Officials from the Cache County city of Hyde Park spoke out Tuesday about the incident that prompted two employees to quit and file a grievance after their boss pointed a gun at them during a meeting.
"We want to assure our residents and those that do business with Hyde Park that they are safe. We feel confident this was an isolated incident," the City Council and Mayor Sharidean Flint said in a prepared statement.
"We feel the comments and statements being circulated through social media have not always been accurate and are counter-productive. We hope that as residents we can move forward and come together to address the issues facing the city."
While Flint has spoken about the controversy before, Tuesday's statement was the first time the City Council had spoken publicly about the incident.
Mike Grunig, Hyde Park's public works director, called a regular meeting in his office on Nov. 14. But that meeting took a strange turn when employees say he stated, "Don't you think Justin would look better with a green dot on his forehead?"
"Mike then pulled a 9 mm Smith & Wesson handgun out of his pocket that had not been in a holster, open(ed) the slide, turn(ed) on the green laser and pointed it" at employee Justin Bodrero, a North Park police memo states.
Employees said Grunig then pointed the gun's laser at Bodrero's crotch before moving the laser onto the chests of two other employees.
The men eventually reported the November incident to the mayor in January. Flint demoted Grunig after reviewing the incident but he appealed that decision and the City Council — including Grunig's own son-in-law, Councilman Mark Hurd — chose to reinstate him as director.
DE: And now there are some allegations that Grunig had friends in high places who may have helped him to retain his job. Tell me about that.
AM: So, one of the individuals on the City Council. He is apparently Mike Grunig’s son-in-law. And then, from what I understand, Grunig is an active member of the LDS church and he has in the past served as a bishop.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
This is unbelievable. I city employee pulls a gun and threatens others, and no real action is taken. He should be in jail and city officials should be investigated for corruption.
Brother Grunig was trying to craft a teachable moment for the good brothers and sisters in the room. I guess there was a misunderstanding. Some folks need to ponderize that teachable moment!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Utah has plenty of gun nuts but most of them are Jack Mormons. They kind of believe in the church but they don't want to pay tithing, go to church, etc.--often because of their own status anxiety as blue collar folks. We have a state firearm. They love to talk about Browning and the BAR. There's a lot of half baked Bircherism. So Utah kind of clings to "guns and religion" too.
Maksutov wrote:They love to talk about Browning and the BAR.
Is "BAR" an acronym for "Browning Automatic Rifle?"
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
I hope they sue the city and get something fair for their trouble.
It's utterly outrageous that a person who lacked the impulse control to stop themselves from pulling a gun out in in the workplace and pointing it at three people is still employed, and in a leadership position. That's just not the kind of one-time mistake a healthy person makes. This dude is bad news.
I wouldn't call myself a gun nut, but I carry one as a matter of professional duty, and I'm probably as comfortable around them as a responsible person could be. Even with guns being an all-day, every day, completely normal thing to me, a situation like this would be incredibly alarming and result in immediate termination, as it should.
