By Annmarie Timmins
The Concord Monitor
CONCORD, Mass. — A 48-year-old Concord woman who was the city’s first female firefighter in 1983 was shot by the police with a non-lethal “sock” gun yesterday, after they say she charged city officers with a 10- inch knife.
Katharine S. Taylor, who is homeless, suffered a fractured arm from the bean bag fired from the police gun, the Concord Police said. She was treated for her arm injury and charged with criminal threatening, reckless conduct and resisting arrest. She is being held on $30,000 cash bail.
No police officers were hurt.
The incident began at 8:33 a.m. yesterday, when the police were called to a School Street address for a report of a despondent woman armed with a large knife, the police said. At the home, the police found Taylor and another woman in a heated conversation at the top of a stairway on the second floor.
Taylor had a knife and did not respond to police officers when they told her to back away and drop the knife, the police said. She then moved “aggressively” toward the officers, getting within several feet of them, the police said.
An officer at the scene then shot Taylor with a “sock” gun, which discharges a small bean bag with considerable force. Injured, Taylor backed away and shut herself in a bathroom with her knife, the police said. A short time later, she emerged and surrendered her knife and herself.
Taylor could not be reached yesterday evening after the police released news of her arrest. Several years ago, Taylor, then using the name Kathy Boren, talked to the Monitor about her days as a Concord firefighter and a sexual harassment complaint she filed against several of her colleagues at the fire department.
The stress of the alleged abuse, she told the Monitor in 1992, left her suffering from physical ailments and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Taylor was a nurse when she decided to become a firefighter for the city in 1983. She had married Rodney Towne, a Concord firefighter, and missed him during his long shifts at the fire station, she said. She decided to attend firefighter training school and graduated in 1982 with the school’s first co-ed class.
On her first day with the city, a lieutenant greeted her by telling her no one wanted her at the station, she said. That was the start, she said, of years of sexual harassment and discrimination. She left the fire department in 1989 and filed a lawsuit against the city, accusing several colleagues in the department of harassment.
Taylor also filed a complaint with the New Hampshire Commission on Human Rights around the same time.
In both, Taylor said she was assaulted, touched inappropriately and called derogatory names. Taylor said colleagues played pornographic movies in the fire station and gave her bad reviews when she complained.
The human rights commission dismissed her complaint in 1992 but later reversed that decision after Taylor appealed. In the second ruling, the commission said there was evidence Taylor had been sexually harassed by one employee and then given a negative review when she reported the abuse.
The outcome of her lawsuit was not immediately available last night.
Taylor’s family could not be reached last night, and friends who’ve helped her recently declined to comment.
Acting Police Chief Robert Barry wouldn’t comment on the incident until after his department has done its own internal review of Taylor’s arrest. His office reported the “use of force” incident to the state attorney general’s office and the county attorney’s office.
Jeff Strelzin, chief of the homicide unit at the attorney general’s office, said he met with Barry and reviewed the shooting but concluded that it did not require the state’s review because lethal force had not been used and no one died or suffered a life- threatening injury.
Strelzin said the police department contacted his office “out of an abundance of caution.”
Taylor is due back in Concord District Court for a probable cause hearing Sept. 21.
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