'Serious allegations' against municipal police force contained in RCMP document released by inquiry

The Mass Casualty Commission entered more than 2,000 documents into the public record Thursday, a month after the inquiry into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting ended public hearings.

“As you know, we have faced significant challenges with document disclosure in the course of our work,” said commission chair Michael MacDonald during a brief virtual hearing Thursday.

Among the thousands of pages, which are now public and will be placed on the inquiry’s website, is an RCMP Situation Report (SITREP), which contains explosive allegations made by RCMP officers against members of another police force.

The document is heavily redacted, but commission correspondence indicates the accusations were not related to the tragedy.

The SITREP indicates the claims were made to senior RCMP members during a detachment visit after the tragedy.

According to the report, “During the review process two persons (redacted) came forward and provided information alleging serious criminal behaviour being committed by (redacted)...."

The July 10, 2020 report says one of those witnesses claimed to have “text messages, as well as other notes in (redacted) possession to corroborate what (redacted) is claiming.” It indicates the information was provided “on record” and in one case was audio recorded.

The report also states, “there is significant detail provided by both witnesses of non-criminal behaviour in relation to Police Act violations..."

Michael Scott of Patterson Law, which represents many of the Nova Scotians most affected by the mass shooting, says the redactions take away relevant and necessary details.

“At the moment, I have no idea why they're being provided, if they're effectively blank documents,” he says.

“What everybody seems to agree on is that they're very serious allegations that require investigation and that no investigation was done.”

The transcript of a Commission interview with RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather, which was recorded behind closed doors on the final day of public proceedings, indicates the RCMP took the allegations seriously and asked the province’s police watchdog, the Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT), to investigate.

Leather told the commission that communications with SiRT’s director at the time, Felix Cacchione, indicated SiRT would look into the information provided by the RCMP.

But after much back-and-forth, Leather says the organization eventually decided not to conduct an official investigation.

“I wrote to the director myself Oct. 26,” Leather said. “And less than 20 minutes later he responded to me with the one-line position that SiRT would not be investigating.”

According to SiRT’s current interim director, John Scott, the municipal force that was the target of the allegations was the Truro Police Service.

Scott says, before taking on a formal investigation, SiRT investigators did some preliminary work on the case, including interviewing witnesses.

“To try to see if there was anything there of any substance whatsoever with this allegation of any type of criminality involved by a member of the Truro Police Service,” Scott told CTV News in a phone interview.

But Scott says those witness interviews led SiRT to conclude there was no evidence of any criminality.

“There was nothing to investigate,” he adds. “And it didn’t meet our mandate.”

During its public proceedings, the commission has heard evidence of tensions between the Nova Scotia RCMP and municipal forces in the province.

In May, Truro Police Chief Dave MacNeil criticized the national police force for failing to use a public alert during the mass shooting to warn the public.

Leather told the commission he was told that SiRT was under the impression the allegations could be tied to those tensions, “as it appears to be an ongoing dispute between the RCMP and (redacted) that a substantive offence is not clear.”

Lawyer Michael Scott says that information is relevant to his clients and their concerns about policing in Nova Scotia.

“It has everything to do with the mass casualty,” he says. “We’ve dedicated a remarkable amount of time dealing with how investigations proceed and the relationship between different policing agencies in Nova Scotia at the time.”

“And we’re bringing in issues of turf wars between different police agencies,” he says. “All of those things inform critical issues that the Mass Casualty Commission is going to have to address.”

As for why the name of the police department targeted in the allegations was redacted, commission lawyer Emily Hill wrote in a statement that, “

“… relationships between police agencies as well as the role of oversight bodies such as SiRT must be examined in order to understand and comment on policing in Nova Scotia….”

She continued, “However, the substance of the allegations set out in the July 2020 letter to SiRT does not relate to the mass casualty or the perpetrator and therefore the details of those allegations, including the identities of the witnesses and of the individuals and police agency who are the subject of the allegations are not requisite to the Commission’s work. In other words, it is the treatment of these allegations that is relevant to the Commission’s mandate. “