SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
RCMP officers involved with the Karen Lander case should have taken further action to ensure public safety, according to Staff Sgt. Brent Secondiak of the Medicine Hat Police Services.
Secondiak, who helped conduct a third-party investigation of the shooting, said he was surprised to find that on the day of Lander's death officers only attempted to contact Glick Court residents by phone.
There was no answer at four of the homes, according to RCMP Insp. David Elliott, who testified at the coroners' inquest into Lander's death.
In that case, Secondiak said, an officer should have been sent on foot to make sure those houses were empty.
"It's entirely possible that somebody is at work and that's OK. But we have to ensure that nobody's home just for safety," Secondiak said.
There were residents inside at least one of the houses on March 14, 2012. Bullets ripped through a couple's home as they were watching the evening news, the homeowner told Yellowknifer previously.
One of the bullets entered the kitchen and landed in a bedroom. Another flew into the living room and hit a bookcase, while a third passed under the front bay window and into a coffee table.
Two other bullets hit the exterior of the home but stopped there, testified Kramer Powley of the National Forensic Services.
The rounds were fired by police officers attempting to take down a suicidal Lander, who came out of a neighbouring house with a rifle. Lander had spent more than four hours barricaded inside before coming out.
Given the situation, the residents should have eventually been evacuated, Secondiak said, adding officers had enough time to get the job done before Lander exited the house.
"Resources are always an issue but when it comes to evacuating, those people's lives are potentially in jeopardy and that's kind of the foremost one of our considerations. So we would do that as soon as reasonable, as soon as we're able to," he said, adding in Medicine Hat residents would be taken to a bus, an arena, a school or perhaps a church.
During the inquest, Elliott said, there was a discussion about removing residents from the area but due to limited resources, such as shelter and officers, they felt it was safer to keep everyone inside.
RCMP Chief Supt. Wade Blake, commanding officer of RCMP G Division, told a local radio station earlier this week that a more senior officer should have been on scene the day of the shooting.
"It is in our policy to have a senior incident commander on scene of any major incident," Blake was quoted as saying. "It's a question obviously I would have as commanding officer of the division."
Yellowknifer could not reach Blake after the inquiry despite repeated phone calls but was put in contact with RCMP Cpl. Barry Ledoux instead.
If the incident had gone on longer, residents would had to have been evacuated so they could safely continue on with their day-to-day activities, said Ledoux last week.
The Yellowknife detachment uses every situation as a learning opportunity, he said. After each incident a debriefing is conducted and officers discuss what could have been done differently, he added.
"We're always revisiting those situations," Ledoux said.
Secondiak said there are lessons to be taken from the incident and he hopes Yellowknife RCMP will learn from that day.
"We're always trying to better ourselves and improve for next time, and if you don't do that and think you did everything perfect then it's just not possible," Secondiak said. "There is always things you can learn."
