‘Right reason to initiate warning,’ Langley City Mayor says of shooter alert

The City of Langley’s mayor says the decision to initiate an emergency alert Monday across the Lower Mainland was done for the right reasons.

The alert, first issued just after 6:15 a.m., was sent in response to an active police incident in which a shooter killed two people and left two others injured before being shot and killed by police.

“I, like everybody else, got an emergency alert I think at 6:18 this morning, that woke me up out of bed,” City of Langley Mayor Val van den Broek told CityNews. “I was in shock, and I immediately called the RCMP to see what was going on.”

Read more: Three dead, including suspect, after Langley shootings

More than an hour later, a second alert was sent, giving people the all-clear that there was no threat to the public, but still urging the public to stay out of the area.

The timing of the alerts however, is coming under scrutiny, as police confirmed Monday during media availability, the shooting incidents began around 12 a.m., with the others at 3 a.m., 5 a.m., and the final shots fired with the suspect around was at 5:45 a.m. — all before the initial alert was sent out.

However, BC RCMP said each incident was initially treated separately, and “as the information became known, and a proper risk assessment was done, that time was the best time that we’re able to issue the alert and tie these things together.”

Fronting the media, B.C.’s minister of public safety, Mike Farnworth, said police were dealing with a fluid and dynamic situation Monday morning.

“They have learned lessons from what happened in Nova Scotia and in Vanderhoof. This is only the second time in the province that an active shooter alert has been used,” he said. The first was in Vanderhoof in November, 2021.

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RCMP Chief Supt. Ghalib Bhayani said the alert was issued this morning, after police had determined it met the core criteria needed to be deployed.

This criteria includes: Reasonable belief of active threat with significant threat to public; threat is unpredictable and challenging for police to mitigate; and there is sufficient information about the threat and location.

However, there were complaints that it woke people up when it went off on phones as far away as Victoria, on Vancouver Island — more than 100kms away.

“I am happy that it was initiated and the reason for it, it was the right reason to initiate it,” van den Broek said.

And for many in the community it was welcomed and useful.

“I really appreciated the emergency aspect of it, immediately drawing attention to it, and the mass awareness,” Langley Township resident Laura Luyt told CityNews, adding it helped her get in touch with others in her community.

van den Broek added, time will tell what lessons can be learned, and if people had the information they needed when they needed it, with Farnworth confirming there will be an investigation launched into the alerts sent Monday.

“After the investigation is completed, there [are] obviously reviews [done] to understand how and why the alerts were issued the way that they were,” he said.