RCMP Shootings in Moncton, NB & Implications

Recent events in Moncton, NB have resulted in the deaths of three RCMP officers out of the Codiac Detachment. The accused in this case is a 24-year-old male who was armed with two rifles and apparently was also carrying a knife. He was at large for about 30 hours at which time police were able to effect an arrest with any further injury or lose of life. The accused was no longer armed at the time of his capture.

What this case represents is akin to the Active Shooter incidents which have become relatively common in the US and other jurisdictions. A recent study by Dr. Peter Blair, Director of Research for Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training and Associate Professor, Texas State University, defines an "active shooter" as:

one or more people killing or attempting to kill multiple people in an area or areas occupied by multiple unrelated individuals.

I shall return to some Dr. Blair's findings in this study shortly, however, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also studied active shooters quite closely and offer this definition:

...an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area...

What is clear with regard to the shooting of RCMP officers in Moncton is that we witnessed an active shooting event that began, and stayed, a mobile situation.

Many commentators have drawn a comparison between these events and the 2005 ambush and killing of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, AB. Here officers were guarding a grow-op and stolen auto parts in a Quonset hut when they were gunned down by James Roszko (46 years old), who later died of self-inflicted wounds.

In 2006 there was further lose of life for two RCMP officers following their encounter with Curt Dagenais after a car chase which developed from an investigation of domestic violence complaints.

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) in Washington, DC had identified active shootings as a critical issue following several events in a number of US jurisdictions, including the 2012 mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, CO and the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. In September 2013 an active shooting event in the Washington Navy Yard witnessed 15 people being shot, 12 of them fatally.

Accordingly, PERF organized a Summit on Active Shootings in Washington, DC in February 2013 which included representatives from law enforcement agencies across the country, and one senior police executive from Alberta. One of the highlights of this Summit was the research completed by Dr. Peter Blair which examined 84 active shooting events between 2000 and 2010. It is useful to note that Dr. Blair will be a guest speaker at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) being held in Victoria, BC in August.

Blair notes that there was a change in the tactical approach to shooting events following the tragedy in Columbine. It was seen as important to increase the speed of the police response when active shooters are involved in an effort to minimize lose of life. This was a departure from hostage or barricaded person events where time could be an important ally.

The Police Response to Active Shooter Incidents (2014)

Clearly, a fast response is more dangerous for the officers involved and this leads to a need for specialist officers to become engaged earlier in the process. So, contact teams should be comprised of Emergency Response Team (ERT) members or tactical personnel who have a higher level of training, as well as, enhanced weaponry skills.

It is essential to recognize that active shooter events are highly fluid and dynamic. Again, they require officers with high levels of skill in containment and clearing activities combined with special weapons proficiency.

US research indicates that 80% of active shooters stay in one location with approximately 20% of them going mobile.

Blair summarizes these active shooter events as pre-police and post-police circumstances. It is possible that events will occur and the attacker will stop because they have committed suicide or have left the scene. It is also possible that before police arrive, the victims will either shot or subdue the attacker. In the post-police context the attacker may stop, again, by committing suicide or surrendering. Finally, the police may stop the attacker by shooting the attacker or subduing that person.

Research also shows that initial entry by a solo officer is inherently dangerous. Fully one third of the cases that Blair looked at found that solo entry officers were shot by the attacker.

N.B.: It is important to emphasize in the case of active shooters that every event is UNIQUE and therefore it is not possible to have a template of "best practices" that can be applied. There are definitely lessons learned that might be applied in any given circumstance but officers need to be prepared for a host of challenges and difficulties when confronting an active shooter or shooters.

Blair has distilled the research on the 84 cases he examined to create the following list of characteristics for active shooters:

• they engage more than one target;
• their actions are usually an expression of hatred or rage;
• they are often suicidal with no attempt to hide their identify [this may be an attempt to engage in subject-initiated homicide];
• they have often made plans for their attack; and
• they often choose a location based upon tactical advantage.

Based upon his research, Blair suggests some ground rules for police operations that include the repeating of radio transmissions (to address the phenomenon of 'audio exclusion'), having rescue teams at the ready, and careful preparation of EMS personnel.

The Incident Commander has a key role to play in these events in areas such as:

• assessments;
• radio communications;
• requesting resources;
• gathering intelligence; and
• establishing perimeters.

Explicitly, the role of the perimeter team is to keep people OUT and to keep suspects IN...

The questions around "suppressive fire" which is really a war tactic were discussed at the Summit. Police executives were of the view that this is a war tactic that doesn't really have a place in law enforcement. However, "directed fire" may be useful in some circumstances if it is feasible.

