By Jennifer Rios
The San Angelo Standard-Times
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Over the past few months, Don Gallion received two awards - one a statewide recognition and the other from the latest local police recruits. Both pegged him as a top instructor.
“He’s the kind of police officer we want to be,” said recent academy graduate Vanessa Millspaugh, speaking on behalf of her class.
She and her classmates, who said they regard Gallion as almost a father figure, are not the only ones who think so.
At the sixth annual SAFVIC - Sexual Assault Family Violence Investigator Course - instructor summit held in San Antonio, Gallion was named Instructor of the Year for teaching law enforcement about the severity of sexual assault and how to investigate cases dealing with sexual or family violence.
After four years of teaching with SAFVIC, Gallion, a retired San Angelo police officer, now works with the Concho Valley Council of Governments.
Brooke Balmos-Hinojosa, SAFVIC program coordinator, said the panel picks winners each year based on student evaluations, how well an instructor is abreast on recent topics and their own observations.
“I always tell him, ‘Your students must think you walk on water,’” Balmos-Hinojosa said.
Officers he has taught have called Gallion “a wealth of knowledge, “a seasoned instructor” and someone “truly committed to training officers,” she said.
“His heart is in it, and he’s really passionate about it,” Balmos-Hinojosa said. “His students really look at him like a mentor.”
Gallion, who retired from the San Angelo Police Department in January after 28 years, accepted a position with the Council of Governments as a Criminal Justice Planner/Instructor and is now responsible for training law enforcement officers in the council’s 13 counties.
The importance of assault and abuse cases is often underrated, he said, and his passion is teaching the officers how to cover the cases, including collecting physical and circumstantial evidence.
“Sometimes we need to do a better job,” he said.
When he steps in front of a class, Gallion’s goal is teaching officers to see that first-hand accounts can take hours to coax out of men or women who have been sexually assaulted.
When a person is quiet or lashes out, it’s not because they don’t want help, Gallion said. By going to a hospital or calling police, he said, they already have reached out for help.
Some officers think that when they show up to a home, they can tell someone to gather their things and pull them away from the situation, and by doing that instantly correct the problem, Gallion said. What they don’t realize is that children or finances may tie into the picture, making the victim reluctant to leave.
After six months of searching and recruitment attempts, he found someone who was willing to go through a medical exam with a video camera documenting what a woman who claims to have been raped goes through behind the closed door of an ER. The demonstration maps out how for the second time in a day a woman is made to take off her clothes, then lie on her back and endure a thorough rape examination with her legs up in stirrups.
Gallion shows the video to his local class, showing, rather than merely telling them, that it is essential to act with compassion and sensitivity.
And the students notice, Millspaugh said, because Gallion faces the problem straight on rather than sugar coating the facts.
Gallion said his goal is to change officer’s attitudes, “or at least try to.”
“People need to understand how traumatizing those events are,” said Millspaugh, who knows from personal experience what it is to be sexually assaulted.
“He saw there was something lacking, and he found the officers didn’t really know what was going on,” Balmos-Hinojosa said.
Gallion said most officers don’t realize they’re witnessing a post traumatic stress episode not unlike what soldiers encounter after battle.
“You still have it,” he said. “It’s just a different form.”
The last few classes were filled with younger men and women, he said, the group he wants to focus on and start off on the right track.
Balmos-Hinojosa said his students seem to be absorbing the information Gallion is dishing out.
“His classes are always getting A’s,” she said about the 50-question exam. “He’s never had a failure.”
As a reserve police officer, Gallion said, he volunteers between 25 to 40 hours a month aside from his position with the Council of Governments. He also teaches police courses in interviewing and interrogating.
“With sexual assault you can get burnt out,” Balmos-Hinojosa said. “He’s been doing this for years and years and years, and thank goodness he has. We need more people like that.”
Copyright 2008 The San Angelo Standard-Times