Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Police suppressed details on Danforth shooter's trip to Pakistan

TORONTO—His first target was a group of teenage girls eating ice cream. They stood in their summer dresses and spiked heels at the edge of a parkette, hub to the lively Greektown bar-and-restaurant strip on Danforth Avenue.

The shooter spotted them. Moving briskly along the south sidewalk, opposite the parkette, he passed the Logo Bar, Brass Taps, Mocha Mocha and a Tim Hortons coffee shop, then crossed the street and opened fire.

He shot one girl through the hip, another in the stomach, a third twice in the stomach and kidney, and a fourth, Reese Fallon, three times in the left arm. The first three victims crumpled to the pavement. Fallon staggered away from the street, stunned, and asked a man for help. “Please call 911,” she said, and as the man fumbled with his phone the shooter clicked a fresh magazine into his 40-calibre Smith & Wesson handgun. “Run!” cried a bystander, and when Fallon tripped, the shooter pumped 10 more rounds into the prone 18-year-old girl. “He went back and finished her off,” a witness said.
Reese Fallon

Reese Fallon

Many details of that Sunday night two years ago, on July 22, were never made public. Police never disclosed that Fallon sustained 13 bullets, most of them fired point-blank. News reporters never put together that eight high-school friends stood at the parkette, seven girls and one guy, and that half of them were shot.

Worse, crucial details of the mass shooting went unexplored or were deliberately suppressed, possibly out of political correctness. The next day, police reported a total of fifteen people shot, including two dead, but the civilian Special Investigations Unit ordered the shooter’s name withheld. Late in the day, when the unit relented and announced the name — a Muslim name — police and politicians warned against jumping to conclusions.

“I am certainly not going to invite any type of speculation,” Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters. “At this stage,” said federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, “there is no connection between that individual and national security.”

Goodale knew, however, that a connection might eventually be made. Police cited possible Islamic terrorism when they applied for search warrants, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) began a six-month probe into potential terrorist ties. Authorities also knew that the shooter’s brother was linked to the discovery of a chemical-weapons cache with serious national-security implications.

On the second anniversary of the shootings, the Covid-19 pandemic prevents a large memorial gathering, but no virus can stop a review of the known facts and uncomfortable loose ends.

The shooter was Faisal Hussain. He was 29 years old, a skinny man with a long face, heavy eyebrows, and a close-cropped black beard. He still lived with his parents, devout Muslims from Pakistan. The three shared a two-bedroom high-rise apartment in Thorncliffe Park, north of the Danforth neighbourhood across a bend in the Don River Valley.
Faisal Hussain

Faisal Hussain

Faisal held two part-time jobs. He stocked shelves at Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart. On Sunday, July 22, 2018, he returned home from the grocery, ate dinner, chatted with his fraternal twin brother, who was visiting, and at 9:10 p.m. walked into the warm, humid night toward the popular strip everybody calls “the Danforth.”

At 9:56 p.m., at the bustling parkette, he started shooting. He used a stolen gun and shot expertly, standing with legs apart and arms outstretched in a two-handed grip. In dark clothing and a black cap, carrying extra ammunition in a shoulder bag, he continued westward for another 400 metres, changing magazines on the fly and sending people screaming.

He shot one waiter through the hand and another through the thigh. On the sidewalk, he yelled at a mother and son, “Get out of my way,” and shot them both. On a restaurant patio, he severed the spinal cord of nursing student Danielle Kane, paralysing her from the waist down, and at a dessert café he shot Donny Kozis and his 10-year-old daughter, Julianna. Separate ambulances took them to St. Michael’s and Sick Kids hospitals, respectively, then one ambulance rushed the father to Sick Kids in time to be with Julianna when she died. Ten minutes after the shooting started, as police closed in, Hussain shot himself in the head.
Julianna Kozis

Julianna Kozis

“Our son had severe mental health challenges, struggling with psychosis and depression his entire life,” a press statement attributed to Hussain’s family said, but it would prove to be misleading.
Faisal Hussain on Danforth Ave.
Faisal Hussain on Danforth Ave.

Politicians blamed gun availability. “The city has a gun problem,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said. The federal government is “prepared to consider” tightening handgun laws, said Goodale, a position since supported by a coalition of Danforth victims and families, who have also taken legal action against Smith & Wesson.

Islamic terrorism dropped from the conversation. Heavily redacted documents later obtained by the Toronto Sun’s Anthony Furey revealed nothing of the CSIS probe. The Toronto Police Service, after one year, issued a 23-page report saying Hussain suffered from depression and was diagnosed in high school with “antisocial personality disorder” but not “psychosis.”

Elsewhere, the report raised more questions than it answered. In the shooter’s bedroom, officers found an iPad, two laptops and three cell phones. They found heroin and M.D.A. packaged for trafficking and hundreds of rounds of ammunition for a Glock handgun, Ruger pistol, Winchester rifle and an AK-47 assault rifle. “Given the amount of ammunition on hand, it is reasonable to believe this occurrence was planned,” search-warrant request said, although no matching guns were found.

Police also reported seizing an “Islamic head dress,” without explaining what that meant, and digital files that included material about the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. In 2001, Hussain’s family left Canada for two years, the report also said, without making clear whether they were in Pakistan on 9/11 or during the subsequent U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“Two or three years” before the shooting, Hussain’s father told police, he and his son visited Islamabad and his son was “happy” and “did not want to return” to Canada. Two receipts found in his room showed that, in Pakistan, Faisal paid nearly $10,000 cash to an Islamic centre.

The ammunition, 9/11 material, recent Pakistan trip and cash to unknown recipients apparently drew no serious investigation. Police did not establish how long Hussain spent in Pakistan, where he went, whom he met, what he did, or why he paid the money. “Little information was located due to the challenge of obtaining records from foreign non-digital databases,” the report said, suggesting police confined their inquiry to a data search.

“Final Conclusion,” the report ended lamely, “there is no evidence that Faisal Hussain was directed or assisted in the crimes he committed.”

Hussain’s possible link to a chemical weapons cache went entirely unaddressed. All that is known so far is that his older brother, Fahad, was charged with trafficking crack cocaine in Saskatoon in 2015. He was returned to Toronto to await trail and shared a room with Faisal, but in early 2017 Fahad moved to a Pickering house owned by their childhood friend, Maisum Ansari.

At the Pickering apartment Fahad overdosed. He became a vegetable. A short time later, in September 2017, firefighters responding to a carbon-monoxide alarm at the apartment discovered 33 illegal guns and a massive quantity of carfentanil, cousin to the killer opioid fentanyl and far more toxic.

The U.S. Defense Department ranks carfentanil as a dangerous weapon, and the international Chemical Weapons Convention bans it. A couple of grains can kill a person. A single kilogram, doled out in two-grain portions, could kill millions of people. In Pickering, police seized 42 kilograms of the drug, the biggest ever such bust in North America.

