Issues with the radio communications have become a theme in the inquiry into the mass shooting but recent evidence points to user error playing the biggest role.
A roundtable last week on the digital radio system in Nova Scotia used by first responders went over the technical aspects of the system and what happened across April 18 and 19, 2020 when a gunman killed 22 people in the province.
Glen Byrne, commander of the communications centre, told commission investigators in an interview last summer that he’d heard from his staff “numerous times” that some RCMP members didn’t know how to use their radios.
“A member puts a radio on their … on their belt and on a 12-hour shift, they’re probably interacting with that radio … hundreds of times. Yet they don’t know the functionality of the radio or how it works or why it works,” Byrne said.
“That’s insane … a radio’s going to save a member’s life before their gun is.”
