The lawyer representing Howard Hyde’s sister accused at least one Halifax Regional Police officer of copying his report of the Tasering incident from another officer.
Police reports are supposed to be written from an individual officer’s memory. But yesterday lawyer Kevin MacDonald read several identical passages from two officers’ accounts of Hyde being Tasered.
MacDonald said Const. Jonathan Edwards seems to have copied more than half of his report from a fellow officer’s version written earlier.
“These are identical words and they’re his words. Why you did it I don’t know, but they’re his words,” MacDonald said yesterday during the inquiry into Hyde’s death.
Edwards denied copying his report and said he wrote it from his own memory. He did admit the two were similar.
“I don’t recall doing that, but if I felt a line was appropriate to use I might have incorporated it into (my report),” Edwards testified.
MacDonald said at issue was the accuracy of the police records. Edwards also testified yesterday that the struggle started when Hyde grabbed at a cutting device while officers tried to snip the string on his shorts. There had been no mention of that in his records at the time.
