BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Rebecca Hopkins
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Cincinnati police saw the danger of blank rounds a month ago, when a training officer shot a recruit in the hand during a training exercise. A burn to recruit Deron Hall's right hand, which put him on limited duty for two weeks,
did not change the police academy's training procedures.
Procedures did change after Wednesday night, when another training officer shot recruit Rebecca Hopkins in the back at close range. The heat and force from the powder in the blank round was enough to put her in critical condition.
Ms. Hopkins, 25, of Westwood has improved from critical to serious condition at University Hospital after losing her spleen and left kidney to the blast of a .38-caliber blank.
Now, police have suspended use of blanks in training and mandated that recruits wear bulletproof vests at the division's Evendale target range.
Ms. Hopkins was not wearing one when Officer David Simpson, 37, an eight-year veteran, shot her in the lower back during a low-light training scenario in a wooded area on the grounds of the range.
The first shooting incident happened Oct. 22, when recruits were practicing dangerous traffic stops. The police trainers role-played as "the bad guy" with the gun, and the recruits pretended to be officers trying to arrest them.
Only training officers carry the weapons with blanks during training. When it was Mr. Hall's turn to be the cop, police Spc. James Kelleher acted as the driver. Spc. Kelleher stuck a gun out the window and fired a blank that burned Mr. Hall's hand, police said.
"That incident was reviewed by supervisors," said Lt. Col. Richard Biehl, acting police chief. "Certainly, an analysis was done of that incident and discussed with recruits."
The police division is focusing on dissecting it further, he said. Both shootings are being reviewed by the division's internal investigation unit to determine what happened and how to avoid similar situations, he said.
But for Kevin Couch, 32, of Forest Park, a friend of Ms. Hopkins, all of this analysis comes too late.
"This was the beginning of a career," he said of Ms. Hopkins, the only child of retired District 4 Officer Larry Hopkins and his wife, Gail. "She's a young girl. Where does she go from here?" Mr. Couch, whose Army training included using blanks, questions how his friend could have been shot at such close range.
"It's like sticking an air compressor to your eye socket and pulling the trigger," he said. "You just know you're not supposed to do stuff like that. And they're supposed to be the trained professionals." Police administrators have not said exactly what happened. They will say only that they are investigating.
The role-playing and low-light maneuver training continues for the 42 other recruits scheduled to graduate Dec. 11. Officers often are called in to help the divisional training staff with different role-playing scenarios. That was the case with the two officers involved in the shootings.
The division's top brass visited the recruits following Wednesday's shooting to assure them that Ms. Hopkins is improving and that measures are being taken to keep anyone else from being hurt, Lt. Col Biehl said.
"To see someone you know very well in grave condition is a shocking experience," he said. "It was a very distressful event for everyone out there, including the training staff."
