As the investigation into the mass stabbing on James Smith Cree Nation and Weldon, Sask., continues, so to are the emergency alerts that buzz on residents’ devices.
Since Sunday, around a dozen emergency alerts have been issued.
Bruce Pitt-Payne, a retired RCMP officer who served for over 25 years, believes the alerts are justified, and in fact, when done correctly, “extremely helpful.”
“But you’ll notice I said when done correctly. And in this sense, it didn’t incite panic. It was enough information at the right time to alert people that there is a danger out there,” Pitt-Payne told Global News.
Despite the system becoming a useful resource to alert the public, Pitt-Payne said it can also become useful information for the wanted suspect to not get caught.
“This may sound counterproductive. It may have stopped the suspect, in this case, from choosing to flee too far and stay in the open.”
Tim Trytten, the former team lead of Alberta’s Emergency Management system, explained to Global News the purpose of issuing an alert and the criteria emergency alerts should meet.
“Emergency alerts are different than communications. They are a short, sharp message to the public, telling them about a clear and imminent danger, unexpected, which they can take protective action,” Trytten said. “And there must be instructions that we can give the public to keep them safe.”
“An alert without instructions is simply an invitation to all kinds of other problems.”
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But not all of the recent alerts were connected to the mass stabbings.
While the majority of the alerts were related to the manhunt for Myles Sanderson, a suspect wanted in the investigation, a string of alerts were actually related to two different police reports of shots fired.
On Monday, alerts were issued by Spiritwood RCMP for reports of shots fired on Witchekan Lake First Nation.
On Tuesday, an alert was issued by Maidstone RCMP for reports of shots fired in Brittania.
“That’s not necessarily something that the police control. But if you have too many of them, I would think that people will see it as crying wolf,” Pitt-Payne said.
However, the former officer concludes that it is better to be safe than sorry: “If it turns out that we didn’t err on the side of caution and somebody died?”
“So I think we’re going to see more and more of these. And I think in fairness to the police, it is new and they’re going to have to learn as well. It’s not failure necessarily. It’s learning.”
Trytten echoed Pitt-Payne’s sentiment.
“You can always say, I’m sorry that things did not get as bad as I thought they were going to do in real time. But there is never a reason to say I knew about it, but I didn’t say anything as an alert issuer.”
Pitt-Payne said that the use of mass communications will be a learning curve for the police force, and other organizations that opt to use the emergency alert system. He compared the communications of RCMP in Saskatchewan versus the communications of Nova Scotia’s RCMP force during the 2020 mass shooting in Portapique.
“Since Portapique, the RCMP took heavy criticism for not doing an alert and saying that allowed the situation to escalate,” Pitt-Payne stated.
Trytten said this should be an indication of the importance of this system.
“People are coming to depend on this as a first indication that a situation is developing,” he said. “That kind of public trust is something we have to work hard as alert issuers to maintain because people do rely on this.”
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