The Summit highlighted a careful warning against officers "self-dispatching" to an active shooter event. This action may serve to complicate the response rather than assist it and if officers do come to the scene they should immediately go to a staging area where they can be properly assigned, if they are needed.

The attendees at the Summit emphasized that social media should be used extensively to communicate with the public. In the Moncton active shooting incident, the RCMP requested that people NOT use social media to share information regarding the whereabouts of its officers as a safety precaution.

University of Wisconsin police chief, Susan Riseling, has studied a number of active shooter incidents and provided five (5) phases for active shootings:

1. Fantasy
2. Planning
3. Preparing
4. Practicing
5. Implementing (or, the Event Horizon)

It will be useful to examine how closely the actions of Jason Bourque align with these five phases.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) Looks at Active Shooters

Beyond the work done by Professor Blair, the NYPD (during Commission Ray Kelly's recent tenure) has published an important and invaluable study of active shooters. This publication is entitled: NYPD Active Shooter Recommendations & Analysis for Risk Mitigation.

This report considers active shooter events from 1966 until December 31, 2010. This resulted in a total of 281 shooting incidents which were located by doing open source research on the Internet. This report includes a series of recommendations that are geared for security personnel in buildings and fall into the following main categories:

• procedures;
• systems; and
• training

It is valuable to know that the age of the active shooting attackers shows a bi-modal pattern with peaks at 15 to 19 (in school settings) and 35 to 44 (in non-school settings).

The eventual resolution of active shooter events followed these lines:

Resolution                           Number of Incidents        Percentage
Applied Force                      93                                     46%
No Applied Force                28                                     14%
Suicide/Attempted             80                                     40%
Attacker Fled                       1                                        Less than 1%
TOTAL                               202                                100%

It is disturbing when one considers the jurisdictional statistics assembled by this NYPD study. While the US is far and away the location for a vast majority of these active shooting events, Canada ranks second in overall instances of this type of occurrence. A sample of this jurisdictional listing is as follows:

Country                Active Shooter Incidents
United States         237
Canada                    8
Germany                 6
Australia                 5
Israel                       3
United Kingdom   4
Finland                    2
India                        2

There will be much to consider as the RCMP, and other police organizations in Canada, debrief and come to terms with the events in Moncton, NB last week. There is much to learn in order to prevent, predict, and/or mitigate such active shooter events in the future.

Stop-and-Frisk Policies: NYPD Style

There has been much attention paid to the impact of the stop-and-frisk policies introduced by the NYPD in recent months. In fact, the issue has divided members of New York City Council with those who perceive them as being an abridgement of civil rights pitted against Mayor Bloomberg, and his supporters (including Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly), who credit these policies with a reduction of crime within the city.

 

NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Policies

 

Basically, those in opposition to these policies suggest that they are actually a form of police practice that lends itself to racial profiling. It is argued that black and Hispanic individuals are subjected to these policies in numbers that are disproportionate to the white community.

 

City Council has been attempting to remove the stop-and-frisk approach from the operational practice of the NYPD, but, Mayor Bloomberg has been adamant in his support for this approach and has used his veto power to block any substantial changes in this area.

 

Recently, a federal judge has ruled that these stop-and-frisk policies have violated the constitutional rights of minorties within the city. And, while Judge Shira Scheindlin's ruling does not put an end to this tactic, it does require that a monitor be assigned to keep a watching brief on this practice in order to provide further feedback on this matter, as well as, pertaining to other issues such as officer-worn cameras. Lawyer, Peter Zimroth has been appointed to provide that monitoring role as a result of Scheindlin's decision and will offer some insights that may be useful for better understanding these practices.

 

As part of her review for this case, Scheindlin learned that about 83% of all stops conducted by the NYPD involved black or Hispanics, even though they represent only slightly more than 50% of the city's residents. These are important demographic realities that need to be taken seriously when discussing the difficult topic of racial profiling.

 

It remains relevant that in Canada only the Kingston Police have conducted any serious study of the potential for racial profiling within a police organization. This eastern Ontario police service undertook a year-long data collection project to determine if racial profiling was taking place in that jurisdiction. The results indicated that there was a disproportionate number of black individuals stopped by Kingston Police officers, however, it was not conclusive that racial profiling took place. Recently, the Ottawa Police Service has been required to pursue studies that approximate what the Kingston Police pioneered several years ago and this large-scale examination will have useful insights for other Canadian police departments.

 

Of critical importance, is that any study be conducted in a manner that observes strict methodological parameters in order that police policy-makers may have solid, evidence-based information upon which to build better approaches that fully respect citizens rights.

