Norfolk police chief will review training safety procedures

NORFOLK

The Norfolk Police Department's training division is in for a cultural change.

Police Chief Bruce P. Marquis said Wednesday that he wants police recruits to report injuries to instructors and he wants to make sure training supervisors recognize when recruits might be in physical danger.

The police chief made those pronouncements in the wake of recruit John Kohn's death after a head injury in self-defense training.

"We have to make sure the training staff is trained to recognize certain things, but we have to get the recruits to understand if they're injured, they need to report the injury," Marquis said. "There will be changes made as a result of this unfortunate incident."

Marquis' statement at a news conference comes after a police video surfaced that shows Kohn - who blacked out, according to police records - being punched in the head by an instructor.

Interim City Manager Stanley A. Stein and Norfolk police Lt. Joseph P. Baron joined Marquis at City Hall Wednesday to answer questions about the death of Kohn, who was taken to a hospital in critical condition Dec. 9. He died Dec. 18.

Self-defense training is mandated by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. The training used for Norfolk police recruits is based in part on Brazilian jiujitsu, according to a police manual prepared by Leldon Sapp, the training instructor who was hitting Kohn when he went limp.

Broken bones or sprains during such training are common, said Officer Jimmy Barnes, a spokesman for Virginia Beach police.

Barnes declined to comment on a video of Sapp repeatedly punching Kohn in the head but said that in Virginia Beach any blows to a recruit's neck or head are supposed to be open-handed.

"The point is not to harm anybody," he said.

Participants' conditions are assessed before and after, Barnes said.

"Any one of us at any time could have that kind of incident happen," he said of what happened to Kohn. "Any time there's defensive or combative training, it could happen unexpectedly."

Marquis in late December said police were investigating a body-to-body collision as a potential cause of Kohn's injury. The collision happened 11 minutes before Kohn collapsed during the self-defense sparring with Sapp.

Marquis said last week he was not given information about the punches by his department when he first provided information about the death in December.

Additionally, Kohn had been hit in the head by another instructor and a recruit earlier in the week, information Marquis said also was not made available to him until recently.

A new recruit class would undergo self-defense training in about three months, Marquis said.

Marquis and Baron emphasized that the Police Department's investigation shows that while Kohn complained about headaches and nausea to his wife and other recruits, he did not tell training instructors.

"We know the dynamics of them trying to make it through training is such that they do not want to fail," Marquis said of recruits. "They're more than likely not going to self-report some deficiency, if you will. They're going to unfortunately hang in there, try harder, even though in this case there may be some injuries that only family members know. We have to change that culture, absolutely."

The cause of Kohn's death remains under investigation. Police have said a preliminary finding by the medical examiner in Norfolk determined the collision was to blame, but police emphasize that the finding was only preliminary.

When asked if punches may have contributed to the swelling of Kohn's brain, or whether the punches had been ruled out as contributing factors, Baron said: "I understand the question, but we have only been authorized to give you what we've given you from the medical examiner's office. Anything further has to come from the medical examiner's office."

Larry Hill, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Health, said he couldn't answer the question.

"We are waiting on some other items that we have requested," he said.

Pilot writer Kathy Adams contributed to this report.

Patrick Wilson, (757) 222-3893, patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com