MCC Day 49 – Another Panel Discussion on Mass Casualties, IPV, GBV and Family Violence
Former Mountie testifies neighbour never reported N.S. mass shooter's domestic violence
Troy Maxwell is speaking before the public inquiry Tuesday via video
Troy Maxwell testified Tuesday via video at the public inquiry led by the Mass Casualty Commission into the shooting deaths of 22 people on April 18 and 19, 2020.
Maxwell, now retired after 21 years with the Mounties, has previously confirmed he was the responding officer from Bible Hill detachment assigned to handle the call from neighbour Brenda Forbes on July 6, 2013.
"If I'm being completely honest, the lack of notes shows me that this was a first-instance file. Because any time you have anything that you're going to be investigating, there would be way more information than that," Maxwell told the commission Tuesday.
He said a first-instance file is one that is concluded without taking any further investigative steps, and is handled very differently from a report of domestic violence.
Forbes has repeatedly told media outlets, RCMP, the commission in interviews and in-person testimony last week, that she told the Mounties about how the gunman, Gabriel Wortman, had choked his partner Lisa Banfield near their Portapique cottage.
She and her husband lived in Portapique at the time. Forbes said she'd heard about the assault from the gunman's uncle, Glynn Wortman, who saw it for himself. Forbes also said Glynn told her another neighbour, Richard Ellison, was also there.
During her talk with the officers at her workplace in Debert, Forbes said she told them the gunman also had illegal firearms and never had a gun licence. She also said she called Glynn and put him on speaker phone in front of the RCMP, but he refused to cooperate because he was worried the gunman would kill him.
"The RCMP heard all of that," Forbes told police soon after the mass shooting.
The officers then told Forbes there wasn't much they could do without Banfield "because we don't have her side of the story. And … with the weapons and stuff … we have no proof," Forbes said.
She added that the RCMP "never" followed up, and nothing ever came of the complaint.
Brenda Forbes, left, with her husband George. Forbes says she tried to tell police about Gabriel Wortman's abuse of his partner, and that he had illegal guns in his home, but that police did not investigate. (CBC)
But on Tuesday, Maxwell said he did not hear Forbes put Glynn on speaker phone, she never mentioned anything about an assault on Banfield and recalled the order of their meetings differently.
He said the complaint came through their Operational Communications Centre (OCC), containing details about someone "being belligerent" as they drove around Portapique.
Maxwell said he then called Forbes to get more information on her complaint which is when he would have taken down some notes.
One page of Maxwell's handwritten notes relates to Forbes' complaint, which include the names of Brenda Forbes, Glynn Wortman, and Richard Ellison, as well as the gunman's name and address. The word "Lisa" is in brackets on one side of the page.
Maxwell said Tuesday he doesn't know who Ellison and Glynn Wortman are, or why he wrote their names down. When asked about Lisa, he said "I don't know why it's there."
Former RCMP officer Troy Maxwell, when stationed in Bible Hill, N.S., made one page of notes about the meeting with Brenda Forbes in July 2013 detailing names of neighbours in Portapique and the gunman's partner. Forbes has said she told the RCMP at the time about the gunman's abuse of his common-law spouse Lisa Banfield, but Maxwell said Forbes complained about him speeding in the community. (Mass Casualty Commission)
For his next step, Maxwell said he recalls visiting the gunman's Portapique cottage around dusk the same day the complaint came in with another officer. They knocked on the door, but no one responded so they left.
He repeated Tuesday that if a domestic assault had been mentioned, there would have been more planning in how they approached that "high-risk" visit.
Maxwell told the commission earlier this year that he remembers Forbes's complaint being about the gunman driving too fast around the neighbourhood "in an old, decommissioned police car."
Banfield has said the gunman did not own a decommissioned police car in 2013. He did buy four decommissioned Ford Taurus vehicles years later in 2019, and turned one into a fully marked replica RCMP cruiser that he used in the rampage.
When commission counsel Emily Hill asked Tuesday whether that information changed his mind, Maxwell said no — since he'd seen an older Crown Victoria, a model also use by police forces, on the gunman's property.
"In my mind there was definitely a Crown Vic backed in at that yard. There was another vehicle behind it, and there was a vehicle off to the side … that was damaged," Maxwell said.
The Portapique, N.S. log cottage belonging to the Nova Scotia mass shooter. The building, and nearby warehouse, were burned to the ground during the April 2020 rampage. (Mass Casualty Commission)
During this visit, Maxwell said he remembers speaking to some of Wortman's neighbours which would have fit with police "best practice." He couldn't remember who he met, but said one of them may have been in the military and had a "slim" build.
