Allen Interview (confidential)

Catherine Katie Allen recounts her experience at the police academy training. She mentions the instructions given before arrival, the attire they were supposed to wear, and the physical activities involved. She noticed Officer Parks struggling during the training and later saw him receiving oxygen. She recalls doing push-ups and crunches in the shaded area. When she looked over, Officer Parks was gone, and she heard a code blue being called. They were instructed to drink water regularly and were allowed to use the restroom. After Officer Parks left in an ambulance, they continued with some physical training before being brought into the classroom. She mentions filling out injury reports and overall describes the day as hectic and stressful, suggesting that the training could have been improved by considering the weather conditions. Alright, today's date is July 26, 2022 and the time is 2.59pm. Could you state your name for me? Catherine Katie Allen. What's your date of birth? September the 8th, 1992. And what department do you work with? The Benton Police Department. How long have you been with them? Since I got hired on in March. Okay. Yeah, but I started in July was my actual start date. Okay. Alright, so, and you started Central Toledo on July 26, 2022? Yes, ma'am. What were your instructions prior to your arrival here? To drink lots and lots of water. Make sure that we ate a really good meal the night before and the day of because they were warning us that there was going to be physical activity involved and they did not want anything to happen to us. And I was also informed by my chief that I needed to do the same because the first couple days was pretty intense of what we heard from the training that happened up here at Toledo. What about instructions as far as what time to be here, what to wear, what to do when you got here? So, we were told to get here that everything was going to start by 1 o'clock, so we all got here at like 12.45, 12.50ish. We were told to wear boots, a polo shirt, our DDU pants. Our belts weren't required. And that was it. And we were told to stand by our vehicles until Toledo arrives. Okay. So, what time did you get here? Roughly, I think it was between like 12, I want to say it was 12.35, 12.40ish. Might have been a little bit later. I'm not sure of the exact time. Okay. And so, you get here, what happens next? We see all the other cadets at their cars. The guys, well, the other officer I rode with, we both were looking around and we're like, are we prepared? Are we supposed to do this? Are we supposed to do that? So, we weren't quite sure, but after seeing everybody else just within their polos and their DDUs, we took off, like, our belts and everything and went in the car and just waited until, like, we were told to wait for instructions. Okay. Another one. And then around, I want to say it was like almost 1 o'clock or maybe at 1, that's when Instructor Chaney came around the corner by the tree and she told us to run up to the grass and was going to take a pendant. And then once she called our names, we needed to run to the blue lines that were out on the black asphalt. Basically, she was trying to see who all was there and who wasn't. So, we all lined up, and then they did, and then we lined up wrong. And then we lined up correctly, and that's when Supervisor DuBois and Instructor Chaney did, like, a workaround of making sure, like, we had what we needed or what we were told to bring, if our boots were showing, stuff like that. Okay. Sorry, one of my people here with me. Did you notice Vincent at any point? I did not notice him during that first part, no. I noticed him at the beginning before we even started running. He was one of the officers that was standing at their cars, and they had, like, their badges on and everything, and I was like, oh, crap, I hope we don't need that because I didn't bring it. So, I noticed him then, but I didn't notice him throughout that little segment that I just said no. So, when you noticed him in his car, did you pay any attention to how he seemed at all? Did you know how? I knew nothing about him. I think he was just like every other cadet, though. He was talking with his cadets from Jonesboro, just antsy because we really did not know what to expect. Okay. And so, you didn't really notice him again after that until? I noticed him. So, then once we were done with having Supervisor Dubois and Instructor Chaney walk around, we were then basically commanded, or not commanded, but we weren't doing things properly. Like, people didn't shine their boots. People didn't pay attention to the rules. They took us over to the shade, and then they did another sweep-through inspection. Somebody had a smart watch. I think that was the first time. We all had to run to our vehicles, so that person could put their smart watch in their vehicle, and then we all had to run back. Then they did another sweep-through. I don't know if they did a sweep-through inspection or if they noticed it when they did the other sweep-through inspection over on the shade. Somebody then had sunglasses. They made us run to our vehicle again, put their sunglasses in their vehicle, and run back. I believe it was that time. That's when I noticed Officer Parks was struggling. What were you all doing when you noticed he was struggling? We were running back. We were running back. Okay. He looked like he was having difficulty breathing. His belt, I don't know if it broke or if it just came undone, but his pants were halfway down to his thighs, and his shirt was untucked. He just looked like he was struggling with the PPE, which