Former Ontario commissioner reflects on 2014 Moncton shooting

Despite working for the Ontario Provincial Police a decade ago, Chris Lewis can distinctly remember where he was when he heard the news of the shooting for three New Brunswick RCMP officers in Moncton, N.B., in 2014.

“I recall it very vividly,” he told CTV’s Todd Battis during an interview on Tuesday. “I related very much to it. As a fellow police officer you can’t help but react, particularly from a leadership perspective because you think about your own people.

“Not only is your heart bleeding for the RCMP in a situation like that, you can’t help but worry about everybody else doing the job.”

On June 4, 2014, a gunman using a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle killed constables Fabrice Gevaudan, Dave Ross, and Douglas Larche. He also shot and wounded constables Eric Dubois and Darlene Goguen.

The gunman was arrested after nearly 30 hours of searching and was sentenced to 75 years in prison. He later had his parole ineligibility period reduced to 25 years.

Lewis, who serves as CTV News’ public safety analyst, said tragedies like the one in Moncton often prompt reflection for police departments.

“Everything big like that, police departments are obligated to learn from that,” he said. “Always looking to improve policy and training after every incident. If you fast-forward from Moncton to Portapique, there were obviously still some issues lingering in terms of command and control and trying to track resources.”

After the Moncton incident, a report with 64 recommendations was released. A recent article by The Canadian Press suggests the RCMP is still struggling with supervisor training, which was one of the recommendations.

“The priority has to be those who respond to frontline incidents like Moncton and if there’s any failure to have them trained, then that’s a failure of the organization and it’s not fair to their members or the community,” Lewis said. “At any given time you send officers away for training, you’re taken them off the road and out of detachments, so it has to be done as quickly as feasible. All those new officers should get that training when they’re hired.”

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