Heather Sterling stepped into the ring at the Texas Game Warden Training Center, ready to face an onslaught of trainers posing as violent attackers.
The four-in-one drill is a training course for game wardens, sworn officers who enforce state conservation laws. Nationwide, thousands of local and state police recruits are allowed into the profession only after undergoing similar exercises — simulated fights for their lives.
The barrage of balls against Sterling came quickly, video obtained by The Associated Press shows. A surprise push from behind threw him to the ground. A right hand punch to the back of the head knocks him down. Within two minutes, he was hit in the head at least seven times, the last blow knocking off his wrestling helmet.
“Keep yourself safe!” shouted a coach.
Sterling completed the drill but was injured. A dozen of his classmates — a third in all — were injured that day as they were repeatedly punched, tackled on the gym floor and thrown against padded walls, records show.
While the drill was physically punishing, their experience was not unique. Since 2005, similar exercises at law enforcement academies nationwide have been linked to at least a dozen deaths and hundreds of injuries, some resulting in disabilities, an AP investigation has found.
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Editor’s note: This is the third installment in AP’s Dying to Serve series. Find previous stories here and here.
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The exercises — often referred to as RedMan training for the brand and color of protective gear worn by participants — are intended to teach law enforcement recruits how to defend themselves against belligerent suspects. They are the most challenging tests in police academies. Law enforcement experts say that when properly designed and supervised, they teach new officers critical skills for handling high-stress situations.
But critics say they could expose recruits to physical and mental abuse that drives some hopeful officers out of the profession. In the absence of national standards for conducting police training, academies have wide latitude to conduct such exercises.
Sterling left the academy after his drill. She’s speaking out now, hoping to change training practices nationwide.
“I’m worried someone’s going to get killed,” said Sterling, who previously worked as a senior game warden and defensive tactics coach in Wyoming. “It’s a poorly disguised attack.”
An investigation by the agency that regulates law enforcement training found no wrongdoing in how the drill was conducted. An academy official told investigators that the goal is to “get the cadets to think when they are physically and mentally exhausted.”
An expert who reviewed the case said AP injuries occur during volatile training environments nationwide, but the Texas drill stood out for its design — recruits could not use force to defend themselves from attackers. He said that the number of injured is alarming.
“To teach cadets how and when to defend themselves, to put them in a doomsday scenario with instructions not to allow them to fight, no training course I’ve ever seen matches that,” said David Judd, retired commander of the Kentucky State Police Academy.
A Wyoming game warden moves back to Texas
In October 2024, Sterling began the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s eight-month academy in rural Central Texas, which boasts of producing “the nation’s best-trained conservation officers.”
Game wardens—called conservation officers or wildlife troopers in some states—enforce hunting and fishing laws. They carry guns, have powers of arrest, are often the first to respond to emergencies and rescue operations.
Sterling said she loved serving as a game warden in Wyoming for about five years, where she sometimes shot moose and mountain lions far from towns. Patrolling without backup, she said, he had “very tense conversations” with suspects and had to place some in handcuffs.
She said nearly everyone she encounters during hunting season is armed and potentially dangerous, but she prides herself on responding alertly and calmly. He never had to fight a suspect, and none of the 40 wardens he taught self-defense had a significant use of force incident.
Sterling applied to live closer to family in Texas, hoping for a similar law-enforcement role in his home state. She grew up as the daughter of a Dallas police officer and ran track and cross-country at Texas A&M.
The academy scheduled a four-on-one drill for Dec. 13, 2024, followed by five weeks of arrest and control training.
The instructors told the cadets they couldn’t defend themselves and were only to punch and kick the shields the instructors put up, Sterling recalled. They discussed how some cadets had been seriously injured and dismissed from past academies for poor performance.
Sterling told the AP that she was confused by the purpose of the drill. He had never been attacked by one person, let alone four. If that happens, she will be able to use a gun or other force to defend herself. As a trainer, she said, she would never have approved such a scenario or allowed punches to the head and neck.
A female classmate who had previously worked as a police officer resigned rather than participate. She later told investigators that she saw the drill as inappropriate and unprofessional training and part of an academy culture of hazing.
But Sterling felt she had no choice if she wanted to stay in her profession. He completed the cardio exercise, and the drill began.
Combat exercises take different forms across the country
Academies have discretion to design training within state guidelines, and the AP found that practices at local police, county sheriff’s and state departments take many forms. They are sometimes called “combat training,” “combat days” or “stress response training.”