Ansari and an associate, Babar Ali, each face 337 charges. When their trial begins this winter, The National Telegraph will be there.

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Monday, July 27, 2020

RCMP were told gunman behind Nova Scotia mass shooting smuggled drugs and guns for years


One witness told police that the shooter had a 'secret room' in his denturist clinic, a false wall at another property and 'secret hiding spots' at a warehouse

HALIFAX — Newly released court documents say witnesses told the RCMP that the gunman who carried out the April mass shooting in Nova Scotia smuggled drugs and guns from Maine for years and had secret compartments inside several of his properties.

The gunman took 22 lives during his April 18-19 shooting and burning rampage before police killed him at a service station in Enfield, N.S.

The documents that a media consortium, including The Canadian Press, went before a provincial court judge to obtain reveal a stark picture of the killer’s alleged criminal activities prior to the shootings.

Previously blacked-out details from police applications for search warrants, unsealed Monday by Judge Laurel Halfpenny MacQuarrie, quote a witness telling investigators that Gabriel Wortman had smuggled guns and drugs from Maine for years and “had a bag of 10,000 OxyContin and 15,000 Dilaudid from a reservation in New Brunswick.”

Another witness told police that neighbours spoke of concealed spaces on Wortman’s properties in Portapique, N.S., and in Dartmouth, N.S.

That included a “secret room” in his Dartmouth denturist clinic, a false wall at his property on Portland Street in Dartmouth and “secret hiding spots” at his warehouse property in Portapique.

Prior releases from a witness who’d known Wortman since 2011 had stated the witness believed the killer had a stockpile of guns and a safe in his garage and “was controlling and paranoid.”

The newly revealed portion further describes Wortman as a man who “builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator and supplies drugs in Portapique and Economy, Nova Scotia.”

The same witness told police, “Gabriel Wortman would tell … different ways to get rid of a body and had lime and muriatic acid on the property. The barrels for these would be underneath the deck.”

The warrants say police were looking for firearms, ammunition, explosives, chemicals, surveillance systems, computers, electronic devices, police-related clothing, human remains and “documents related to planning mass murder events” and the acquisition of weapons.

Investigators obtained warrants to search properties owned by the killer — three of them in the northern Nova Scotia village of Portapique, where the 51-year-old started his murderous rampage.

The warrants provide information on other areas, such as how police finally killed Wortman at a service station.

In previously released documents, a paragraph describing how the gunman was shot dead on April 19 was blacked out.

A newly released section suggests a chance encounter led to his death.

Information provided by an RCMP investigator says that when Wortman pulled up to the Irving Big Stop in Enfield, “a peace officer and member of the RCMP was also at the gas pump and recognized Gabriel Wortman … Gabriel Wortman … died.”

One witness told Halifax police that Wortman has an uncle who was in the RCMP and the witness believed Wortman had one of the uncle’s uniforms, “but it didn’t fit.” The gunman began his rampage wearing an authentic RCMP shirt and pants, police have said.

Another person told Halifax police officers they had seen a compartment in Wortman’s garage where he kept a high-powered rifle.

“The compartment was hidden underneath the workbench,” the documents say.

In addition, a previously blacked-out portion of a text exchange between Wortman and another individual on April 14 and 15 “with respect to some potential business” has been released.

It says, “I am currently residing at my cottage in Portapique. I am enjoying this prelude to retirement, unfortunately not able to get to Maine.”

Previously released documents have detailed warning signals of paranoid behaviour and unusual purchases of gasoline by the gunman before his killings.

Large portions of the documents remain blacked-out, and the judge wrote Monday that those redactions are necessary “because of the significant ongoing investigation.”
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Nova Scotia mass killer had ‘secret rooms’, ‘burns bodies’ and was ‘a sexual predator,’


The gunman in this country’s worst mass killing, “builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator and supplies drugs,” one witness told police in the days following the April massacre.

The same witness told police the shooter had smuggled guns and drugs across the Canadian border from Maine, and that he had a stockpile of guns and “a bag of 10,000 OxyContin and 15,000 Dilaudid” — extremely potent opioid painkillers.

A Nova Scotia court on Monday released previously redacted information about the Portapique shooting rampage that left 22 victims dead — details that enhance the portrait that has emerged of the shooter as a secretive and paranoid man.

Newly released details in witness statements to police contain multiple accounts of the shooter having false walls and hidden storage rooms in his Portapique properties and his Dartmouth, N.S. residence.

The information comes from a series of information-to-obtain (ITO) documents, which are the rationale police put before a judge in order to get search warrants.

The documents were originally released in heavily censored form, and have been at the centre of a court battle as media outlets have fought for more details to be made public.

If the new details are anything to judge by, the shooter had few reservations about sharing his secrets with others. In several of the newly revealed portions of the ITOs, witnesses recounted him showing them or telling them of hidden compartments, false walls and secret rooms.

He showed one witness a hidden compartment in his garage underneath a workbench, where he kept a high-powered rifle, the documents say. He showed the same witness a false wall in the right-hand side of the shed at his residence in Dartmouth, which was attached to his denturist clinic.

Other witnesses told police about the killer’s “secret hiding spots” and “secret rooms behind false walls,” according to the ITOs.

Many areas of the documents remain redacted, including a puzzling passage in which police outline some of the evidence they planned to look for while executing their warrant.

“The following items (things, or some part of them): a) Firearms, ammunition, explosives, chemicals, [REDACTED];” reads one passage in the ITO for search warrants for the shooter’s properties in Portapique and in Dartmouth.

Also still obscured are details about the type of weapons the killer possessed, as well as most of the witness statement from the killer’s common-law wife, who was assaulted by the killer before he began his rampage. She managed to escape and hide in the woods overnight.

A consortium of media organizations both national and local — including the Halifax Chronicle Herald and Halifax Examiner — have been before the courts for weeks, seeking first to have RCMP search warrant requests released, then to have redacted portions revealed.

Over a 13-hour period on April 18 and 19, Gabriel Wortman went on a rampage in Colchester County, N.S., in which he killed nearly two dozen people, shot pets and burned houses. He was finally spotted and killed by police at a gas station in Enfield, N.S., almost 100 kilometres away.

In a statement taken by Halifax Regional Police Det.-Const. Anthony McGrath, a witness said that, “Gabriel Wortman builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator, and supplies drugs in Portapique and Economy, Nova Scotia.”

The same witness told police he “was aware that (the shooter) had smuggled guns and drugs from Maine for years and had a stockpile of guns.”

He also told McGrath: “Gabriel Wortman smuggled drugs from Maine and had a bag of 10,000 oxycontin and 15,000 dilaudid from a reservation in New Brunswick.”

