Question Number 1: Who has been trying to spin the story by feeding both David Cochrane and Fred Hutton with confidential information?
The standard police position is to withhold all information about officer-involved shootings as part of the investigation.
That’s the position Royal Newfoundland Constabulary chief Bill Janes took at his news conference on Monday morning about the death of Donny Dunphy.
Yet, both VOCM and CBC reported information on Sunday evening and early Monday morning about the fatal police shooting in a rural community that could have only come from either very highly placed political sources or police officers very close to the incident and the investigation.
Here’s the first line from Cochrane’s first story:
CBC News has learned that an officer of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, who was at the scene of the fatal shooting on Sunday in Mitchells Brook, NL, was there to investigate an alleged threat against Premier Paul Davis.
Other reports indicated that the officer shot Dunphy after Dunphy produced a “long gun” on the lone police officer there.
All those details could only have come from the officer who shot Dunphy, someone else who was on the scene at the time of the shooting, one of the investigating officers, or a senior political staffer who had been briefed on the incident by police.
Who has been leaking information?
