LBCC Public Safety Officers Review Refresher In De-escalation

Sam van Teijn was thrown face down onto the blue mat while a crowd attentively watched.

Van Teijn and about nine of LB’s other public safety officers gathered in the activities center on Tuesday, April 11 at 2:30 p.m., along with Marcene Olson, the director of Safety and Loss Prevention here at LBCC, for their monthly meeting.

van Teijn was used as a test dummy in a scenario practicing what to do if an altercation would arise on campus. “Our policy is to avoid physical altercation,” said Olson, who oversaw as well as participated in the refresher with hopes that trainings like these can aid the officers whenever an altercation arises on campus.

De-escalation trainings are real-life scenarios put in place and practiced to teach officers how to “verbally [be] able to control the subject,” before situations escalate to physicality. Meetings like these help the officers to “build comradery, confidence, and [teach them to] defend themselves if they have to, or somebody else,” says Olson.

This month, the two-and-a-half hour meeting consisted of the officers pairing up and practicing personal self-defense and verbal de-escalation techniques as a refresher. Initially, the meeting was supposed to consist of members of the Black Curtain Society attending and verbally screaming at the officers so that they can practice non-violent de-escalation techniques. The students from BCS did not attend, so the officers wasted no time to begin their refresher.

The meeting began promptly by forming four pairs led by a colleague, Chris Matson, who is also an LB public safety officer. Matson dove right into showing the rest of the team a maneuver that would help them to apprehend a physically violent subject. Once he went through the motions, the other officers were asked to give it a try on each other to mimic just what he showed them.

This went on for the remainder for the two-and-a-half hour course, teaching and critiquing different maneuvers and help to activate muscle memory.

“I teach what’s called a real world self-defense,” said Matson, “I have an answer for every bad situation.”

Being that, fortunately, there are not very many altercations that happen on campus, the self-defense that Matson teaches is not just for officers on duty, however, he is looking to starting a self-defense class that will be open to administrators as well as students.

“I always have an open door, open question policy,” said Matson, “anybody can always come to me” for questions about self-defense.

Among the officers in the training was Bernita Rose, a LBCC Administrative Secretary who’s been with LB for 10 years and working in public safety for five.

Although she is not an officer, Rose believes that meetings like this are beneficial for her not only as an administrator but as a woman. “I want to be able to defend myself,” said Rose, “as a woman, you can’t be without them [self-defense training].”


At a Glance:

Marcene Olson, Director of Safety and Loss Prevention
Phone: (541) 917-4940

Public safety office - (541) 917-4440
Officer on duty - (541) 926-6855

Location - Red Cedar Hall 119