US officer fired over stun gun

A POLICE officer who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl was fired for violating police policy, not for using the Taser gun itself but for failing to use the camera attached to it, according to the town’s mayor.

Vernon McDaniel, mayor of Ozark, Arkansas, said he received notice of Officer Dustin Bradshaw’s firing yesterday morning.

Bradshaw previously was suspended for seven days with pay.

“The policy that Officer Bradshaw failed to obey is failure to have his camera placed on his Taser,” police chief Jim Noggle wrote in a memo. “It is the officer’s duty to insure all of his equipment is present and in working order.”

Police were called to the home on November 11 after the girl’s mother couldn’t get her to take a shower.

Bradshaw’s report said the girl was “violently kicking and verbally combative” when Bradshaw tried to take her into custody, and she kicked him in the groin.

He said he delivered “a very brief drive stun to her back”.

“Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to,” Bradshaw wrote.

The girl, who hasn’t been identified, wasn’t injured.