Analyzing today's Sun article on the Taser injury
Today's Daily Sun ran a front page story regarding the rumored Taser injury of a Gilford police officer. As reported by Mike Kitch in the Sun, Chief Markland says:
"There is no factual information that indicates that a TASER caused an injury."
And yet there's verbiage about training and one surmises that an officer was indeed injured sometime in the recent past.
Sounds like the SOP we heard about on the budget committee last year-- that all injury cases involving TASERS are found to have other causes, being merely agitated by the device.
Question: Do we have an injured officer unable to perform his normal duties, or have we recently?
Did the injury occur in an exercise in which a TASER was in use at some point?
The Gilford taxpayers (rightfully) spend a lot of money to ensure the utmost safety of all its employees, especially those in the public safety departments. TASERS were okayed, in fact, as a safety measure. The taxpayers have a right to know the circumstances causing an employee an on the job injury so they can evaluate the effectiveness of the measures for which they pay.
If revealing the nature of an on the job injury using town owned equipment and techniques is private and therefore unknowable, according to law, why did we learn Officer Bredbury broke a finger in a motorcycle week cruiser crash-- one that wasn't known publicly for an extended period of time?
What's the difference?
And what if a policeman had been accidently shot. Would the public be barred from knowing the full story?
I'm not suggesting there's been a "cover up" to hide wrongdoing. Perhaps bad publicity about an event everyone wished hadn't happened? Well...
