Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 2021)
2A | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021 | APPEAL TRIBUNE Former trainee: Safety not priority at police academy Claire Withycombe Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK Ron Martin was lying on the floor of a padded room, screaming in pain and staring at the ceiling. It was his fourth week of training for his new job at the Multnomah County Sheriff’s office. A few moments before he lay in agony, waiting for paramedics, he had been participating in a role- playing exercise at the state’s public safety train- ing campus in Salem. It was Oct. 24, 2019. In the scenario, another recruit had been playing an inmate. The “inmate” was pinning a third recruit, acting as the cor- rections officer, to the ground. The “officer” called Martin in as backup. When Martin entered the scene, he decided he wasn’t far away enough to use his stun gun. He felt the only choice was to “physically interact,” he said, and so he tried to push the recruit playing an inmate off the other recruit. The recruit playing the inmate didn’t budge, Mar- tin said. He turned toward Martin and grabbed his right calf in a bear hug, ap- plying pressure with his upper body and hyperex- tending Martin’s knee. Martin fell backward, hinging forward at the hip. As he fell, he heard — and felt — 10 to 15 pops down the back of his leg. “I knew my body was tearing,” Martin said in an interview with the States- man Journal. “And then I hit the ground.” Martin has filed a writ- ten complaint with the state alleging the Depart- ment of Public Safety Standards and Training neglected to provide “a safe training environ- ment.” He is asking the state to compensate him for in- come and benefits he’s lost due to the negligence he says caused his inju- ries, an amount he esti- mates is at least $100,000. The training academy certifies and trains Ore- gon’s public safety profes- sionals, from the operator who answers when you dial 9-1-1 to the officer who shows up when you get into a fender bender. An administrator says safety is a top priority. But the department does not centrally track how many injuries occur during the training of public safety officers each year. And at least one other neighbor- ing state stopped allowing trainees to play “suspects” years ago. Recovery halts career plans Martin, 48, was hired to work in Multnomah Coun- ty as a corrections officer in July 2019. Corrections officers go through a six-week course at the Department of Pub- lic Safety Standards and Training campus in Salem. The department is over- seen by a 24-member board that sets the stan- dards for training and cer- tification. Martin’s career has spanned a wide range of jobs, from commercial fisherman to professional ballet dancer. He had been cooking in the county’s ju- venile justice center when he got a notice to sit on a grand jury — the group of citizens who weigh in on whether prosecutors should charge people ac- cused of crimes. That ex- perience spurred him to seek out a career in polic- ing, the third generation in Affected by the Oregon wildfires? Find resources to help you recover. Call today 1-833-669-0554 Open 24/7, every day. his family to do so. But he hasn’t set foot in the jail since he was in- jured. When he was knocked backward during the training exercise, Martin said he stretched out his arm, to try and lessen the impact. It twisted behind him and his head hit the ground. Martin said he tore his hamstring — the collec- tion of three muscles on the back of the thigh — from his pelvis, herniated a disc in his neck, tore a meniscus in his knee and sprained his right shoul- der. A letter dated Dec. 17, 2020, that Martin provid- ed to the Statesman Jour- nal from his workers’ com- pensation processing company shows the com- pany accepting a meniscal tear in his right knee, right shoulder sprain and right hamstring strain, as well as what’s called a “cervical radiculopathy” — in sim- ple terms, a pinched nerve — in a section of the neck. In December 2019, Mar- tin had surgery to have his hamstring reattached. In June of this year, he un- derwent another surgery to have his neck fused. Nearly two years after he was injured, Martin is able to walk but his neuro- surgeon has recommend- ed he doesn’t raise his arms over his head, or lift anything more than 10 pounds until the nerve in his neck can heal. He’s able to lift and cuddle the fluffy Silkie chickens he and his husband keep in their backyard. But fish- ing, one of his favorite ac- tivities, has been off-limits since he got hurt. Even doing paperwork for more than a half-hour or so can be painful, Mar- tin said, because he needs to keep his neck neutral as much as possible. Some of Martin’s treat- ments were delayed be- cause of the pandemic. He was about a month into starting to walk again when the pandemic hit, so he didn’t get the last three months of rehab on his hamstring. But he expects to finish that at some point. He waited longer than