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My comment on this thread: First I have great respect for the members of the RCMP Protective Division, they have spent 15 years adding skills & capabilities that have made them a professional organization. I’ve worked closely with them several times & even trained with a few in + https://twitter.com/mercedesglobal/status/1281388279535939584
a past life. That said, my knowledge of their skills & procedures makes my assessment of their actions that night all the more difficult. From the moment they decided that the threat was real, they failed in escalating and compounding ways that mystify me. First their exterior +
search was weak. When that turned up nothing they had three choices: 1. Determine that the witness was mistaken. 2. Determine that the shooter was spooked and left (alert local authorities with description) or 3. Presume the shooter got inside. Hopefully protocols were +
being followed & the interior undercover team was searching hard for a suspect but if they came to the conclusion that the threat was inside their options narrowed to two: 1. End the event, evacuate the principles, then as people were leaving, attempt to identify & arrest +
the suspect. 2. Secure the principles, empty the venue (observing all people as they exit into a secure parking lot, rescreen the venue, rescreen the people attending the event and then allow the event to continue. These are basic responses to threats, while some were followed +
too many mistakes were made to ignore. 1. No additional local resources were involved to clear, secure & expand the exterior perimeter. 2. People were allowed to come & go from the venue during the efforts to locate the possible shooter. 3. The interior was never secure. 4. An +
entity (OPP SWAT) was introduced into the team to provide an overt security presence without sufficient preparation or integration. It appears their presence was an effort to scare the shooter into not acting. 4. Adding a visible soft vest to a principle, would all but ensure +
an attacker aimed at other lethal spots like the head instead of centre of mass (torso) where a covert soft vest could effectively stop most hand gun rounds. One of the greatest failings this incident exposes is the ability of a campaign team to overrule the protective detail +
and force them to do things that they know are improper. I don’t believe for a second the RCMP didn’t know what had to done or propose it to the campaign team but unlike the US Secret Service, the RCMP does not have any veto power over their protectee’s. That needs to change or +
RCMP Protective Detail members will continue to more at risk than they need to be and principles will continue to put themselves at risk unnecessarily. This became a political spectacle not an example of how a professional security organization responds to a threat in a high +
risk environment and it also demonstrated that while the RCMP has come a long way on the security professionalism side there is still a ways to go on the authority front. Just my thoughts! #cdnpoli
