Skip to main contentAfter several of his employees were injured earlier this month, Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Noelle is having second thoughts about the tryout regimen for an elite unit of corrections deputies.
WW has learned that nine of Noelle's deputies suffered injuries March 5 during a tryout for the Corrections Emergency Response Team. CERT specializes in what are called "extractions"--entering a cell when an inmate barricades himself in and refuses to come out.
The injuries, which sent two men to the hospital, included stress fractures of the spine, a dislocated elbow, dehydration, kidney failure, an injured knee, a black eye, cracked ribs and a probable concussion.
"Everybody is kind of in shock," says Noelle. "There's obviously something wrong."
According to Barbara Simons of the Sheriff's Office, 13 candidates tried out for a couple of open spots on CERT. Fourteen CERT members also participated because they needed to requalify. All were men.
Most of the injuries, Simons says, are thought to have stemmed from one exercise, called "bull in a ring."
In it, at least four CERT members surround the candidate and attempt to knock him or her down, using 16-by-24-inch pads. All involved wear helmets and padded armor. The candidates try to stay on their feet as long as they can. In at least some cases the candidate fights back: According to Noelle, one candidate's roundhouse kick to a CERT member's torso caused the rib injury.
CERT is the jail's version of the Portland Police Bureau's elite SERT, or Special Emergency Reaction Team. Allegations of hazing by the Portland unit surfaced last year. According to Lt. Vera Pool, a county jail manager, some deputies within the Sheriff's Office consider "bull in a ring" to be hazing as well.
Pool, however, defends the exercise as a necessary test of "mental and physical preparedness." Similarly, Darcy Bjork, president of the Multnomah County Corrections Officers Association, defended the exercise as "mission-relevant and appropriate," describing it as simulating a deputy caught in a hostile mob of inmates.
Commander Rob Gordon of the Washington County Sheriff's Office says his CERT unit dropped its "bull in a ring" exercise, which it modeled on Multnomah's, due to excessive injuries.
In Washington County, the exercise was starting to get out of control, says Gordon, with deputies even using fists at times. He says the training was "coming very close" to a hazing ritual, with some team members taking a "now it's your turn" mentality toward the recruits.
In 1998, the first year of CERT in Multnomah, the "bull" exercise caused at least two injuries. A follow-up report concluded that "it is not clear if the testing can be made safer."
Gordon, an immediate past president of the Oregon Jail Managers Association, says many counties in Oregon are moving away from relying on CERTs, instead extending cell-extraction training to all deputies.
No such move is being considered in Multnomah, but the county will review training carefully, says Noelle. "We're going to take the whole thing apart and look at it from top to bottom."
WWeek 2015