Friday, May 21, 2010

Will A.G. look into Woods' shooting injury?

On Tuesday of this past week I telephoned the Office of the Illinois Attorney General about the Eric Woods' shooting injury on March 15. They must be running on Empty down there, because the attorney (I'll avoid embarrassing the attorney here by leaving out the name) didn't call me back yet.

I'm glad to see that Mike Mahon, the Democratic candidate for sheriff, is as interested in getting at the truth of the Woods' injury as I am (and as are some (maybe lots of) deputies at MCSD).

How should that incident and injury have been handled press-wise? There would not be all the interest and furor now, if the Sheriff's Department had announced immediately that Deputy Woods had been injured at the range, was being treated and would return to duty as soon as possible. End of story.

Instead, taking 13 days to make any announcement at all and then referring to Woods' injuries as like "road rash", when many knew that was not the case, is spelling disaster for Sheriff Keith Nygren.

The most recent FOIA response from the Sheriff Department was that there is no written documentation of any review by the Sheriff or "leaders" in the department into the circumstances that resulted in Woods' injury. That review should have taken place in the week of March 29-April 2.

Any reasonable person would expect that a written report would follow, so that "lessons learned" would be recorded and range operations adjusted to ensure deputies' safety at the range.

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