Recruits like Sterling must fend off multiple attackers at once. Others fight a series of trainers, one after the other. Some academies deliberately use older, more skilled coaches. In Kentucky, one scenario required a fight with a suspect in a pond.
The stated goals are usually the same: the skills learned at the academy to stop or subdue attackers and never give up.
Recruits and coaches wear protective gear to protect their heads from blows. But there are no uniform safety guidelines, including whether academies must have on-site medical staff.
Lawyers for some black and female former trainees have alleged that trainers used excessive force on their clients to try to force them out of the profession. Many of the deaths have occurred at the prospect of black men joining disproportionately white police forces.
Amid the deaths and criticism, experts are encouraging academy directors to retire or modify any problematic practices.
Brian Baxter, who oversees training at the Texas Department of Public Safety and now leads a group that studies use of force, said the exercises “can quickly turn into an abusive ritual” without proper attention and oversight. Some coaches want to win rather than let recruits practice their skills, he added.
“The idea that we’re going to punch each other to see who’s tougher … that’s when it’s inappropriate,” said Baxter, whose former agency revamped its practice in 2005 after a trooper died from multiple blows to the head. “There needs to be a problem to be solved by this training. And that problem has to be directly related to public service.”
For this Texas Academy class, the injuries were widespread
For Sterling, the drill ended when he held his attackers at gunpoint and placed them in handcuffs.
Later that day, she had a headache. Her knee swelled, and she skinned her elbow on the ground.
At least 13 of the 37 cadets reported injuries: concussion symptoms; a broken wrist; a torn MCL; sprained wrists and knees; A bruised nose, records show.
Two recruits required surgery. Some were told they were injured due to their lack of preparation and poor technique, and had to redo the drill.
Sterling said she was not offered medical care. He recalled vomiting while driving himself to emergency treatment. A doctor found she had a concussion that was the result of the assault, medical records provided by Sterling show.
Sterling passed the drill, but it resulted in her resignation.
“I have a very high sense of right and wrong,” she told the AP. “I no longer wanted to be a part of what was going on at the academy.”
Deaths and injuries across the country
Nationwide, deaths and injuries have been blamed on a mix of trauma from punches and other force, overexertion, heat stroke, dehydration, and organ failure.
In August, John-Marques Salms, 30, died two days after a training exercise at the San Francisco Police Academy. He suffered a head injury after fighting a trainer in a padded suit.
An autopsy found that his death was an accident caused by complications of muscle and organ damage “in the setting of a high-intensity training exercise.” His family has filed a lawsuit against the city and hired experts for a second autopsy.
In November 2024, a 24-year-old Kentucky game warden recruit died at the point of collapse after fighting with a trainer in the pool, video obtained by the AP shows. William Bailey died by accidental drowning due to “sudden cardiac dysrhythmia during physical exertion”.
A year earlier, a Denver police recruit had both legs amputated after a training fight that his attorney called a “barbaric hazing ritual.” An Indiana recruit died of exertion when he was beaten by a large trainer, and a classmate was incapacitated after fighting the same man.
An investigation by the Police Academy in Austin, Texas, found that such exercises resulted in “significant numbers” of cadets being injured due to physical and psychological abuse, from dehydration to broken bones, and led to corrections. Black and female cadets represented a disproportionate number of casualties and desertions.
Macho Products Inc., which sells Redman training gear nationwide, cautions in its warranty that such training “always presents a risk of accidental injury, disability and death that must be assumed by all participants.” The document says risks can be minimized through “carefully planned scenarios operating at appropriate levels of force”. A company spokesman did not respond to an AP request for comment on the latest deaths and injuries.
The former cadet compares the drill to a gang initiation ritual
Concerned about the injuries to Sterling and others, a state lawmaker’s office contacted the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to seek an investigation.
After reviewing videos, investigating injuries, and interviewing coaches and some recruits, the investigation found that the drill was “controlled and organized, with safety measures in place and training objectives clearly communicated.” The videos did not show trainers acting excessively aggressively toward Sterling, or “acting inappropriately or inconsistent with established training guidelines,” it found.
“While many cadets sustained minor to moderate injuries during the drill, most recovered without extended medical consequences or changes in their training status,” the report said.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department declined to comment and declined to release the records, citing the possibility of prosecution.
Sterling, who has returned to Wyoming and still works in law enforcement, was outraged by the state’s defense of the drill, which she compared to a gang initiation ritual.
“New members are physically beaten by gang members,” she said, “who now consider you their property.”