there were a lot of other cadets that were. It didn't really seem anything out of the ordinary at first. Then I looked over, maybe not even five minutes later, and I see him getting oxygen. I was like, well, this is what my chief was talking about, with people struggling. I was like, I can see because I'm not in really good shape. I was even struggling then. I was like, holy cow. Then a couple other things happened. People weren't doing things properly, so we had to do push-ups. We were doing crunches and stuff in the shaded area. When I looked over, I just remember him, I believe he was on the table still. It was either he was laying on the table or sitting on the table because they were examining him. After I was done doing my crunches, it was either crunches or mountain climbers, I looked over again and he was gone. I thought he was one of the ones that had already went to the hospital. Then all of a sudden I heard a code blue and being yelled by one of the fire department people and my girlfriend worked in the medical field. I think everybody knows what a code blue is. But anyways, when I heard code blue, I looked over and they were flagging people to come help. I just saw somebody because one of the doors of the ambulance was open was starting CPR. Y'all were all still outside when they yelled for the code blue? Yes, ma'am. Before all that happened, had y'all been instructed to, I'm not talking about before you got here, but while y'all were here, were there any instructions on drinking water, staying hydrated, where to fill your bottles up? Yes, ma'am. Everybody, officers, officer supervisor Dubois, instructor Chaney, and all the other instructors that they had participating with the training that day, they all were coming around telling us to drink in intervals of three seconds because if we drank any faster than a three-second count, we were going to puke. They had a huge bucket, like I don't know how many gallons, but it's a big old gallon, like huge gallons of tub to put water in so we could fill it up. They put that in the shade for us. They told us where it was. They gave us multiple times to fill up our water whenever we needed it. They constantly told us to drink water, though. Okay. Without going to the restroom, were y'all allowed to do that? Yes, ma'am. So nobody asked to go to the restroom was told that they couldn't go? Not from my knowledge because when I asked to go to the bathroom, I was allowed. How far into that was that? Was this before Vincent had to go in there? Sure. It's okay if you don't remember. Honestly, I don't remember. I don't want to say something and then be embarrassed. No, it's okay. It's a hectic day. Yeah. So I'm just asking y'all what you can't remember. Sometimes if you ask something specific, it may come to you. And if not, it's not a big deal. So after Vincent gets in the ambulance and he leaves, did y'all continue doing physical training or did y'all go inside at that point to the classroom? I'm not exactly too sure when Officer Parks left. Okay. So the time that we stopped doing PT, I want to say it was – I want to say we did a little bit more, but it wasn't that much. And then we were brought into the classroom. Okay. When y'all were in the classroom, did anybody mention him again after that, prior to them coming in and letting y'all know that he had passed away? We were all wondering how he was doing. Did anyone ever say anything like, don't do this or you'll be like that guy or anything that would have been putting him down in any kind of way to the recruits? Not that I heard from our knowledge, no. Do you remember them talking about injury reports? When we did PT on filling them out? Yes, ma'am. I don't think it was Instructor Chaney who told us. I think it was Investigator Tidwell. Because you could tell something was wrong, how Instructor Chaney was acting, and we didn't know to the extent of what was going on. We just could tell something was serious because of a lot of people giving the code blue. And we knew that she was probably dealing with that. So our Investigator Tidwell was replacing her, and he was telling us about the injury reports, filling it out if we were injured during PT, who gets it, then informing them the date of it happening. Because if an injury happened three days prior and you inform them then, they can't really prove it happened here. Okay. So overall, what were your thoughts and feelings about that day? Well, it was hectic. It was really stressful. I think some of it to a degree, like I came in here knowing the police academy was going to be like a military, like going off to basic training. I think what could have been done better was not having us do those things in boots, in our DDU pants, polo shirts. I mean, I'm not kidding you. I was drenched. Like, and I felt sick even doing it in this amount of gear. And I understand, like, being a police officer, you're going to have situations in any sort of weather, and you can't control that. You can't stop a criminal from committing a crime. But that, I think it should have been a little bit more of, okay, it's this hot out. Why don't we have them change into their PT clothes, and why don't we allow them to have a little bit more circulation throughout their bodies instead of all their heat being compacted in places, because there was nowhere for my heat to escape from my body. So. Okay. Ma'am, is there anything that I haven't asked you or we haven't talked about that you think would be really important for me to know? No, ma'am. That's all that I can provide you with from what I remember that you've asked me. Okay. All right. We'll conclude this at 3.14 p.m.