The findings are disturbing in an investigation of the police training academy accident last year that cost a Granby officer his left eye.
The most damning statements in the 200-plus page report by the Massachusetts State Police released last week are that Officer Shawn Rooney, 41, was wearing a padded helmet with a face cage but no eye protection — contrary to advice by the manufacturer of the gear. Additionally, the defensive tactics drill leading to the injury was conducted without written guidelines — contrary to the norm at the academy, where virtually all training follows a written lesson plan.
Those lapses have resulted in the disciplining of five police academy instructors and the suspension of the defensive tactics exercise at all five training academies in the state “until a detailed curriculum involving safety protocols and role playing script has been developed,” according to the Municipal Police Training Committee.
That agency of the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security manages the training academies. It must now take responsibility for preventing a repeat of the debilitating injury to Rooney, which ended his police career.
Rooney, of Chicopee, worked his way up in the Granby Police Department, starting as a part-time dispatcher in 2002, becoming a part-time officer in 2003, and earning an appointment to a full-time position last year. He was 15 weeks into the 26-week training class that began Aug. 17, 2015, when he was injured the morning of Nov. 30 at the Western Massachusetts Regional Police Academy in Springfield.
Rooney was the second student to participate that day in the drill known as “Redman.” The scenario required him to remove an unruly patron from a simulated bar. The patron was played by instructor Robert Wise of the West Springfield Police Department. According to the state police report, Rooney was on top of Wise trying to subdue him when Wise took possession of his baton. As the two wrestled, Rooney’s “downward movement coincided with officer Wise bringing the baton up causing the baton to meet and enter Rooney’s (face) cage causing the injury,” according to witness statements cited in the report.
The hard-foam head protection with a metal face cage worn by Rooney is manufactured by Redman Training Gear and is widely used by law enforcement. It comes with this warning: “Do not grab or penetrate the Face Cage. Provides only limited protection to the eyes and face. Wear impact resistant eye protection to reduce risks of accidental penetration.”
According to the state police report, safety glasses were not provided to the students participating in the Redman drill, nor, apparently, were any available at the Springfield training center.
Furthermore, Joseph Witkowski , director of the police academy in Springfield, told investigators that while there is a lesson plan for “pretty much everything” during training, there was none for that Redman drill. Instead “there is institutional knowledge by the instructors on how the scenario is run,” according to the report.
Police work is a dangerous business, and officers are at risk whenever they are on duty. Training exercises must simulate real-world situations requiring police to protect themselves and citizens in stopping threats and de-escalating tension-filled, often unpredictable situations.
But that training must be conducted with utmost attention to safety, which at a minimum requires wearing all recommended protective gear.
And the exercises must be guided by agreed-upon best practices that are uniform at all the state’s police academies, rather than relying on the “institutional knowledge” of instructors who come and go.
Those protections were evidently missing on Nov. 30, when Rooney’s eye was so severely damaged that it could not be saved. After multiple surgeries, Rooney now has a prosthetic eye.
His lawyer, Judd L. Peskin, of Springfield, puts it bluntly: “There’s negligence all over the place. … This is a big deal. He lost an eye.”
The state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security now must be held accountable for making certain that instructors are properly trained in safety techniques and that tighter guidelines govern role-playing drills. That much is owed recruits who are training to put their lives on the line.