The alert alerted those at the GTHA that Peel Regional Police were investigating an active shooter considered armed and dangerous and that the suspect was in a stolen vehicle.
“If you see it, don’t go near it.  Call 911 immediately,” it said.
The alert did not provide information on the make or model of the vehicle and did not provide a suspect description.  While it contained a link to more information, many reported that the link took them to an error page.
The incident claimed the lives of Toronto police constable Andrew Hong and Milton body shop owner Shakeel Ashraf, left a 28-year-old student on life support and injured two others.  During the rampage, the gunman, identified Thursday as 40-year-old Sean Petrie, drove from Mississauga to Milton, Ont., in a black Jeep Cherokee.
Shortly after the alert was issued, Hamilton police announced they had taken Petrie into custody.  He was killed during the interaction, ending the threat to public safety.
Many recipients of the public emergency alert were quick to point out the lack of detail included in it – namely, a description of the suspect, the make or model of the vehicle or an indication of where the events were unfolding in Peel Region.
Officials have also been criticized for the timing of the alert, which was issued at 4:23 p.m.  – nearly two hours after Hong was shot.  The alert could have led some to interpret the events unfolding in the Peel region at this time when, in fact, Petrie would be arrested by Hamilton minutes later.
Dr.  Terry Flynn, an associate professor of Communications Management at McMaster University, acknowledged that police forces face a difficult challenge when it comes to communicating information to the public in a situation as fluid as an active shooting.  But he says Monday’s notice lacked a substantive call to action.
“Okay, so there’s an active shooter — different people have different perceptions of what kind of action they should take,” Flynn said in an interview Thursday.  “So the criticism is, what was the direction?  What was the essential action that people should have taken?’
He also noted that the alert urged those who may have seen the suspicious vehicle to call 911, but had no description of the vehicle, other than that it was stolen.
“It didn’t say anything about the type of vehicle stolen or where it was going, so I don’t know how to tell if [a vehicle] it is owned, leased or stolen,” he said.
At a press conference Thursday, Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said the alert could not have been sent sooner and that police needed to confirm the shootings were connected before issuing it.
“I can ease any concerns [the alert] delayed,” Duraipa said.  “As soon as we could calculate there were multiples [connected] incidents happen, it went through the immediate process.”
In response to criticism of the lack of a description or location of the vehicle, the chief said those details were not confirmed at the time.
“The purpose of the notice is because we don’t know where it is, we don’t know if the vehicle has been changed,” he said.
“To those people who might be disappointed with the lack of detail in this: if we had a detail, we would put it out.  If we had more details, we might not have even issued the warning, we would have gone straight to the point.”
Duraipa said the alert had finally achieved its goal.
“If someone hears this alert, shelters and mitigates the loss of a life, we’ve accomplished our goal.”
While Flynn says Monday’s alert did its primary job — get the public’s attention — he worries the population could become desensitized to the public emergency notification system if too many are dismissed or dismissed.
“You want a system that is timely, informative and action-oriented – those are the three elements you need to make these alerts meaningful and so that people don’t denigrate it as a form of notification,” he said.  .
“You’re not going to get one size fits all, [..] and I’m not trying, in any way, to shape or criticize those decisions right now, but we have to find better ways to use this [system] before it becomes useless.”


EMERGENCY PUBLIC NOTICES 
Active shootings fall under the category of extreme emergencies in the National Public Alert System — a category that historically has not been issued often in Canada, Flynn says.
In context, this notice is issued when people cause disruption to services or require different levels of support, law enforcement or attention.
After the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre, Canada’s deadliest mass shooting, which claimed 23 lives, the RCMP faced heavy criticism for failing to issue a public warning.
Most recently, the system was used to assist officers in their search for Myles and Damien Sanderson, suspects in a series of stabbings on the James Smith Cree Nation and in Weldon, Sask.
In this case, the notice was issued in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and included a vehicle description.