The witness said he was “aware of all the secret hides located in the building. There are two false walls in the back bathroom and two in the garage.”

The RCMP has faced heavy criticism about its response to the massacre, including questions about the manner and timing of warnings to the public, most specifically its decision to use social media to communicate rather than the province’s emergency alert system.

Questions are also being asked about the Mounties’ apparent decision to decline an offer of help from the nearby Truro police force.

The RCMP’s reticence to provide information has been cited in calls for an inquiry into the events surrounding the massacre.

On Thursday, federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Nova Scotia Justice Minister Mark Furey announced an independent review of the matter.

The review falls short of the open process called for by families of victims, who have urged a public inquiry, in which witnesses could be compelled to testify under oath.

Those calls have been echoed by more than three dozen senators and almost as many members of Dalhousie University’s law school faculty, both of whom wrote letters calling for a public inquiry.
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Friday, July 24, 2020

San Gabriel Mission Fire ‘Justified’?



ChurchMilitant.com reported on July 22, 2020:
by Martina Moyski
A spokesperson for California's San Gabriel Arcángel Mission reportedly told a fellow Catholic that it's "justified" to attack churches and statues if they're deemed offensive.
The remark was made July 11 to Beatrice Cardenas, former Republican congressional candidate for California's 27th district, as she was surveying fire damage at the historic mission.
According to Cardenas, San Gabriel Mission communications director Terry Huerta told her the religious outpost, founded in 1771 by St. Junípero Serra, "represented pain to a lot of people."
When Cardenas countered that didn't give anyone a right to set a church or a building on fire, Huerta responded, "Yes, it does. You and I also have the right to do that if we wanted to because this is a free country."
The conversation took place amid "a very emotional scene," said Cardenas, who described many people gathered at the smoldering remnants of the church as hugging and crying.
Firefighters on site "were very choked up," Cardenas said. Capt. Antonio Negrete, public information officer for the San Gabriel Fire Department, called the scene "heartbreaking," NBC Los Angeles reported.
Though no definite cause for the blaze has been determined, arson has been identified as a possibility.
Based on Cardenas' conversations with the people gathered she said, "I can tell you that everyone is fed up already and strongly suspect this was an arson attack against the Church, against this nation, and against freedom."
Cardenas explained to Church Militant that the "beloved and holy" San Gabriel Mission — and the rest of the archdiocese — has fallen into the current cultural mindset that our great nation was built on hatred and oppression that needs correction. 
The "rock-solid catechesis of the Catholic Church" is being attacked by a destructive force from within, by "members of the community who value social change above truth," she said.
You and I also have the right to do that if we wanted to because this is a free country.Tweet
"California has become so 'progressive' that our clergy has tried to appease this movement by allowing concessions from political pressures," she said. We look to the archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles "for cues and many look to him for direction."
But his comments show that "he is willing to bend a knee to the demands of those who seek to destroy the Church and its legacy" she said, adding, "We need bishops to be steadfast and unapologetic about our history."
Cardenas referred to a letter Gomez wrote late last month in which he explained he has "come to understand how the image of Fr. Serra and the missions evokes painful memories for some people."
But, "the truth is uglier than that," she says.  The official story the archdiocese gave the public was that the statute of St. Serra at the San Gabriel mission was placed in secure storage for safekeeping. But according to Cardenas, "The archbishop José Gomez decided to remove it because it brings painful moments to many people," says Cardenas on her Facebook page, "per Ms. Huerta."
There have been multiple attacks on Catholic churches throughout the country over the last two months in the wake of the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots.
The truth is that St. Junípero risked his life to bring God to the North American natives and even confronted his own government about their treatment. The smears against him are nothing short of a blood libel.Tweet
The devastating July 11 fire at San Gabriel Mission was preceded by the toppling of statues of St. Junípero Serra in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Saint Serra is a "specific target" of the Left, maintains John Nolte of Breitbart News, "as a result of the lies going around about his treatment of missionary Indians at the time."
"The truth is that St. Junipero risked his life to bring God to the North American natives and even confronted his own government about their treatment. The smears against him are nothing short of a blood libel," Nolte said.
Cardenas told Church Militant she is invested in protecting the mission on multiple levels.
On a personal level, she said, "I am deeply committed to advocating and fighting for implementation of procedures to protect the Mission of San Gabriel Arcángel — from hiring 24/7 private security to exploring change of ownership of the Mission."
As a mother, she said: "[M]y daughter's ancestors are buried at this Mission and were Spanish soldiers who accompanied Fr. Serra on his first trip to what was to become Alta, California, so as mother I also have an added interest in protecting the Missions and the rich legacy of once Spanish Catholic California."
As a Congressional candidate in this district she feels "the need to fight for this community and to win this seat in Congress because we don't have enough people fighting to preserve our history and our Christian faith — despite how liberal my district is," she adds.

Cardenas said reflectively, "So now you know why the Church is not defending itself against these attacks. It feels it is making reparations. It is only a matter of time before the existence of every Christian church is considered an error that must be corrected."
"We are in deep trouble, folks," she warned.

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Monday, July 20, 2020

RCMP in Portapique Nova Scotia, An Epic Failure

The RCMP has claimed it did its best in trying to deal with the Nova Scotia mass killer on the weekend of April 18 and 19, but a reconstruction of events by the Halifax Examiner strongly suggests that the police force made no attempt to save lives by confronting the gunman or stopping his spree at any point.

“Public safety and preservation of life are the primary duties of any peace officer,” said a former high ranking RCMP executive officer who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation by current and former law enforcement officials who are vigilant about any criticism of policing by those in the field. “As far as I can tell, the RCMP did nothing in Nova Scotia to save a life. They weren’t ready. It is embarrassing to me. The entire thing was an epic failure.”

Based upon interviews with other current and former police officers, witnesses, and law enforcement, and on emergency services transcripts, it seems clear that there was a collapse of the policing function on that weekend.

At no point in the two-day rampage did the RCMP get in front of the killer, who the Examiner identifies as GW. It also seems apparent that some Mounties, many of whom were called in from distant locales, were stunningly unaware of the geography and landmarks in the general area as the RCMP tried to keep up with GW.

Sources within the RCMP say a major problem was that communications between various RCMP units was never co-ordinated. “Everyone was on their own channels,” the source said. “Nothing was synchronized. They could have gone to a single channel and brought in the municipal cops as well, but for some reason they didn’t. It was like no one was in charge.”

Nova Scotia RCMP’s chief investigative officer, Chris Leather. Photo: Halifax Examiner.

RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather said in the days after the incident, that the RCMP was responding to a “dynamic and fluid” situation. “The fact that this individual had a uniform and a police car at his disposal certainly speaks to it not being a random act,” he said.

