Joel BurgessAsheville Citizen Times
A now-closed police training program at a Henderson County community college endangered the public and students, leading to serious injuries, including a student's broken back, according to the state agency responsible for monitoring Basic Law Enforcement Training.
"The school engaged in conduct that led to the failure of training objectives, subjected students to oral and physical abuse, violated commission rules for instructors, deviated from approved lesson plans and ... caused multiple significant injuries to students," said the May 21 letter to Blue Ridge Community College from Jeffrey Smythe, director of the Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Division.
The Citizen Times obtained the letter through a public records request. While news of the May 8 decision to close Blue Ridge's BLET program for "egregious" rule violations has been reported, the letter now reveals the seriousness of the problems found by the Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission. The letter also gave the length of the program's suspension: five years.
In another public records request, the Citizen Times obtained the names of six instructors who are set to appear this month before the commission, which has the power to revoke trainer and law enforcement certifications.
Meanwhile, Henderson County Sheriff Lowell Griffin has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to open an official inquiry, though that request made in May is on hold, District Attorney Andrew Murray said, because he has not received preliminary facts and evidence needed to give the SBI a go-ahead. The issue appeared confused, as N.C. Department of Justice spokesperson Nazneen Ahmed said Aug. 2 that the SBI must first open an investigation and request that information "with proper legal process."
Strikes to the head, fractured vertebra
Many of the program violations involved "Subject Control Arrest Techniques" sessions in which non-certified instructors who were skilled in martial arts used excessive violence against students, Smythe, the justice standards division director, said in the letter.
"Students received direct strikes to the head, and when the strikes were hard enough to displace student protective headgear, the headgear was not replaced yet strikes to the head continued," he said, adding the kicks, uppercuts and other blows were enough to cause a "variety of significant injuries."
Excessive force also happened in domestic violence training and patrol techniques, Smythe said, "duringwhich a student sustained fractured vertebra."
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Of about a dozen Blue Ridge Community College students, 10 of them requested to be transferred to the BLET program at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. On July 31, nine of them graduated, A-B Tech officials said.
Blue Ridge President Laura Leatherwood spoke at that ceremony. Like other BLET graduations, it was not recorded because of the presence sometimes of officers who do undercover work, said A-B Tech spokesperson Kerri Glover.
Leatherwood did not respond to an Aug. 1 message. Blue Ridge spokesperson Erica Allison said Leatherwood was out of the country and that she was not comfortable sharing the president's written remarks without her permission.
Allison released an official statement noting the school had shut down its own program in fall 2023 because of what she had described in an earlier statement as "concerning conditions and actions of certain instructors." The college restarted the program in the spring 2024 after approval by training and standards officials, the most recent statement said.
"Upon review of a mitigation plan and a full plan for Blue Ridge’s BLET program, including all course material, classes and instructors, CJ Standards Commission staff approved and encouraged Blue Ridge to resume classes in March 2024. In fact, we successfully ran the SCAT training during the Spring 2024 semester without incident, with CJ Standards staff members on site for a portion of the training, unannounced," the statement said.
"The issues raised in the letter from the CJ Standards Commission to suspend our program for a period of five years are of great concern to our team and are matters that we are actively working to resolve in order to meet the future needs of our law enforcement partners in the region," it said.
In another action related to closure, the trainer certification of six instructors at the program was suspended with hearings set for them beginning Aug. 21.
In a records request fulfilled Aug. 2, training and standards officials gave the public personnel files of the trainers. They are David Adams, Bryan Baldwin, Joseph Ellis, Danny Godman, Kenneth Hamby and Matthew Owen. The Citizen Times reached out to the instructors Aug. 2 using numbers listed in a public database.
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Problems with the training went beyond physical injuries, Smythe said. If students became officers, they would not have faith in their training after facing "one-sided beatdowns," he said. That could lead to them avoiding conflict or violence escalations, something that would harm the public, he said.
As for concerns about former BLET classes, training and standards officials said they interviewed Blue Ridge students from 2022 and 2023 and found no reason to take any actions.
Of the nine former Blue Ridge students who graduated from A-B Tech, lead instructor Daryl Fisher said they didn't complain about their situations and appeared very determined. They have been hired at agencies including the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office, the Hendersonville Police Department, the Transylvania County Sheriff's Office and the Fletcher Police Department.
"They persisted and they persevered and I'm looking forward to the time they become law enforcement officers in our community," Fisher said.
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Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess atjburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter@AVLreporter. Please help support this type of journalism with asubscriptionto the Citizen Times.