 

What You See Is What You Get: Facial Recognition

While the technology has been available for some time and has been featured in Hollywood movies, it's still instructive to consider the application of facial recognition techniques for law enforcement.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/technology/chicago-police-using-facial-recognition-technology-identify-suspects

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) has used the 'NeoFace' technology, which taps into the footage generated by the nearly 24,000 closed-circuit cameras distributed within their jurisdiction. Recently, the CPD made their first arrest employing facial recognition capabilities. Pierre Martin was apprehended following an incident on the Chicago subway system involving an armed robberty. The CPD was able to match images of Martin after a comparison with more than 4.5 million booking shots in their files. A prodigious amount of analysis completed with minimal human interaction.

This operational breakthrough has been met with serious concerns about invasion of privacy by members of the Illinois ACLU. However, as a cost-effective law enforcement tool, it has considerable promise.

Certainly the kind of Orwellian surveillance that CCTV facilitates is a matter for public policy debate. Of course, the goal of public and community safety may warrant the application of this particular form of technology if it produces results that can stand the test of the courts, as well as, within the court of public opinion.

Twitter & Modern Policing: New Research

In June 2013 the UK policy think-tank, Demos, published a new report that should be of considerable interest to Canadian police organizations: @MetpoliceUK: how twitter is changing modern policing: the case of the Woolwich aftermatch by Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller.

http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/metpoliceuk

A word about Demos is useful at this point as it represents something noticably absent on the Canadian policy landscape. This is a progressive entity that undertakes substantial research on public policy issues and takes an "all-party" perspective. Their projects range from austerity measures, through crime and public safety, to residential care, and welfare.

The publication cited above is an extremely timely offering that provides readers with some much-needed insight into how this form of social media may be utilized by police organizations for a variety of purposes.

We have seen many so-called "twitcidents" occuring around the globe. In Vancouver, the Vancouver Police Department made consider use of social media intelligence (or, SOCMINT) following the devastating riot that followed the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2012.

Of considerable value is this publication's dissection of the flood of tweets that surrounded the death of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, England on May 22, 2013. Rigby was a drummer with the Royal Regiment of Fusilliers and his murder occurred in broad daylight. Lee Rigby

The authors of this report have downloaded and categorized all 19,344 tweets that included @metpoliceUK from May 17 to 23, 2013. This method of collecting, coding, and analyzing relevant tweets is an important technique that may prove commonplace for police organizations in the future. The researchers gave considerable thought to the ethics associated with this project and came to the conclusion that, given the inherent nature of tweets and the public status of the Met, there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy among the tweeters. In any event, the authors were diligent in stripping any identifiers from the tweets they have analysed in this report.

We are increasingly being informed by what researchers have taken to calling 'souveillance' which amounts to the recording of police actions by members of the public using various forms of technology. The events surrounding the deaths of Robert Dziekanski in Canada, Ian Tomlinson in the UK, and others are the direct result of this 'souveillance' by citizens equipped with recording equipment, like smart phones.

The authors of the Demos report include several recommendations that will benefit police organizations, or their civilian governing authorities, in relation to social media intelligence, including:

• establish the human and technological infrastructure to deal effectively with the social media aftermath of emergency situation. Essential to have a single point of contact within the organization;
• develop centralized capacity for SOCMINT; and
• Home Office should create a clear framework for the collection and use of SOCMINT across the UK's forty-three (43) police services.

Technological advances in social media have created an excellent tool for incoming and outgoing communications in modern police organizations. This publication demonstrates that social media will place increasing expectations upon police services to engage with the public using this platform. Twitter also offers some scope for investigative approaches that may harness the stream of information that flows from this type of source.

Mentally Ill Persons and the VPD

It has been known for some considerable length of time that police departments, in Canada and elsewhere, have been carrying a heavy load when responding to individuals within their communities who suffer from various forms of mental illness. It is not uncommon for so many of the excessive use of force incidents to result from a police officer's attempt to deal with someone who is uncontrollable, dissociative, and exhibiting signs of severe mental illness. Police personnel at the front-line rarely, if ever, have the training, knowledge, skills or mindset required for dealing with this population.

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) has recently released a report that deals with the enormous magnitude of this issue:

VPD costs for dealing with Mentally Ill

Accordingly, the VPD's latest report: Policing Vancouver's Mentally Ill: The Disturbing Truth: Beyond Lost In Transition makes for important reading that all Canadian police services will wish to study and likely take on board as an echo of their own challenges with this distinctively difficult and deserving population of citizen.

VPD Report on Policing the Mentally Ill

An ongoing operational, strategic and societal issue for resolution.