Sheriff Gets Settlement
For Treatment at Academy
By Sandy Vondrasek Cooch

Following a 2004 lawsuit and a recent $125,000 settlement, Orange County Sheriff Bill Bohnyak has gained some confidence that any officer he sends to the Vermont Police Academy will emerge in good health.

Bohnyak’s first experience with the Proctor training academy, in 2001, resulted in a nine-day stay in the renal ward at Fletcher Allen Health Care, and another six weeks of convalescence.

The kidney failure he suffered at the time, Bohnyak explained this week, was due to "extreme physical punishment" meted out to the class during the first three days at the Academy.

This "corrective punishment training," as trainers called it, coming on top of 40 hours of calisthenics in three days, sparked a muscle breakdown that sent toxins from Bohnyak’s muscle cells into his bloodstream and kidneys.

Prior to entering the 16-week program, Bohnyak had put himself through a workout regimen and was "at the graduation standard for conditioning." What he didn’t know about were the punitive workouts, which were meted out by a number of different officers, with no overall coordination and no accountability, Bohnyak charged.

On the first day, for example, when enrollees failed to make their beds in one minute, the entire class had to do extra "skull crusher" pushups (with hands together.)

Bohnyak put up with the physical demands until the fourth morning, when he found blood in his urine. At that point he drove himself to Rutland Regional Medical Center; he was quickly transferred to FAHC by ambulance.

Bohnyak was, at the time, a part-time officer attempting to gain full-time certification. He remained part-time another two years, until 2003, when, with some trepidation, he reëntered the Police Academy.

This time no "punishment PT" was handed out, and Bohnyak successfully completed the course.

Bohnyak said others at the Orange County Sheriff’s office urged him to sue the academy, but he initially declined to do so. There is a "thin blue line," he noted, and no officer wants to speak up against another.

However, after several letters written by him and then-sheriff Dennis McClure met with no response, Bohnyak did file a lawsuit in 2004.

"It wasn’t easy," Bohnyak said this week.

"I had to ask myself, ‘Is it the right thing to do?’" he said. The inescapable answer was "Yes—I don’t want to see another officer go through what I went through."

The suit was settled in November for $125,000, and Bohnyak was advised, in negotiations, that changes have been made at the academy.

Another officer, a part-time police chief in North Troy, has filed a similar suit; that case is still pending.

R.J. Elrick, who was appointed academy director in 2004 after the incidents involving Bohnyak and the police chief, has stated that policies now in place prohibit "any act of hazing or excessive disciplining."

Bohnyak, elected Orange County Sheriff last November, said he will send officers to the academy for training.

"But I would also tell my officers that if they are subjected to extreme physical punishment to speak up."