RCMP face questions over emergency alerts after Riverview shooting

The New Brunswick RCMP are defending their handling of emergency alerts issued in the Riverview shooting Tuesday that left a teacher in hospital and sparked an overnight manhunt for an armed and dangerous suspect.

The incident began with a shooting Tuesday at 5:15 p.m. outside of Riverview High School and ended with the arrest of Janson Bryan Baker in downtown Amherst, N.S., Wednesday morning.

But the almost 19 hours between the shooting and the arrest — and a series of alerts sent out in the duration — have sparked questions about whether the public was adequately informed and protected, both here in New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia.

Immediately after the incident, Riverview Mayor Ann Seamans told CBC News that she'd been assured by the RCMP that there was "no risk to the public."

However, hours later, just before 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, RCMP issued an alert saying that they were seeking an armed and dangerous individual, identified as Jansen Bryan Baker, and warned residents not to approach him if they saw him.

They later sent out another alert adding the area he was believed to be in — the Greater Moncton area — and then another alert at around midnight, connecting Baker to the Riverview shooting.

Confusion over alert lag time

Many took to social media to express their confusion over the alerts, particularly the amount of time it took to let people know the individual being sought was a suspect in the shooting at the high school and the leap from "no risk to the public" to warnings of an armed and dangerous suspect on the loose.

In an interview with CBC News on Thursday, New Brunswick RCMP Insp. Andrea Gallant, the communications program manager with the Alert Ready system, tried to clear up the confusion.

Gallant noted that while the lag between incident and alert might seem long, much investigation goes on behind the scenes before an alert is issued.

"No police officer or agency can know everything about an evolving situation immediately," she said, noting that a lot of information has to be gathered, facts have to be cross-checked and risk levels have to be determined before an alert can be issued.

"It was an evolving and dynamic situation, and the areas that received the message were strategically chosen based on the investigational information we had at the time."

Taking the time to put out thoroughly checked information is crucial not only to public safety, she said, but also to keeping rumours and misinformation from spreading throughout the community.

Gallant said it was encouraging to see that the alert information was being widely shared on social media, because that ensured that "credible and accurate information was circulating."

"That may seem like a small thing, but it went a long way during an incident like this," she said.

Mayor explains 'no risk to public' comment

Gallant declined to comment on the mayor's earlier comments that the RCMP had told her there was no risk, saying she could not respond to statements made by "someone outside the agency."

But Mayor Ann Seamans said Thursday that, in hindsight, she shouldn't have publicly said that the community was not at risk.

"Some residents were upset with my comment [to CBC News] that referred to there being no danger to the public," Seamans said.

"My intent in that interview was to relay what I had been told by RCMP in their initial text to me," Seamans said in an email. "Unfortunately, the situation evolved."

Seamans said she was pleased with the RCMP's handling of the situation, noting they were in constant communication with her and informed her that an alert was about to be sent out.

She said she was confident that her community had been adequately protected, and noted that in the future, "we'll be ensuring that the RCMP handles the communication during any such incident."

Gallant noted that Tuesday's alerts were the first instance of the New Brunswick RCMP using the Alert Ready system to directly issue an alert to the public. (The administering of the alerts was handed over to the RCMP this past summer by the province.)

"As with all critical incidents," Gallant said, "we'll be reviewing our response to ensure we are building best practices."

'Everything is still raw from Portapique'

In Amherst, where Jansen Bryan Baker was ultimately arrested Wednesday and where the mass killings in Portapique are still a traumatic recent memory, some were expressing grave doubts about those practices in Nova Scotia.

In an interview with Information Morning Moncton on Thursday, Cumberland County MLA Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin said she thinks the Maritime region and its police forces need to work more collaboratively in such situations.

"The fact that the alert went out in New Brunswick at midnight, it should not have been difficult at all for an alert to be given out to people of Nova Scotia" as soon as the suspect's car was found in Amherst, she said.

"Especially when eight hours earlier New Brunswickers are informing us that he's dangerous and armed and not to approach him, and now his car is literally in our downtown."

Smith-McCrossin said she alerted border officials Tuesday herself at around midnight to make sure they were aware of the alert.

"Everything is still very raw from Portapique," Smith-McCrossin said. "Here we are eight or nine months later and it appears nothing was improved in our emergency alert system in Nova Scotia."