Massachusetts State Police Ford Police Interceptor. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
A Massachusetts State Police recruit is dead. Four instructors face involuntary manslaughter charges. And the State Police Academy in New Braintree is now closed to incoming recruits until further notice — with no reopening date in sight.
The 93rd Recruit Training Troop, which was scheduled to begin in June 2026, has been postponed indefinitely. Colonel Geoffrey Noble announced the delay alongside the release of a damning 110-page independent review that identified 103 problems with how the academy operates — from toxic leadership culture to dangerous training practices. At the center of it all: the September 2024 death of 25-year-old recruit Enrique Delgado-Garcia, who was knocked unconscious during an unsanctioned boxing match and never recovered.
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For South Coast Massachusetts — where Fall River and New Bedford both depend heavily on State Police troopers for backup coverage, gang investigations, and drug enforcement — the timing couldn’t be worse. When the 93rd Troop eventually graduates, it will matter here.
What Happened to Enrique Delgado-Garcia
Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, was a recruit in the 92nd Training Troop when he died in September 2024. According to investigators, Delgado-Garcia was forced to participate in a boxing match as part of a defensive tactics exercise — a match that was not authorized under academy policy. He was knocked unconscious. He died in the hospital the following day from blunt-force head injuries.
The match wasn’t an accident that slipped through the cracks. It was a sanctioned activity within an unsanctioned culture — one the IACP review later described as operating under extreme stress conditions that were not consistently tied to any training objective. Drill instructors, the report found, wielded enormous influence over recruits and “did not always reflect the professional behaviors expected of troopers in the field.”
In April 2026, following an independent investigation by the state attorney general’s office, four State Police Academy staff members were charged with involuntary manslaughter: Sgt. Jennifer Penton, Trooper Edwin Rodriguez, Trooper Casey LaMonte, and Trooper David Montanez. All four pleaded not guilty. All four remain on the payroll — suspended with pay.
Let that sink in. Four people are charged with manslaughter in the death of a 25-year-old man who was trying to become a state trooper, and they are still drawing state paychecks while the case crawls through the courts. That is not a footnote. That is the story.
The State Police have since permanently banned boxing and all “head-strike” activities at the academy.
The IACP Report: 103 Problems Found
The International Association of Chiefs of Police conducted the review at the direction of Gov. Maura Healey. The $600,000 report took about a year to complete and ran to 110 pages. Its findings were not subtle.
The IACP found that the academy technically meets baseline standards set by the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. But meeting the floor is not the same as meeting the standard. The review documented “systemic and cultural challenges that significantly affect trainee safety, learning, morale, and retention.”
Among the specific findings:
- Toxic stress culture. Stress is important for training — preparing officers for the chaos of real-world policing is legitimate. But the IACP found that stress at the academy was excessive and often not connected to stated training goals. Recruits described being told that nothing they did would ever be considered correct. One recruit reportedly vomited from stress at lunch.
- High attrition — and it was celebrated. Recruits who quit had their caps hung in the cafeteria. The “Chow Hall” was apparently decorated with the headgear of people who couldn’t hack it. That’s not accountability. That’s a trophy wall of broken people.
- Leadership revolving door. The academy has had 21 commandants in 33 years. Average tenure: one and a half years. You can’t build a culture of safety with that kind of turnover.
- Feedback only through yelling. The report noted that instruction was delivered almost exclusively through shouting, with no constructive feedback mechanism for recruits.
- No baseline psychological screening. Recruits were entering training without standardized mental health or physical readiness evaluations.
A spokesperson for Governor Healey called the report “an important framework for the Massachusetts State Police to better align with national best practices.” That’s the kind of language politicians use when the findings are damning but they don’t want to say so directly.
What the Reforms Actually Mean
Colonel Noble has identified 31 of the 103 recommendations as priority items that must be completed — or at least meaningfully underway — before the next training class begins. The full list of reforms is expected to take five years to implement, with an outside monitor reviewing progress along the way.
Key changes include:
- A new civilian director of training. The academy will hire a civilian to work alongside the commandant, adding non-law enforcement perspective to curriculum development.
- Balanced stress training. The military-style bootcamp approach will be moderated. The goal is to prepare troopers for stressful situations without creating a punishing environment for its own sake.
- Psychological and physical baseline screening before recruits enter training.
- Better wellness supports to reduce the number of recruits who wash out — addressing both the human cost and the practical problem of losing trained candidates mid-program.
- More consistent leadership. The revolving door of commandants has to stop if any of this is going to stick.
Noble said the working group overseeing the reforms will reconvene at the end of summer to assess progress. At that point, a timeline for reopening the academy may become clearer. The earliest the 93rd Troop could begin training, he indicated, would be late summer at best — though Noble offered no firm date.
“We will never waiver, and we will continue to reinforce a ‘Safety First’ culture that will be a top priority of all that we do in all of our training at the State Police Academy,” Noble said. That’s the right thing to say. Whether the institution can actually live up to it is a different question, given that 103 problems don’t appear overnight.
The Local Impact — Fall River, New Bedford, and the Officer Shortage
This isn’t just a story about an academy in central Massachusetts. It’s a story about who shows up when someone calls 911 in Fall River or New Bedford.
State Police troopers assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney’s office work closely with local departments on the region’s most serious crimes — homicides, drug trafficking, gang investigations. The Bristol County area has seen some of the state’s most violent crime in recent years. We’ve covered it: the double murder on Aetna Street that left two men dead from a gun, a cobblestone, and a pitchfork. A New Bedford man killed in Raynham by a driver with an open OUI case. A child dead on his bicycle, two shootings in ten days. These cases don’t investigate themselves.
The State Police have been dealing with staffing pressures for years. Retirements are outpacing new hires. The academy shutdown — even if temporary — tightens an already stretched pipeline. Colonel Noble acknowledged that the delay “could put a strain on the department, which relies on new recruits to fill roles as other troopers enter retirement.”
Fall River and New Bedford don’t have the luxury of absorbing that strain easily. Both cities run leaner than they should on local patrol. State Police backup isn’t optional — it’s built into the regional law enforcement model. When that pipeline slows, it shows on the street.
What Comes Next
Four people are facing manslaughter charges in the death of Enrique Delgado-Garcia. Those criminal cases will work their way through the courts separately from the reform process — and they should. The IACP report deliberately stayed away from the specifics of how Delgado-Garcia died, citing the active criminal proceedings. That was a reasonable call, but it means the accountability and the reform are running on separate tracks.
Noble has committed to a five-year reform timeline with outside oversight. That’s encouraging on paper. But five years is a long runway, and the Massachusetts State Police has a documented history of problems that predate this incident — from the overtime pay fraud scandal to the cultural rot the IACP described in this very report.
The 93rd Recruit Training Troop will eventually graduate. New troopers will eventually hit the road in Southeast Massachusetts. But when they do, they’ll be entering a department that is either genuinely changed or has learned to paper over its worst tendencies with better PR.
Enrique Delgado-Garcia was 25 years old. He wanted to be a Massachusetts State Trooper. That’s worth remembering when the reform press releases start rolling in. According to Boston 25 News, Noble said: “We will honor Trooper Enrique Delgado-Garcia’s life and service with the Massachusetts State Police through meaningful action.”
We’ll be watching to see if they mean it.
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