It's encouraging to hear word of an independent review launched by the RCMP, but it's not yet enough to remove the sickening feeling we are all experiencing.
The Mounties have launched an independent review into how an HIV-positive, high-risk convicted rapist was given a speeding ticket and then allowed to drive away with a young girl in his vehicle.
The 10-year-old girl was abducted from the Deerfoot Mall, and her ordeal should have come to an end when an RCMP officer stopped the vehicle near Airdrie.
The girl was too terrified to say anything, and in the meantime her father was back at the mall still trying to figure out where his daughter had gone to.
So in fairness, the officer was not on the lookout for a potentially abducted child, and maybe the sight or a frightened child in the vehicle wouldn't have seemed unusual.
But the fact that no red flags were raised when the name of a convicted sex offender - one ordered to stay away from children - was entered into the police computer is shocking beyond belief.
Fortunately, the encounter spooked the suspect enough that he dropped the girl off unharmed at an Airdrie restaurant. Of course, it's not hard to imagine how a frightened and desperate sex offender might have handled that scare in a much more tragic way.
We've been given conflicting statements from RCMP about what standard procedure is when it comes to running names through the system.
An independent review may eventually give us answers, but in the meantime it also gives police an excuse to continue to avoid some very difficult questions.
Let's hope those answers are forthcoming, and let's hope this sort of thing is never allowed to happen again
More here, here, and here.
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