People Called 911 to Complain About Active Shooter Alert

Public safety officials in Langley, British Columbia promise to review the decision to issue public emergency alerts during a shooting rampage Monday, but they say the decision was appropriate, and they’re not happy with the way some citizens responded. Per CTV News, the first cellphone alert was issued at 6:20am as police were dealing with a deadly shooting rampage in the city. Irked by the early hour, some heavy-eyed residents dialed 911 to complain, provoking a scold from E-Comm, the province's emergency service dispatch service, reminding everyone that "general questions and complaints do not belong on 911."

Besides, E-Comm doesn’t issue emergency alerts; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police do. They issued a total of three alerts Monday morning, by which time there had already been multiple shootings across the Vancouver suburb, with the first occurring around midnight, per CBC. In the end, two male victims were found dead; a female victim remains in critical condition. Per Reuters, the shooter was already wounded when police located him and "was shot dead at the scene by officers." He was identified as Jordan Daniel Goggin, 28, who had no criminal record, though he was known to local police. Authorities have not offered a possible motive, but they described the victims as "transients."

Goggin was already dead when the first warning was issued at 6:20am, but police didn’t know at the time whether he was the only shooter, Global News reports. In a press conference, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth justified the decision to alert the public. "Police were dealing with a very fluid and dynamic situation, they have learned lessons from what happened in Nova Scotia and in Vanderhoof." As the CBC reported late last year, policies around the use of the Ready Alert system were updated following a mass shooting in Nova Scotia 2020 that claimed 22 lives. The updated system was first used for an active shooter incident late last year when a gunman in a vehicle opened fire on police in Vanderhoof, BC. The suspect was later arrested and nobody was hurt. (More British Columbia stories.)