A law enforcement officer had a gun at the St. Bede Academy baseball game yesterday. Credentialed police are allowed to have their guns in public even when off-duty, and some law enforcement agencies require their officers to always be armed in public. But the circumstances of this case are under investigation.
Spring Valley Police Chief Adam Curran received a smart phone photo from someone he knows showing the gun on the back right hip of a person who wasn’t dressed like an on-duty police officer. Curran says when his officers got there, the man didn’t cooperate at first but eventually identified himself.
Curran says everyone is right to be worried about things like this, considering the deadly shooting at a Nashville school and the teenager charged with having a gun near LaSalle-Peru High School this week. Curran says a little cooperation from the outset would have been better. He declined to name the man’s employer but says it’s an agency in Illinois. Police are looking into whether any laws or policies were violated.