RCMP Support Services Officer Darren Campbell
In the days and weeks after the shootings, RCMP spokespersons repeatedly portrayed the gunman as a clever, psychotic criminal who had conceived what was essentially a brilliant plan to dupe police and evade capture. This subtly changed in an interview with the CBC earlier this month when Supt. Darren Campbell said: “There’s been no evidence that he was pre-planning [the mass shooting].”

As chaotic as the situation might have been for the RCMP, it is evident that the force failed to contain the shooter on the evening of April 18 at the initial multiple crime scenes in the Portapique Beach area of Central Nova Scotia. Thirteen people were murdered that night in which might well be called the first massacre. As has already been acknowledged, the RCMP did not set up roadblocks and perimeters around the area, even though it knew within minutes of arriving at the scene that the shooter was armed and likely on the loose in a replica Mountie police vehicle. 

On April 19, the second massacre took place. Unlike the night before, the RCMP knew beforehand who the suspect was, how he was dressed, and what kind of vehicle he was driving, a replica RCMP vehicle. The RCMP had sightings of the killer that morning, but again inexplicably did not seal off roads and highways and try to contain him after numerous 911 calls about sightings. Nine more people, including RCMP constable Heidi Stevenson, were murdered that day.

Preservation of human life is generally accepted to be the ultimate duty of all law enforcement officers in critical incident management. In basic training all Canadian police officers are taught to understand that when confronted with a life-threatening situation, the “priority of life” is demonstrated in this order: hostages, innocent by-standers, police/first responders, and suspects.
The RCMP has said that officers who responded to the original incident employed a tactic known as Immediate Action Rapid Deployment (IARD). With such training, as well-described on-line, the first responding officers are authorized to be proactive and disrupt a crime before criminals become “active shooters.” 

“We are taught to move past injured victims and attack the situation,” said one current RCMP member. “If the suspect is in a building, we use a T formation. If he’s outdoors, it’s a diamond. You typically need four officers, but, if need be, you can do it with fewer. The point is to neutralize the suspect as quickly as possible and prevent further injuries or deaths.”

In spite of what the RCMP has publicly stated, law enforcement sources and others have told the Examiner that the first RCMP responders did not actively intervene after arriving at the scene. After discovering a considerable number of slain victims around a property and on or near the road, the officers retreated to a point near the top of Portapique Beach Road where they congregated to wait for reinforcements.

Several RCMP and law enforcement sources say that a corporal from a nearby detachment who was the initial supervisor on the scene froze in place to the distress of other Mounties. The corporal later ran into nearby woods and turned off their flashlight and hid. That officer continues to be off work on stress leave.

Some veteran Mounties say that there were likely a number of factors which caused the first Mounties on the scene to hesitate. 

“It could have been inexperience. Maybe there was no backup. And then there’s always that Canada Labour Code thing,” said one long time Mountie.

He was referring to a $550,000 fine imposed on the RCMP in January 2018 for failing to properly arm and train its members after three Mounties were murdered and two injured in a shooting rampage in Moncton on June 4, 2014. Since the Labor Code decision, all RCMP members on patrol are trained in the use assault weapons. Every Mountie carries a Colt C8 rifle with a 30-shot magazine in their patrol cars. The high-powered gun is considered to be an upgrade to the American made AR-15.
“They were in a bad situation,” said the Mountie. ”Their duty is to save lives, but whoever the supervisor was, he or she might have been thinking that they could be criminally sanctioned and go to jail if they send officers into a life threatening situation. At the very least, it could be the end of their career. That’s how the Labour Code fine is interpreted, even if the police are supposed to be exempt from it in the performance of their duties.”

Others have suggested that the RCMP called what has become to be known in policing circles as a FIDO  Fuck it, drive on. What that means is that police deliberately avoid dangerous situations and delay or wait until everything has calmed down before making a move. 

Within an hour or so after the first call came in, Staff-Sergeant Allan Carroll took over as the officer-in-charge at a command centre set up in the RCMP detachment at Bible Hill. Sources say that Carroll did not attend the scene and it is not known precisely what he did or didn’t do.

It is noteworthy that his son, Jordan, an RCMP constable, was the second officer to arrive at the scene in Portapique. A knowledgeable source told the Examiner that Staff-Sgt. Carroll retired from the force three weeks ago. A party was held on June 27.  

As the Mounties maintained their static position at Portapique Beach Road, tensions were rising. “It was a shit show,” one Mountie said. 

Some of the frustrated Mounties wanted to follow their training, move forward and attack the situation. A RCMP tactical officer from Cole Harbour who was called to the scene became frustrated with the fact the Mounties were not attempting to move from their fixed position, save lives and possibly confront the killer. When that Mountie and another said they were going to do it on their own, an unknown supervisor told them: “If you go down there this will be your last shift in the RCMP.” The Mounties held their position.

The RCMP has refused to release its own communications from that night or transcripts of them, but interviews with and transcripts of communications from the nearby Truro Police Department and Emergency Medical Services along with other already noted sources helps fill in some of the gaps and paint a picture of the chaos inside the RCMP.

In the days after the shootings, the RCMP gave three different versions of how long it took the force to respond to the first 911 call which was at 10:01 p.m. First it said officers were on the scene in 12 minutes. On April 21, the RCMP said the first call came in at 10:30 p.m. The next day this was corrected to the call coming in at 10:01 p.m with the first Mounties arriving on the scene at 10:36 p.m. 

A local man was driving out of Portapique Beach Road when the killer in his replica cruiser approached him from the other direction and shot at him in his vehicle, wounding him in the arm. According to search warrant documents obtained by the Examiner, that man told investigators he drove up the road and met the cordon of Mounties waiting there. Police sources tell us that the man told Mounties that a man he believed was GW was in a marked police car had shot at him. This occurred sometime after 10:26 p.m. and before 10:35 p.m. when the vehicle was seen leaving the area driving across a field to Brown Loop which is about 200 metres to the east of where the police were positioned.

That man’s report is the first time, as far as we know, that the RCMP were aware that GW was in a recognizable police vehicle.

At or around 10:45 p.m., the killer and his vehicle later are identified as passing by a residence on his way to Debert where he arrived at 11:12 p.m. He parked his car behind a welding shop. He stayed there for six hours.

Until midnight, the fires raged but the RCMP held back the fire department. At least two people were hiding in the woods. One was Clinton Ellison, who had found his brother, Corrie, dead on the road and was stalked by the killer who was using a flashlight to try to find Ellison. The other was GW’s girlfriend, who later said she escaped being handcuffed in the back of another former police vehicle and ran into the woods where she reportedly stayed until 6:30 a.m.

The RCMP put out its first alert to the public on Twitter at 11:32 p.m. It read: “#RCMPNS remains on scene in #Portapique. This is an active shooter situation. Residents in the area, stay inside your homes & lock your doors. Call 911 if there is anyone on your property. You may not see the police but we are there with you #Portapique.” 

