the Moncton shootings, the RCMP is still struggling with supervisor training

HALIFAX — Nearly 10 years after a deranged man with a rifle killed three mounts in Moncton, NB, RCMP have yet to fully implement a key recommendation from a 2014 review aimed at preventing such deadly encounters.

On the evening of June 4, 2014, Justin Bourque was armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a shotgun when he left his mobile home on a self-described mission to kill police officers. Driven by paranoia and hatred of the government, the 24-year-old worker fatally shot police officers Fabrice Gevaudan, 45, David Ross, 32, and Douglas Larche, 40.

Two other officers, Darlene Goguen and Eric Dubois, were wounded during Bourque’s 20-minute shooting spree before he escaped into a wooded area at the edge of a residential subdivision.

For more than 29 hours, the city of 69,000 would remain under virtual siege until crew aboard a surveillance plane used an infrared camera to spot the gunman’s glowing heat signature on the night of 5 June 2014.

Bourque was sentenced to an unprecedented 75 years in prison, but the New Brunswick Court of Appeal reduced his parole ineligibility period to 25 years after the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the law that had made such long sentences possible.

Six months after the killings, retired RCMP Deputy Commissioner Alphonse MacNeil released a report with 64 recommendations. These included a call for police forces to “examine how they train frontline supervisors to exercise command and control during critical incidents”.

In his report, MacNeil found that on the night of June 4, 2014, RCMP supervisors “were faced with a situation that in many ways exceeded what supervisors are trained to deal with,” adding that at the time they were shot gunfire, “chaos ensued. “

“No one established a commanding presence during this period. Members were acting on their own without a unified tactical plan… No one at the supervisory level had a big picture of where resources were positioned and that remained for the next hour or more.”

In response to the recommendation, the RCMP developed two critical incident response management courses: a 90-minute online introductory course and a 16-hour advanced course. And the courses were made mandatory for all frontline supervisors in 2018.

But in the years that followed, few mountaineers enrolled in the courses. That issue was revealed by the public inquiry into the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia, which saw another lone gunman kill 22 people — including an RCMP officer — during a 13-hour rampage on 6-7 p.m. April 2020.

The final report of the Mass Casualty Commission, released just over a year ago, confirmed that none of the RCMP commanders who initially responded to the mass shootings in Nova Scotia had taken the advanced course and only one had completed the introductory course.

“We find that many of the supervisors involved in the initial response to the critical incident in Portapique, NS, did not receive the training that … MacNeil recommended,” the inquiry report said. The supervisors who coordinated the RCMP response that night “were in no better position than their colleagues had been in Moncton in June 2014.”

In 2022, the Commission of Inquiry also challenged the Highlanders’ claim to the inquiry investigators that they had already implemented MacNeil’s recommendation.

“A recommendation is not properly characterized as ‘implemented’ if the training … has not been completed by all or a large portion of those to whom it is directed,” the commission’s final report said.

As a result, the panel recommended the RCMP conduct an external review of its critical incident response training for frontline supervisors and specifically mentioned the two courses in question.

Two months ago, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme provided an update on the RCMP’s progress in implementing the recommendations of the public inquiry and launched the required external review. It said improvements were needed with the advanced course, but also confirmed the compliance rate for the training remained low.

By March 31, 2023, only 14% of police officers had completed the advanced course. The RCMP target for that date was 55%.

In the higher ranks, 44% of corporals had completed the course by the same date. The police force was targeting 70% by March 2024, but more recent statistics were not available.

For sergeants, 43% had completed the course by March 31, 2023, well below the 85% level required by March 2025.

The RCMP accepted a request for comment from The Canadian Press but did not respond.

Christian Leuprecht, a political studies professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, said the RCMP is a slow-moving organization that has long been starved of resources.

“There are never enough financial and human resources because the demands always exceed the resources,” said Leuprecht, who also teaches in the political science department at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston.

Leuprecht said the RCMP’s lack of resources is compounded by the federal Liberal government’s apparent lack of interest in reforming the police force. “If it took 10 years, the inference is that nobody at the political level really cares,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Mass Injuries Commission’s final report had harsh words for the RCMP’s response to the MacNeil report, particularly when it came to handling critical incidents.

“Although good work was done in the immediate aftermath of the Moncton shootings … that work was not institutionally sustained and did not produce lasting improvements in supervisor training and education,” the final report said.

As the anniversary of the Moncton shootings approaches, RCMP say the date will be marked in the city with a private gathering among relatives of the three slain officers. The ceremony will take place Tuesday at the Garden of Honor in Riverfront Park, where a monument features life-size statues of Gevaudan, Ross and Larche.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 2, 2024.

Michael MacDonald, Canadian Press