The radio communications system used by the RCMP during Nova Scotia’s mass shooting worked as it was designed to — even if officers struggled to get messages through because of network congestion, officials told an inquiry Thursday.
The system, known as Trunked Mobile Radio 2, is designed to allow authorized users and organizations to communicate with one another on multiple channels through so-called talk groups. During emergencies — like the killing spree that claimed the lives of 22 people over a 13-hour period on April 18-19, 2020 — the system can get overwhelmed.
In fact, a number of RCMP officers have either testified or told the inquiry during separate interviews that they often struggled during the 13-hour shooting rampage to get through on their radios because of congestion on the network. Trevor MacLeod, Bell Mobility’s director of public safety radio engineering and operations, said Thursday the network experienced “a significant amount of additional call requests" during the mass shooting.
The incident saw two RCMP officers, Const. Terry Brown and Const. Dave Melanson, mistakenly open fire and miss a man they thought was the rampaging gunman. Their target turned out to be David Westlake, the emergency management co-ordinator for Colchester County. Meanwhile, the inquiry also heard Thursday that a radio in the gunman’s replica RCMP vehicle was an older model that would not have had the capability of listening in to the digital radio network used by the RCMP during the shooting.
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