The RCMP did not alert the two municipal police forces on either side of Portapique, in Truro, 20 minutes away, and Amherst, 45 minutes away. This is significant because in both police forces most of the members have tactical training, a necessity in small departments where any officer could find themselves in a difficult incident without much or any notice. Both police forces had considerable numbers of officers primed and ready to go.

On the Truro Police communications log, at midnight the department received a call from someone at Colchester Regional Hospital reporting that they have a gunshot victim from Portapique and advised that the hospital is in lockdown.  

Truro Police Sgt. Rick Hickox called the RCMP six minutes later at 12:06 a.m. looking for an update.
The RCMP returned his call 49 minutes later at 12:55 a.m. to inform the Truro police of an active shooter in Portapique, although GW was long gone from that area.

Three minutes later at 12:58 a.m.: “RCMP dispatch calls advises shooter is associated to a former police car possibly with a decal on it.” 

Nine minutes later at 1:07 a.m. the RCMP issued a BOLO (Be on the lookout) for GW as an active shooter and suspect. The RCMP “ID’s some vehicles and girlfriend who is unaccounted for.”
At 1:07 a.m., therefore, the RCMP clearly knew the identity of the suspect and that he had killed many people. The RCMP was not sure about how many because the fires were still raging. Yet the RCMP advised police departments outside the scene to look for this incredibly dangerous person but did not themselves or ask anyone to put up roadblocks and lock down the area. Most importantly, in its tweets the RCMP fudged the markings on the car. The local man who was shot by GW told them it was a police car. The RCMP described it as a former police car with a Canada decal on it. Why the obfuscation?

Informed sources close to the investigation say it was around this time that that an Amherst Police officer was told that the RCMP did not need that force’s assistance because the Mounties had deemed the situation to be a murder-suicide and that the shooter was dead. Amherst Police Chief Dwayne Pike denied in an interview that such a conversation took place. When told about the chief’s denial, the original source persisted in his claim. “Municipal forces like Amherst depend upon the RCMP for lab services,” the source said. “They don’t want to say anything to piss off the Mounties because they will cut them off from the labs. That would cost the locals a lot of money. The RCMP plays rough and the local forces know it, so they keep their mouths shut.”

Chief Pike said recently in an email response from the Examiner that his force was still putting together a timeline of the force’s involvement that weekend. 

Back at Portapique Beach, the RCMP continued its investigations at the multiple crime sites. It obtained a search warrant for the killer’s properties at 200 and 287 Portapique Beach Road and 136 Orchard Beach Drive. In the search warrants it cited human remains as one of the things they were looking for.

The RCMP remained silent until 4:12 a.m., when it told Truro police about a Ford F150 truck associated to the suspect. Two minutes later at 4:14 a.m. it updated Truro about another vehicle. Ten minutes later at 4:24 a.m., the RCMP provides a list of vehicles the killer may be driving and noted:  “… he is still not in custody.” The RCMP didn’t know where the killer was. They knew he had killed about a dozen people by that time (some victims had not yet been located). But the force did not send out a provincial alert or set up roadblocks around the greater area.

In its communications the RCMP seemed to be suggesting that it was searching for GW, dead or alive, but it still has not done anything proactive to preserve life by obstructing his possible paths, if he were still alive. 

In the overnight hours the RCMP says it was busy clearing the various crime scenes in the Portapique Beach area. It is not clear how many Mounties were at the scene or where they came from, although some eventually were called in from New Brunswick. The RCMP has not been clear about any of this, stating that at times there were 30 members there and eventually “100 resources,” whatever that entails. Transfixed as it seemed to be with the nightmarish crime scenes, the force seemed to have put the notion that the killer was alive out of his collective thoughts. No one seems to know what he was doing in Debert. 

Some police sources have suggested that GW was perhaps in touch with the RCMP during this period. It is known that a RCMP crisis negotiator was on the scene in Portapique, but Supt. Campbell denied to the CBC in an unpublished interview that the force had any contact with the killer during the overnight period.

While the RCMP was putting out BOLOs as perhaps a hedge, by its actions over the next few hours, the force seemed to be convinced that shooter was no longer a threat. By 6:30 a.m. many of the Mounties on the scene at Portapique, including the staff-sergeant from Bible Hill, were allowed to go home after a long, gruelling night. 

Informed sources say that a new incident commander was scheduled to arrive at the scene at 10 a.m., possibly from “the Valley.”

In the interim, the RCMP put out a tweet at 8:02 a.m. reiterating that a shooter was still active in the Portapique area. This made the Truro police anxious. Corporal Ed Cormier immediately called the RCMP at 8:03 a.m. looking for an update. Four minutes later, at 8:07 a.m., the RCMP responded with an updated BOLO, elaborating on their tweet:  “[GW] arrestable for homicide. Advises of a fully marked RCMP car Ford Taurus. Could be anywhere in the province. Last seen loading firearms in vehicle. Vehicle photo will be sent when available.”

This information reportedly came from the killer’s girlfriend, who apparently came out of the woods at 6:30 a.m. However, this BOLO provided not much more information than the one at 12:58 a.m., five and a half hours earlier. It added the firearms, but any reader had to presume that GW had firearms in the earlier BOLO since he was described as a “shooter.”

Still, while telling other police agencies that GW “could be anywhere in the province,” so far as the public was told, GW was still in Portapique.

And the RCMP did not engage the local municipal police forces in Truro, Amherst, the New Glasgow area or even Halifax, an hour away. There are more than 900 Mounties employed in Nova Scotia in various capacities. Only a relative few of them were called in. The Mounties, however, did enlist the help of RCMP members in New Brunswick from Moncton and as far away as Fredericton, a three-hour drive at speed from Portapique. 

One of four H125 helicopters used by the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources. Photo: Communications Nova Scotia (CNW Group/Airbus)
Some expert police observers have said in interviews that the attempts to locate the killer and pursue him would have benefited from the use of a helicopter but the RCMP does not employ a helicopter in Nova Scotia. No helicopter was employed during the overnight hours, as well, to conduct a search.
“The RCMP has nine helicopters across the country, but as far as I know has never had one in Nova Scotia,” said a former executive level RCMP officer in an interview. “In renewing its contracts with the RCMP, it appears that the government of Nova Scotia has taken the position that a helicopter is an unneeded frill and dispensed with the idea. That was a big mistake. The questionable leadership of the RCMP and the questionable leadership of the government of Nova Scotia has failed to appreciate the changing dynamics of policing. The force needed a helicopter that weekend and didn’t have one. Twenty-two people died. Some of those lives could have been saved.”