is typical before get- ting his neck fused. And now he’s waiting for his neck to heal before he can have surgery on his knee to repair the torn me- niscus. That won’t likely happen until next year. Before going to the training academy, Martin said he was cleared by a doctor as part of the hiring process. He said he under- went a basic physical and disclosed the three surger- ies he’d previously had on his left knee, right ankle and lumbar, and the doc- tor didn’t give him any in- dication those would pose problems. “That information was all brought to their atten- LOCAL ADVISORS Salem Area Caitlin Davis CFP® Chip Hutchings www.edwardjones.com Member SIPC FINANCIAL ADVISOR FINANCIAL ADVISOR West | 503-585-1464 Lancaster | 503-585-4689 Jeff Davis Tim Sparks FINANCIAL ADVISOR FINANCIAL ADVISOR Mission | 503-363-0445 Commercial | 503-370-6159 Garry Falor CFP® Tyson Wooters FINANCIAL ADVISOR FINANCIAL ADVISOR West | 503-588-5426 South | 503-362-5439 Keizer Area Mario Montiel FINANCIAL ADVISOR Keizer | 503-393-8166 Surrounding Area Bridgette Justis Tim Yount FINANCIAL ADVISOR FINANCIAL ADVISOR Sublimity | 503-769-3180 Silverton | 503-873-2454 Kelly Denney FINANCIAL ADVISOR Dallas | 503-623-2146 OR-GCI0555203-02 Address: P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309 Phone: 503-399-6773 Fax: 503-399-6706 Email: sanews@salem.gannett.com Web site: www.SilvertonAppeal.com Staff News Director Don Currie 503-399-6655 dcurrie@statesmanjournal.com Advertising Westsmb@gannett.com Classifieds: call 503-399-6789 Retail: call 503-399-6602 Legal: call 503-399-6789 Missed Delivery? Call: 800-452-2511 Hours: until 7 p.m. Wednesdays; until 3 p.m. other weekdays To Subscribe Call: 800-452-2511 $21 per year for home delivery $22 per year for motor delivery $30.10 per year mail delivery in Oregon $38.13 per year mail delivery outside Oregon Deadlines News: 4 p.m. Thursday Letters: 4 p.m. Thursday Obituaries: 11 a.m. Friday Display Advertising: 4 p.m. Wednesday Legals: 3 p.m. Wednesday Classifieds: 4 p.m. Friday News Tips The Appeal Tribune encourages suggestions for local stories. Email the newsroom, submit letters to the editor and send announcements to sanews@salem.gannett.com or call 503-399-6773. Main Statesman Journal publication Suggested monthly rates: Monday-Sunday: $22, $20 with EZ Pay Monday-Saturday: $17.50, $16 with EZ Pay Wednesday-Sunday: $18, $16 with EZ Pay Monday-Friday: $17.50, $16 with EZ Pay Sunday and Wednesday: $14, $12 with EZ Pay Sunday only: $14, $12 with EZ Pay To report delivery problems or subscribe, call 800-452-2511 To Place an Ad Published every Wednesday by the Statesman Journal, P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309. USPS 469-860, Postmaster: Send address changes to Appeal Tribune, P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID: Salem, OR and additional offices. Send letters to the editor and news releases to sanews@salem.gannett.com. tion when they hired me,” Martin said. “I don’t think they would have hired me if they felt it was going to cause a problem.” tors” and to document the incident in his report, a signal to a server was lost and the video and notes “appeared to not save.” Video evidence disappears ‘Safety is our No. 1 concern’ An internal report paints a different picture of how the injuries oc- curred. Scott Willadsen, a coor- dinator for the police acad- emy, wrote a report about the incident that day, say- ing as Martin entered the scenario, “his feet got near the heads of the other two students.” The agency re- dacted the names of the other students. “[Redacted], acting as a role player, got ahold of Martin’s foot/ankle in what appeared to be an at- tempt to restrict Martin’s movement,” Willadsen wrote. “This action did not appear reckless or out of control but it did restrict some movement in Mar- tin’s leg.” Willadsen continued: “As Martin appeared to try and free his foot he some- how moved in a way that caused him pain in the back of his leg and he then fell to the ground.” Martin takes issue with how the report is written. He said he was never in- terviewed for the report, so how could they know when he felt pain? Martin said it was falling the way he did that caused him pain. And while the report makes note that half the class and the instructor witnessed the incident, it doesn’t include state- ments from or interviews with other members of his class. Brian Henson, admin- istrator of the operations and services division at DPSST, said Martin was “transported and not available for comment” when Willadsen logged his report. The next day, Oct. 25, Martin sent his own report of the incident to class co- ordinator James Webb. He forwarded it to the States- man Journal. In it, he wrote the other student “had been able to grab me by wrapping both of his arms around the lower part of my right leg.” “I tried to pull away, but his strength overpowered my resistance,” Martin wrote. “He squeezed even harder on my lower leg and applied pressure with his upper body until