At some point within the next five days, Maxwell said he called the gunman to inform him of the vehicle complaint. He does not remember whether he spoke to him directly, but does recall leaving a message on his answering machine, Maxwell said Tuesday.
Maxwell also said he didn't remember how he got the gunman's phone number, but recalled it being related to an address in Dartmouth or Halifax.
Finally, Maxwell said Tuesday, he remembers visiting Forbes at her Debert workplace to tell her about the steps he'd taken, and how the file was being closed. He said he didn't remember how Forbes reacted.
Banfield told the commission last week that she never knew Forbes made a report to police in 2013, but confirmed what Forbes described did happen.
After Forbes started speaking out about her complaint in the wake of the mass shooting, and how she'd tried to warn neighbours about the gunman, the Nova Scotia RCMP looked into their files.
That's when Maxwell turned in his one page of notes. Although the RCMP regularly purge old files, they were able to recover some details about Forbes' July 2013 complaint.
It was dispatched as "causing of disturbance" and later concluded as "assist to general public," RCMP documents show.
The term assist to general public would apply to "very minor thing," Maxwell told the commission earlier, like speeding or someone driving a bike on the wrong side of the road.
Domestic violence would have led to different investigation: Maxwell
If Forbes' had told him anything about domestic violence, even second-hand, Maxwell has said he would have made note of it and it would have been flagged to superior officers. He previously said they would have taken separate statements from the gunman and Banfield.
"My mother was abused as a child, so I did not take anything like that with a grain of salt, and it definitely would have been handled in a completely different manner than the notes you see," Maxwell said in his earlier commission interview.
If no one had been home when police arrived investigating domestic violence, Maxwell said Tuesday they would have returned to Portapique or asked other officers to check other properties until they found the suspect and victim.
The same day of Forbes's complaint, records show Maxwell conducted a check on the perpetrator using the Canadian Police Information Centre database, to see if he had any guns or concerning prior police interactions "to make sure that when we arrived we were safe."
By that time, the gunman had been reported to RCMP twice: first in 2010 after threatening to kill his parents, and then in 2011 that he wanted to "kill a cop."
On Tuesday, Hill pointed out a document that appears to show the OCC made the check into CPIC on his behalf about Wortman. Maxwell agreed that would likely have been the case since the communications centre checking into suspects and addresses was routine.
Banfield has said no police member ever interviewed her about possible domestic abuse before the mass shooting.
"Knowing that there was all these complaints … why didn't anybody even try to approach me? I've never had a police officer even ask me anything as far as my well-being or has he ever done anything to me," Banfield said in a commission interview.
The commission has said RCMP Const. Greg Wiley, who did visit the gunman's cottage to ask about firearms after the 2010 complaint, will testify at a later date yet to be announced.
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Okay, but doesn't that mean that essentially someone is lying? Then, the question for me would be---what motivation would the Forbes's have for lying about this now? If they did not actually tell the police anything at the time, why would they now lie and say they did?
Because how could they know for sure the police didn't have proof of what they said at the time---like maybe one of the police officers had a body cam or was using a recording device of some kind---and simply show that evidence, thus proving those two folks to be mischief-makers at the least.
But not only are the police unable to provide such evidence of their version of events, they barely have anything at all related to the report. Which would be odd if the Forbes's version is correct, because police are not known for dismissing reports of violence and illegal weapons.
So, what could it be? Well, here is a quote from a Macleans article:
"The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say."
"A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says Wortman could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen.
“There’s no way a civilian can just make an arrangement like that,” he said in an interview.
He added that Wortman’s transaction is consistent with the Mountie’s experience in how the RCMP pays its assets. "
Don't know about the Examiner, but Frank Magazine has tons of info and analysis that is comprehensive and insightful
Yet here you are...
Read both for a better sense of the disconnect between the somewhat bleached narrative of msm and what independent media know now and in the case of the embarrassingly honest little HE was exposing within days of this terrible massacre. There have been far too many powerful political players involved in this huge case--few or any of which/whom ever wanted exposure of the actual details in any official public inquiry and consequently they dragged their feet until the pressure grew too great. And still there is no guarantee that all of the sordid facts will be washed in public.
For over two years and most other msm only provided a gloss of the massacre details. Therefore, the msm narrative reads very differently from the highly-connected and politically embarrassing details often published by the Halifax Examiner.
When what he was doing was laughing at them and taking great pride in their gullibility and they can't admit that they were played for fools.
The real question is, was he a sometimes paid RCMP informant?
That editorial position is best described as pablum for mass consumption,
the Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - July 17, 2022
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