Until 2001, the RCMP had an agreement with the provincial Department of Natural Resources, which commands four helicopters. In return, informed sources say, the DNR was allowed to use the RCMP’s forensic laboratories. The RCMP denied that use in 2001, so the DNR stopped allowing the RCMP the use of the helicopters.

In the intervening 19 years, whenever the RCMP required the use of a helicopter it either negotiated with the armed forces or it paid private rental companies for one.

The relaxed attitude of the RCMP in the early morning hours of Sunday was evidenced in a video shot by CBC at the RCMP command centre at the firehall in Great Village. Emergency response team members stand in a circle chatting away. A bored Mountie wielding a C8 rifle paces back and forth. Another Mountie helps local fire-fighters roll up some hose.

After this, things began to get even hairier.

An RCMP map shows GW’s route from 123 Ventura Drive in Debert to 2328 Hunter Road, Wentworth. Insets of still images taken from different videos show GW’s replica police car at 5:43am in Debert and passing a driveway on Hunter Road in Wentworth at 6:29am.
At 5:45 a.m. surveillance cameras record GW leaving the Debert Industrial Park as he began the 40-kilometre drive to Hunter Road in Wentworth. He is believed to have arrived at the house of Sean McLeod and Alanna Jenkins at around 6:30 a.m. McLeod and Jenkins were apparently murdered in their beds. McLeod’s two dogs were also killed. GW killed neighbour Tom Bagley who had come to investigate.

For some unknown reason, the killer lingered at the McLeod property for three hours. At some point he set the house on fire and left at 9:35 a.m. according to a security camera. It is not yet known what he was doing while he lingered there.

Lillian Hyslop. Photo: Facebook.

At 9:43 a.m., the Truro police were notified by the RCMP about “a dead woman in Wentworth on the road. Advises RCMP car was seen in the area and there was a loud bang.” The killer had shot retiree Lillian Hyslop who was out for her morning walk, unaware that he was in the area because an alert has just been issued as she left the house.

The RCMP flooded the area and thought it had the killer contained, even though callers to 911 had told them that he had been seen heading eastbound on Highway 4 toward Truro. Thinking it had the killer trapped, the RCMP again failed to mobilize in an attempt to find, stop or capture him. As it had in Portapique, the RCMP did not call for help from other forces, did not set up roadblocks, call for a helicopter or track, contain or attack GW. 

Instead of calling in local police for help, the Mounties relied on their own, some from far away who were entirely unfamiliar with the territory and couldn’t find roads. One couldn’t find the RCMP building in Bible Hill just outside Truro. Another indicated to a Truro police dispatcher that he didn’t realize that there was a hospital in Truro.

Further evidence of the communications disconnect between Mounties and their commanders and between Mounties and other police forces was how messages about what was going on in Wentworth were disseminated. 

At 9:46 a.m., a RCMP officer at the Colchester Regional Hospital told Truro Constable Cormier that the force believed it had the killer pinned down in Wentworth. Two minutes later Truro Constable Thomas Whidden reported that that he had heard informally from the RCMP that the killer was headed to Truro. The RCMP was not formally engaging the Truro Police.

Then, at 10 a.m., RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather, the number two Mountie in the province and the chief of criminal operations, further added to the ball of confusion. He sent an e-mail to Truro Police Chief Dave McNeil that the RCMP had the shooter pinned down in Wentworth. But that wasn’t true. What Leather later told reporters is that he had meant to Onslow, 30 kilometres to the south of Wentworth, an 8-minute or so drive west of Truro.  

By now the killer was heading back to the Debert area where he had spent the overnight parked behind a garage in the industrial park. Despite the fact that 13 people had been murdered, just west of there in Portapique, there were still no roadblocks or impediments to his travel.

At 9:48 a.m., GW visited the house of a couple he knew who lived on the 2900 block of Highway 4, in Debert, just north of the intersection with Highway 104.  The couple hid under their bed, a gun cocked and ready. The killer backed off and continued moving south. GW left without harming them, and the couple called 911.

At 10:04 a.m. the RCMP sent out a tweet asking people to avoid the Hidden Hilltop Campground in Glenholme, which is near the couple’s home. But GW wasn’t there. He had moved on to Plains Road in Debert, where he killed Heather O’Brien and Kristen Beaton, two Victorian Order of Nurses who were driving in separate cars. The RCMP later said that the killer pulled them over and later still corrected that statement, saying he hadn’t. The force has yet not explained what really happened.
Near Onslow, the killer passed a Mountie who was driving the other way. The unnamed Mountie thinking that he had just seen the suspect is reported to have turned around to pursue him, but lost sight of the killer. There was no RCMP back up in the area.

Although the killer had been spotted,  the RCMP did not issue a province wide alert or take any action to impede or stop the killer with the ultimate intention of preserving life. 

The killer then headed to Truro where he drove down Walker, Esplanade, and Willow streets between 10:16 and 10:19 a.m. and then headed south out of town toward Brookfield. The Truro police were entirely unaware that he had done that until video surfaced later that week.

Meanwhile, the RCMP finally had negotiated the use of a helicopter from the Department of Natural Resources. A source close to the DNR said that department was told that the helicopter would be used to scout the Portapique Beach Road fire scenes to ensure that the fires had not spread into the woods. The helicopter with a Mountie on board took off for Portapique. The pilot was never instructed to hunt for the killer in his readily identifiable mock RCMP cruiser — it was the only one on the road in the area that featured a push bar or ram package over its front bumper.

Back in the Truro area, more than 12 hours since the first alarm went in at Portapique Beach Road, the RCMP were still playing catch-up. At 10:21 a.m., the force tweeted that GW was in the Central Onslow and Debert area “in a vehicle that may resemble what appears to be an RCMP vehicle & may be wearing what appears to be an RCMP uniform.” By then, he was long gone, but the tweet or whatever else the RCMP was saying in its internal communications may well have provoked one of the strangest known incidents that day.
The Onslow Belmont Fire Hall.
The Onslow Belmont Fire Hall. Photo: Jennifer Henderson

Around 10:30 a.m., two Mounties emerged from a black Hyundai Elantra and started firing toward an emergency services worker outside the Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade Fire Hall. The Mounties shot up the fire hall and just missed hitting people inside while causing considerable damage to equipment. One of the Mounties went into the fire hall for a moment and then the two left in the Hyundai.

The killer was well on the other side of Truro by then.

Five minutes earlier, at 10:25 a.m., in a well-known security video, the killer pulled into the lot of a business in Millbrook, got out of the car and changed out of a RCMP jacket into a yellow vest. He got back in the car and headed south toward Shubenacadie where two RCMP constables, Chad Morrison and Heidi Stevenson were driving in separate vehicles to meet up near the intersection of Highway 2 and 224.

Ten minutes after changing into the vest, the killer pulled up beside Const. Morrison who was waiting by the side of the road for Const. Stevenson. He fired into the car, striking Morrison in one hand and the other arm.

