NORTHAMPTON — The career-ending injury that left a Granby officer nearly blind in one eye while training at a state-run police academy in Springfield last year is a rare occurrence for recruits, though plenty of others have been hurt in recent years, records show.
A Gazette review of injury reports filed by instructors at the state’s five regional police academies shows that at least 20 recruits have been injured since 2014 while engaged in hands-on, defensive tactics exercises, including at the Western Massachusetts Regional Police Academy in Springfield where Granby Police Officer Shawn Rooney suffered a grim eye injury in November.
The injuries have ranged from bruising, pulled muscles and hamstrings to ligament damage, injured ribs and chipped teeth. Only a handful of recruits were not able to return to the academy after suffering these less severe injuries, according to the reports.
In addition to Rooney, Greenfield officer recruit Michael McDowell suffered an undisclosed though “substantial injury” at the academy in early 2015, forcing him to leave and recover before returning to a new session later that year, according to the Greenfield Police Department. McDowell’s injury does not show up in the specific reports the Gazette requested but was documented, according to the Municipal Police Training Committee, an agency of the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
The agency said it is “possible, but not likely,” that some instructors have not reported all training injuries at the academies.
The Gazette reviewed defensive tactics injury reports from 2013 to the present as part of a public records request. During that span, 775 recruits have graduated from 16 academy sessions, according to the police training committee. There were no reported injuries related to defensive tactics training in 2013.
“Injuries are indeed rare,” Felix Browne, a public safety spokesman, wrote on behalf of the agency in response to questions by the Gazette. “We have some academies that may go years without an injury.”
The training committee manages five regional academies in Springfield, Boylston, Plymouth, Randolph and Reading. Officer recruit training typically runs 20-plus weeks.
Rooney, 41, was struck in the eye with a baton by a training instructor during an exercise in which he had to react to an “unruly patron in a bar,” his lawyer, Judd L. Peskin, of Springfield, has said. More than 20 people were reportedly in the room and witnessed the injury, most if not all instructors in training, he said.
Rooney has not been able to return to work, has lost sight in one eye, and has undergone multiple surgeries, according to Peskin. He recently suffered a setback after being fitted with what Peskin described as a type of prosthetic lens over his injured eye, which led to complications, he said.
“They thought they had saved the eyeball,” Peskin said. “It looked as though he actually had an eye.”
Rooney was awarded temporary full disability benefits under workers’ compensation in late March, according to Peskin. The town had previously been paying his salary.
In the wake of Rooney’s injury, the training committee suspended all police academy hands-on training drills involving the use of padded suits and impact weapons, a freeze that remains in place as a five-month investigation into the circumstances that led to Rooney’s injury continues.
“All such drills are still suspended while protocols and scenarios are being reviewed and revised, as needed,” the agency wrote to the Gazette last week. “The academies are still conducting hands-on training to learn the necessary skills and are still participating in scenario training. The suspension only covers padded suits.”
Training committee officials said the suspended drills provided an extra level of training and were optional at the time of Rooney’s injury. “Some academies utilized them, others did not,” they said.
State public safety officials have declined to release a state police report on Rooney’s injury, citing an ongoing personnel investigation.
The report was completed in February and turned over to the public safety office, according to the committee’s Feb. 17 meeting minutes.
Granby Police Chief Alan Wishart said he has been requesting the report for months.
“We’ve seen nothing at all yet from the state,” Wishart said. “We don’t know what the state police investigation looks like. We don’t know if anything is being done.”
In an unrelated case, three instructors at the Springfield academy at One Armory Square are named as defendants in a federal lawsuit filed by a recruit in 2014 alleging he was harassed and hazed by the instructors while attending the academy. The complaint also names Daniel Zivkovich, the training committee’s executive director, and Curtis McKenzie, director of the Springfield academy, as defendants.
Inherent risks
Training committee officials said no two situations or classes are identical at the academies and there are many contributing factors to injuries sustained by recruits.
Injury reports filed over the last three years show that in some cases, officer recruits have aggravated a previous injury or they have been injured while engaged in defensive tactics with other officer recruits, such as a blocking drill with batons.
Some injury reports describe calves, knees and shoulders popping, or errant punches or elbows causing bruising and in one case, chipped teeth.
“During a take-down in edge weapon defense, left elbow popped, followed by a burning pain,” a February 2016 injury report from the academy in Plymouth reads.
“Took elbow to the head …” and “… said he heard his left calf ‘pop’ while doing patterns of movement,” read two others filed by instructors.
Peskin said the injuries described in the reports are hardly surprising and of a very different nature from Rooney’s permanent injury.
“That’s what you would expect,” he said. “I would expect there would be some bruising and soft tissue injuries. People are taking falls and landing awkwardly.”
Training committee officials say the agency has required instructors to report injuries for decades and for a variety of reasons. They include ensuring officer recruits receive proper care for their injuries and to keep them from further injuring themselves in training as well as to examine the training environment that may have contributed to an injury.
The agency said it expects injuries will occur given the physical nature of the training and it provides recruits with a health and wellness fitness preparation guide aimed at preventing injuries.
“Police training, like any type of realistic skills training, involves inherent risks, even when safeguards are in place,” training committee officials told the Gazette. “… Every training situation has a unique set of variables that can create risks.”
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.