Was the investigation of the Woods' shooting injury at the McHenry County Sheriff's Department range whitewashed?
Deputy Eric Woods was injured on March 15, when a bullet ricocheted off a steel target during a SWAT exercise at the shooting range.
On March 28 a Northwest Herald reporter, in the first media report of the injury, wrote that "Range officers, leaders and Nygren will review what happened..."
Rumors abound that the SWAT exercise was not run in the normal manner and that Woods was being subjected to hazing, indoctrination or initiation as a new SWAT team member. Upon re-reading the March 28th article, that possibility became clearer. The reporter wrote, "Deputy Eric Woods entered the room first ... Deputy Michael Hart ... entered the room a few minutes later."
Deputy Morrow's summary and Lt. Cedergren's summary do not state that, so there must be at least one more report that wasn't provided in response to my several FOIA requests.
What happened to the Sheriff's review after March 28? The "leaders" did not document their "review", if there even was one. Why would the leaders and the Sheriff meet to review a serious incident resulting in injury of a deputy and not create a written record of their investigation of the incident?
Lt. Cedergren wrote a summary on March 15 - the same day as Woods was injured. That summary is so incomplete as to be worthless. He wrote that Dep. Woods entered the room and then Dep. Hart came into the room. No mention of the three deputies who entered the room between Woods and Hart. No mention of the number of rounds fired. No mention of the elapsed time between Woods' entering the room and Hart's entry. No critique of the obviously "coordinated" reports written by the corrections officers. Two of those had 71 consecutive words that were identical!
And still there have been no written reports submitted by Deputy Woods, Sgt. Embry or Lt. Miller. Why not?
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4 comments:
Woods is back at work. Maybe someone should ask him.
Glad to hear that Woods is back at work. I hope his leg has healed completely.
Will someone ask him? Not likely. MCSD must have a Don't ask; don't tell policy for injuries like that.
If I were Sheriff, I'd invite him to my office, close the door and ask him what really happened that day.
He's been brought into a office but I don't believe much ASKING was going on. More like TELLING.
We all know that the "leaders" at MCSD aren't going to learn anything about what really happened on March 15, unless they shut their mouths and listen to what Woods says.
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