my knee bent backwards and I began to fall.” Training scenarios are filmed. But the video of Martin’s injury “was lost when the instructor at- tempted to save it,” and could not be recovered, ac- cording to a records spe- cialist for the department. Willadsen did not re- turn a request for com- ment from the Statesman Journal. He wrote in his re- port that while he was able to review the video “along with several other instruc- In Washington state, when there is a serious in- jury during police training, the agency procedure is to conduct an internal inves- tigation and interview the instructor and every wit- ness, as well as the injured student, said Sean Hen- drickson, manager of the applied skills training divi- sion at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission. First, the injured stu- dent writes a report, in- cluding a list of everyone who witnessed the inci- dent, and that is sent to the assistant commander, who runs the internal in- vestigation, puts together their findings and sends that report to the com- mander of basic training. Oregon’s procedures require all injuries to be re- ported and documented, and the agency retains the records for two years. But the procedures don’t re- quire that witnesses be in- terviewed. Henson, the academy administrator, said the number of students who get hurt in training “is very small in relation to” the thousands of students that graduate. “So it would appear that what we do works,” Hen- son said. “Could it be bet- ter? Sure. We can always say we can do more and we always try to do more, but safety is our No. 1 con- cern.” The department has a safety committee that each month reviews every injury that happens at the academy, Henson said. That committee does not include a medical profes- sional. “We’re constantly look- ing at what may have hap- pened,” Henson said, “And if it did happen, how… it happened, and could it have been mitigated, or how do we mitigate it fur- ther, those types of things.” But Henson said he could not recall a time where the safety commit- tee recommended changes to training proc- esses after reviewing a specific incident. Nationally, about 1.2% of U.S. students didn’t complete basic police training in 2018 due to in- jury or illness, according to the Bureau of Justice Sta- tistics. That amounts to 714 of the roughly 59,500 students in basic police training that year. The state police agency said it could not respond in time for publication to a Statesman Journal re- quest for information about the number of inju- ries that occurred in the past two years at the train- ing facility. It doesn’t track those injuries in one place so it would require search- ing for the injury reports in files associated with each class in each discipline. A week before Martin was injured, on Oct. 17, 2019, another student, Dustyn Matlock, was se- verely injured while prac- ticing “defensive tactics” in off-hours in the acad- emy dorms with three oth- er students. Salem Police investi- gated the incident, but prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges. Dep- uty District Attorney Matt Kemmy said in a memo on the incident that the other trainees downplayed the extent of Matlock’s inju- ries and discouraged him from seeking medical help. The three trainees had claimed that one of them, Joseph DeLance, had lift- ed Matlock off the ground and “somehow” he fell over and hit the ground. But the emergency room doctor who treated Mat- lock told investigators that his injuries “were more consistent with being slammed to the ground and blunt force trauma with a higher level of force.” Had he gone to sleep like the other three stu- dents were encouraging him to do, he could have died, the doctor said. The state Board of Pub- lic Safety Standards and Training revoked DeLanc- e’s previously held certifi- cation as a corrections of- ficer in July. His police cer- tification is still under re- view, Henson said. Staff for the agency found DeLance’s attempts to minimize his behavior and Matlock’s injuries, and his failure to report the incident violated the board’s “moral fitness” standards. He resigned from the Deschutes Coun- ty Sheriff’s Office more than a year ago, in April 2020. Court records show Matlock is suing DeLance in Deschutes County Cir- cuit Court, alleging battery and negligence, for $950,000. Matlock is still in his probationary period, Hen- son said. His agency asked for additional time for him to complete his certifica- tion. He has until Jan. 18, 2022 to get certified, un- less the agency asks for another extension. ‘A responsibility of the trainer’ Harvey Hedden, execu- tive director of the Inter- national Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, said trainers need to strike a delicate balance – making training realistic while also reduc- ing the risk of injuries. In Martin’s case, stu- dents were practicing what is known in police training as “defensive tac- tics,” basically the range of techniques police use to See SAFETY, Page 3A