(Halifax) The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and its police federation are resisting pressure to compel officers who responded to the worst mass shooting in Canadian history to testify at the public inquiry.
Posted at 6:21 p.m.
The 18 police officers who intervened during this massacre which left 22 dead in April 2020 run the risk of being re-traumatized on the witness stand, argued Thursday the lawyer for the National Police Federation, who represents RCMP officers.
Nasha Nijhawan told the commissioners that they must take into account, in the treatment of witnesses, the mandate of the commission of inquiry, which includes being “respectful of the trauma suffered”.
Additionally, Lori Ward, counsel for the Attorney General of Canada, who represents the RCMP, said the families’ lawyers need to realize that the public inquiry is trying a whole new approach in terms of format.
“We hear the frustration of lawyers accustomed to a trial-like approach to gathering evidence […] but that does not mean that other methods of proof are not significant,” Ms.and Ward.
Most of the RCMP officers who responded to the killings have already given in-depth, unsworn interviews to commission prosecutors, she said. Unless it is clear that something is missing, that should be enough, pleaded Mand Ward.
Families care
Lawyers for family members of the victims asked the commissioners on Thursday to subpoena police officers Stuart Beselt and Vicki Colford to testify under oath about the first hours of the attacks in Portapique, where the killings began on April 18, 2020.
The commission released transcripts in which Constable Colford radioed her colleagues that she had heard there was “some kind of road that someone could get out of” the area. The commission agreed that the killer probably fled via a small, rough road that was not guarded by the police.
Mand Ward, for the government, said Officers Beselt and Colford addressed key issues during their interviews with commission prosecutors, and she argued that it was not clear that further testimony was needed. She also suggested that questions could be submitted in writing.
Lawyers for the Police Federation and the RCMP argued that the questions victims’ families have about the killings have already been answered and can be found in written transcripts of pre-inquest interviews. of the committee.
Commission lawyer Gillian Hnatiw did not request that any of the officers testify at the hearings. She did say, however, that some officers, including Constable Beselt, would participate in “a series of roundtables” made up of firefighters, paramedics and police officers, which are expected to take place during the second phase of the investigation. , later this year.
Butand Scott said that mechanism would not answer family questions about the police response on April 18 and 19, 2020, during the 1 p.m. manhunt for the killer, who was driving a replica of a RCMP patrol car.
“We are extremely frustrated with the idea of having to justify fact-finding as part of an investigative process,” he told the commission.