Local Law Enforcement Captains Named in Abuse Investigation of Blue Ridge Training

Officers from the Brevard Police Department and the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office have had their state instructional certifications suspended pending a hearing later this month.

BREVARD — Two high-ranking local law enforcement officers have been named in an investigation into abusive practices that has led to a five-year suspension of state-sanctioned law enforcement training programs at Blue Ridge Community College.

The officers’ state certifications as instructors have also been temporarily suspended, said Brevard Police Chief Tom Jordan and Transylvania County Sheriff Chuck Owenby, but their law enforcement certifications have not been.

Both officers — Brevard Police Capt. Dan Godman and Sheriff’s Office Capt. Chase Owen — remain on the job, Jordan and Owenby said. 

The permanent status of their certifications and those of four other instructors from the now-shuttered program will be decided after an Aug. 21 hearing of the state Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission.

Godman’s “instructional certification is suspended pending a fact-finding hearing that will determine if there’s an issue,” Jordan said. “They may come back and say there is no issue at all.”

If the Commission does find issues, possible corrective actions range from a verbal warning to the suspension or revocation of law enforcement certifications, Commission Chair Chris Blue wrote in an emailed response to questions.

The Commission’s investigation focused on the 16-week Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET) program, which is required for state certification.

The school received formal notification that the Commission had voted to suspend the program in a May 21 letter from Jeffrey Smythe, the director of the state Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Division.

The Commission, according to the letter provided by Blue, found probable cause that training sessions last fall “subjected students to oral and physical abuse, violated commission rules for instructors, deviated from approved lesson plans . . . and caused multiple significant injuries to students.”

The suspension was previously reported by outlets including WLOS News 13 and the Asheville Citizen-Times, which published a story based on the contents of the letter earlier this week.

WLOS has also aired a video of an older training session in which a “role player” wearing a thickly padded suit and helmet forcefully struck a lightly protected student. A former student, whom the station quoted anonymously, said the classes last fall were “more of just beating up the cadet rather than pursuing actual training.”

The school “allowed non-certified role players to injure students and . . . created false records of student participation and testing. This was all done with inadequate oversight and staff who directly participated in these acts or who failed to correct them,” said the letter, which went on to detail the violence:

“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 . . . Students were also subject to a variety of kicks, uppercuts, and various martial arts techniques.”

Though the letter says the suspension applies to “all Commission courses offered by you,” the college will continue to provide “an array of public safety courses that are not impacted by the CJ Standards decision,” school spokeswoman Erica Allison wrote in an email.

The letter also cited the school’s use of role players who were not certified as law enforcement instructors to help create “scenarios” that mimicked actual confrontations.

Allison did not address this specific concern, but did write that Blue Ridge had chosen not to appeal the suspension.

In her email, she described the college’s response when it first heard complaints about the training in November of 2023.

“The course was paused, an internal review initiated, and we reached out to CJ Standards Commission to self-report issues of concern and request assistance with our review,” she wrote.

After creating a “mitigation plan” to address the issues, the school resumed the program in the spring of 2024 until May 8, when “a plan was put into place to transfer the students to A-B Tech,” she wrote, referring to Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, where the students completed the training.

Most of the actions investigated were part of the Subject Control/Arrest Training (SCAT).

Godman was “one of the Specialized Instructors for the practical skills portion of the Subject Control/Arrest Techniques block of instruction,” Blue wrote.

Jordan said that, because he did not conduct the investigation, he does not know Godman’s precise involvement, “but I’ve had my own officers who were in that class tell me he wasn’t there when those injuries occurred.”

Owen, Owenby said, is not certified as a SCAT instructor and did not teach those techniques. 

“The block Captain Owen taught is the patrol techniques block, and from our understanding of this investigation, everything is stemming from the SCAT block,” Owenby said.

However, one of the injuries highlighted — a broken vertebra — did occur during the patrol training, which also included “excessive violence,” the letter said.

Owenby said this injury came at the hands of a role player who was chosen by the school even though he was not a certified instructor.

“The hardest part for us is — (Owen) did not have a say in selecting his role players.”

Until recently, state law allowed cadets to work as officers for up to a year before completing the BLET program, Owenby said, and two of the injured cadets were employed at the Transylvania County Detention Center during the 2023 BLET term at issue.

The cadet who suffered the broken vertebra was actually the less seriously injured of the two, Owenby said.

He returned to the job after several weeks on a light-duty assignment, was able to complete the BLET, and “is on field training right now and everything is great,” Owenby said.

The injuries inflicted in the SCAT training, on the other hand, were severe enough that the cadet was not able to complete the physical portion of the training program, Owenby said.  

Jordan also said several students who completed last fall’s term now work at his department.

“I will say that not one cadet out of that class has come to me with any concerns about” Godman, Jordan said.

Both Godman and Owen are highly respected long-serving officers, Jordan and Owenby said.

Godman has worked at the city since 2009 and earns about $86,000 annually. Owen was hired at the county the same year and makes about $80,000.

Owen, who was defeated in the Republican primary when he ran for Sheriff in 2022, described himself during the campaign as a Transylvania native with a long record of serving in key roles at the Sheriff’s Office.

He was then a lieutenant in charge of criminal investigations and, as a captain, now oversees the agency’s patrol operations, Owenby said.

Godman, meanwhile, serves as “captain in charge of investigations and field support,” Jordan said.

The program has long been the department’s primary source of recruits, Jordan said. “With them being shut down for five years, it means we will drive further and go further out to get necessary training.”

The issues raised in the letter from the Commission, Allison wrote, “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.”

Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com