Morrison apparently radioed for help, but the media have not been privy to that communication. 

A Nova Scotia EHS tape, widely circulating on the Internet, indicates that at around the time shortly after Morrison was shot and paramedics responded. In the conversation with a dispatcher, a paramedic described a “member” (the common term for a Mountie) who was shot in the foot. The paramedic says he can’t transport the patient to hospital yet because he first had to recover a gun the officer had left in the woods and lock his police car. The RCMP has not confirmed any of this.
At 10:48 a.m., the killer slammed his vehicle into that of Const. Stevenson at the traffic circle connecting highways 2 and 224. The RCMP says Stevenson “engaged” the killer, but witnesses say he shot at her through the windshield and then dragged her out of her damaged vehicle. He then executed her with multiple shots as she lay on the pavement. He set his and Stevenson’s vehicles on fire. When a passerby, Joey Webber, stopped to help, he was killed. The killer then dragged his guns and paraphernalia to Webber’s Chevy Tracker and drove off.

After the shootings were reported, the RCMP still did not try to get in front of the killer and stop him.
Between 11:06 and 11:23 a.m. the killer was less than a kilometre from the traffic circle where Stevenson was killed, now at the home of Gina Goulet, a fellow denturist. He shot her and her dog, changed clothes and stole her car, a Mazda 3.

The RCMP, meanwhile, was now looking for GW in Joey Webber’s Chev Tracker, issuing a Tweet to that effect at 11:24 a.m. 

Unfortunately, for the killer, Goulet’s vehicles gas tank may have been empty. That seems a likely reason why he pulled into the Irving Station at Endfield; or, perhaps, he felt the gathering police presence around him. Instead of blocking off roads, the RCMP was going to businesses such as Sobeys and asking them to close their doors.

It was around this time that Halifax Police became engaged and began to set up a roadblock at exit 5A on Highway 102 heading into Halifax, one exit south of the airport. The Halifax Examiner previously reported another curiosity about the lookout for the killer in that Halifax Police Chief Dan Kinsella apparently ordered his officers to attempt to capture the killer and not shoot him.

Whatever the case, suspect was in his vehicle at the Irving station when a Mountie, reportedly a canine officer, who was stopped to fill up his vehicle recognized him. A brief confrontation ensued and the shooter was killed.

Meanwhile, the Department of Natural Resources helicopter was done with its reconnaissance of the Portapique crime scenes and was returning to Halifax. In the distance, the black smoke from the two burning cars at the traffic circle. Sources say they pilot was never engaged to try and hunt down the killer.

Obviously operating on a different frequency than other Mounties, the pilot was informed that the suspect was down at the Irving Station at Exit 7 on the 102.

As he landed in a field near the station to let off the Mountie who was with him, the pilot received a transmission from a gruff sounding RCMP Officer who identified himself as being “the RCMP Command Post.”

What the Mountie had to tell him was that the suspect had been brought down at the Irving Station in Enfield “at Exit 11.”

Exit 11, as it turns out, is in Stewiacke, approximately 43 kilometres to the north.

It was a fitting end to an epic policing failure.

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/an-epic-failure-the-first-duty-of-police-is-to-preserve-life-through-the-nova-scotia-massacre-the-rcmp-saved-no-one/?fbclid=IwAR0_j4vWJgQzOADWvT1k9gPWqagWguJOovsGGd34Oo435r393M6RwH310Ls
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Monday, July 13, 2020

Hollywood's identity crisis: Actors, writers and producers warn of 'reverse racism' in the film industry


