RCMP’s Inability to Track Officers During NS Killings Questioned at Inquiry

(L–R) RCMP constables Adam Merchant, Aaron Patton, and Stuart Beselt are questioned by commission counsel Roger Burrill at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18 and 19, 2020, in Halifax on March 28, 2022. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

Lawyers at the public inquiry into Canada’s worst mass shooting are asking why—in an era when teens use apps to locate each other—the RCMP lacked technology to track their officers on foot.

The topic has arisen repeatedly in the inquiry’s first two months, and a senior RCMP manager is acknowledging the absence of global positioning systems on police radios as officers responded to the 2020 rampage in Nova Scotia was unacceptable.