Corporate Fund Criticized for Las Vegas Fund-Raising Event

Since 2004 the Taser Foundation, a corporate foundation for the nation’s largest maker of stun guns, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the families of police officers killed in the line of duty. The foundation is facing harsh criticism, however, from one of the nation’s largest law-enforcement survivor groups for a potentially distasteful fund-raising event in Las Vegas this weekend that will feature a poker tournament and Playboy Bunnies, reports USA Today.

Suzie Sawyer, executive director of Concerns of Police Survivors, in Missouri, said the event sends the wrong message. She said, “While the Taser Foundation is doing a very nice thing to financially support the surviving families of fallen officers, it would be our hope that they would conduct their fund raising in a manner that could not sully their mission.” She added, “When you mingle the vices with the virtue, raising money through Playboy Bunnies and the Vegas style, it isn’t something we would do or encourage.”

Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said that the tournament, which is being promoted as “Beauty and the Bet,” is in the spirit of the foundation’s three prior charity poker tournaments that have been the organization’s “most successful” money raisers. This year, since police deaths have jumped nearly 30 percent, the foundation thought it would respond with additional attractions to the event. “What is most important to remember is that every dollar raised through this tournament will go directly to families of fallen law-enforcement officers,” Mr. Tuttle said.