As the wooden boards are taken down from shopfronts and studio lots grind slowly back to life, Hollywood is basking in an unseasonable heatwave. 
The famous boulevards shimmer in 40C haze and warm Santa Ana winds fan the Beverly Hills mansions.
Shaken by #MeToo, paralysed by Covid-19, the $50 billion film industry is finally emerging from a four-month lockdown – only to find a new and very different world, where tension is rising as surely as the thermometer.
For if the very public Black Lives Matter protests have polarised America, the silent fallout has now reached Hollywood.
The new intolerance: As BLM protests rage, Refuse Fascism demonstrators dump water on Donald Trump’s star on LA’s Hollywood Walk of Fame
The new intolerance: As BLM protests rage, Refuse Fascism demonstrators dump water on Donald Trump's star on LA's Hollywood Walk of Fame
A revolution is under way. White actors are being fired. Edicts from studio bosses make it clear that only minorities – racial and sexual – can be given jobs.
A new wave of what has been termed by some as anti-white prejudice is causing writers, directors and producers to fear they will never work again. One described the current atmosphere as 'more toxic than Chernobyl', with leading actors afraid to speak out amid concern they will be labelled racist.
The first sign came with one of the most powerful black directors in Hollywood, Oscar-winning Jordan Peele – the man behind box office hits such as Get Out and Us – stated in public that he did not want to hire a leading man who was white. 
'I don't see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie,' Peele said. 'Not that I don't like white dudes. But I've seen that movie before.'
As one studio executive responded privately: 'If a white director said that about hiring a black actor, their career would be over in a heartbeat.' Few doubt it.
Peele is more vocal than most about his hiring policy, but his outlook is increasingly widespread. Dozens of producers, writers and actors have spoken to The Mail on Sunday about the wave of 'reverse racism' pulsing through the industry.
speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive confirmed that the climate is now toxic for any 'white, middle-aged man in showbusiness'. Their careers, 'are pretty much over'. 
They continued: 'We're only hiring people of colour, women or LGBT to write, star, produce, operate the cameras, work in craft services. If you are white, you can't speak out because you will instantly be branded 'racist' or condemned for 'white privilege'.
The first sign came with one of the most powerful black directors in Hollywood, Oscar-winning Jordan Peele – the man behind box office hits such as Get Out and Us – stated in public that he did not want to hire a leading man who was white
The first sign came with one of the most powerful black directors in Hollywood, Oscar-winning Jordan Peele – the man behind box office hits such as Get Out and Us – stated in public that he did not want to hire a leading man who was white
'The pendulum has swung so far, everyone is paralysed with fear by the idea anything you say could be misinterpreted and your career ended instantly. There are a lot of hushed conversations going on, but publicly everyone is desperate to be seen to be promoting diversity and too terrified to speak out. It's imploding: a total meltdown.'
The failure to nominate actors of colour for the Oscars has been seen as a stain on Hollywood in recent years. But there are fears that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction – and that the movie and TV industries are 'on the edge of a collective nervous breakdown'.
The latest buzzword in Tinseltown is 'Bipoc' – an acronym for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour – and 'Menemy', which means a white, male enemy of the diversity movement. 'Everyone wants to be able to check all the boxes for each new hire,' according to one Oscar-nominated insider.
'Directors normally have a say about who is in their project. Not any more. It's all about 'Bipoc hiring'. And it's coming directly from the heads of the studios who know their jobs are on the line. White middle-aged men are collateral damage. They are the Menemy.'
Nathan Lee Bush: ‘Anyone who dares speak up is cancelled’
Nathan Lee Bush: ‘Anyone who dares speak up is cancelled’
An actor in his 50s who has worked on some of the biggest shows of the past 20 years described how, during a recent audition, the casting director told him he was 'perfect for the part' but that they had been instructed to hire 'a person of colour' for the role. 'I get it, I really do,' the actor said. 
'I understand Hollywood still has a long way to go before people of colour are properly represented on screen but how am I supposed to pay my mortgage, put food on the table? Everyone is terrified. And you can't say anything because then you set yourself up for public crucifixion.'
Dismissing such complaints, however quietly expressed, Selma director Ava DuVernay, now one of the most powerful black women in Hollywood, wrote on Twitter: 'Everyone has a right to their opinion. And we – black producers with hiring power – have the right not to hire those who diminish us.
'So, to the white men in this thread… if you don't get that job you were up for, kindly remember… bias can go both ways. This is 2020 speaking.'
It might seem an irony, then, that Hollywood has long been seen as the heart of liberal America. Leading figures from the industry have a reputation for lecturing the world on issues of human rights, diversity and the environment, from George Clooney's campaign to end the genocide in Darfur to Leonardo DiCaprio's missives on global warming.
But 'wokeness' is not only increasingly pervasive, it seems impossible to navigate. Killing Eve's Jodie Comer – celebrated for playing a bisexual assassin – last week faced intense criticism on social media for dating US sportsman James Burke, said to be a card-carrying Trump supporter, solely on the basis that he supported the President.
And Halle Berry had to apologise for 'considering' taking on the role of a transgender man in a forthcoming film project (instead of leaving it to a real transgender man).
Such is the culture shift that one studio is now preparing to shoot a film with an all-black cast and crew – a project which should normally give cause for celebration.
Selma director Ava DuVernay, now one of the most powerful black women in Hollywood, wrote on Twitter: 'Everyone has a right to their opinion. And we – black producers with hiring power – have the right not to hire those who diminish us. 'So, to the white men in this thread… if you don't get that job you were up for, kindly remember… bias can go both ways. This is 2020 speaking.'
Selma director Ava DuVernay, now one of the most powerful black women in Hollywood, wrote on Twitter: 'Everyone has a right to their opinion. And we – black producers with hiring power – have the right not to hire those who diminish us. 'So, to the white men in this thread… if you don't get that job you were up for, kindly remember… bias can go both ways. This is 2020 speaking.'
But when a white woman, a highly respected executive, was tasked to 'oversee' the production on location, she was told she would receive no on-screen credit. A source from the studio behind the project said: 'The kids making the film are fresh, great new talent. But they are kids. None of them are over 25. Most of them have never been on a movie set, let alone a movie which costs $20 million. They don't know the basics about how union rules work, about taking regular breaks or how long you can shoot in a day.
We need to protect our investment and make sure they get up on time and shoot what they need. Otherwise, we could have a multi-million- dollar train out of control.
'We're sending this woman, who is brilliant, to run things on the ground. But she won't get any title credit. People won't admit it, they can't admit it, but reverse racism is definitely going on. You could argue that it's a good thing, that this swinging of the pendulum so far the other way is only fair after years of white privilege. But at what cost? Surely it is best for everyone if people are hired on the basis of talent and ability? I can tell you, we are hiring people based purely on their ethnicity, gender and social-media profiles.
'If you are brown and female and gay then come on in. We're all getting diversity training. We're walking on eggshells during every Zoom meeting. It's got to the point where, if there's a person of colour in the meeting, we can't hang up before they do, for fear of it being considered offensive.'
One film editor who did dare to speak out has seen his career all but destroyed. Nathan Lee Bush, who has shot commercials for corporations such as Budweiser and Nike, criticised a post on a private Facebook group which read: 'I NEED AN EDITOR! Looking for Black Union Editors.'
Leading figures from the industry have a reputation for lecturing the world on issues of human rights, diversity and the environment, from George Clooney's campaign to end the genocide in Darfur to Leonardo DiCaprio's missives on global warming
Leading figures from the industry have a reputation for lecturing the world on issues of human rights, diversity and the environment, from George Clooney's campaign to end the genocide in Darfur to Leonardo DiCaprio's missives on global warming
Bush, who is white, described the advert as 'anti-white racism' and wrote: 'Look what we're asked to tolerate. The people openly and proudly practising racism are the ones calling everyone racist to shut them down, and anyone who dares to speak up is cancelled, their livelihood and dreams stripped from them by a baying mob.'
But voicing his concerns proved disastrous. One of Bush's main clients, the US restaurant chain Panera Bread, vowed never to work with him again and Bush has since been forced to apologise.
'I was literally just playing a video game when I casually wrote those words,' he said later. 
'All I was trying to say is: 'Is the antidote to past discrimination based on skin colour more retributive discrimination based on skin colour?' I should have, however, realised this was not the time to bring it up. To anyone I offended, I'm very sorry.'
It has taken several tumultuous years for this perfect storm to gather. It began with the scandal over Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement. Now, as one insider puts it, the industry faces a 'tsunami which has turned everything upside down'. Some will say the change is overdue as, for all the warm words, Hollywood remains a privileged enclave.
Just five years ago, lack of diversity at the annual Academy Awards ceremony spawned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
While last year's box office hits – films such as Black Panther, Get Out and Crazy Rich Asians – were a huge success, their casts, predominantly black and Asian, were not represented in the major acting awards. This year's winners – Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger and Laura Dern – were all white.
Then came Black Lives Matter spawned in the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd in May after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Demonstrations were held across America, the Confederate flag was burned and 'racist' statues toppled – while along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, protesters mingled with the (predominantly white) stars immortalised on the sidewalks.
Studios including Disney, Warner Bros, CBS and Netflix have shared messages of support for the BLM movement, and have vowed to spend millions to promote diversity and inclusion. New York Times writer Reggie Ugwu said: 'The industry is in the clutches of an extremely public identity crisis in which the fresh, multicultural image it aspires to is undermined by the observable evidence.'
But while the intentions are undoubtedly good, many fear it will have the opposite effect. One Emmy Award-nominated white writer said: 'I've never known people so fearful. Houses are being put up for sale. People are moving out because even when things get back to normal after the pandemic there's going to be no work.'
'It's about fairness,' another writer said. 'I've spent the past three years mentoring young, black writers. But now I'm out of a job and it's nothing to do with my abilities as a writer. People think of Hollywood as a place where dreams come true but for people like me, it's turned into a nightmare.'

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