Jon-Marques Psalms: Family seeks answers after 30-year-old San Francisco Police Department recruit dies in training exercise

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — We’re learning new details about a particularly dangerous law enforcement training exercise that San Francisco police recruit Jon-Marques Psalms may have been participating in before his death.

“You shouldn’t die in training right?” questioned Marcus Psalms.

Marcus and his wife Christina Psalms are still trying to figure out how their son, Jon-Marques, 30, a former football player with a blue belt in jiu jitsu, could’ve died in a training exercise. The San Francisco Police Department recruit suffered a medical emergency during a drill on Aug. 22nd and died two days later while hospitalized.

“They took a perfectly healthy, well-conditioned young man, put him through training, and he died,” said Brad Gage, the Psalms family attorney. “That should never happen.”

“He didn’t die. He was killed,” Marcus said.

MORE: Family of SFPD recruit who died after training exercise plans to sue city

“From the time I arrived at the hospital, no one with SFPD came and approached us to tell us exactly what happened,” Christina said.

Through the city’s chief medical examiner’s report, the Psalms learned Jon-Marques had severe head trauma and internal injuries, including kidney failure and liver damage. They’re seeking a second independent autopsy.

“The less transparent the agency is, the more we want to find out what’s happening,” Gage said.

The Psalms believe Jon-Marques was part of a training drill involving RedMan Training Gear, used in high intensity training scenarios.

“It usually entails someone dressing up in a suit. It’s padded and that person acts as the aggressor or suspects to the cadet or law enforcement officer,” said Sean Allen, the current president of the NAACP San Jose chapter and former sergeant with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

MORE: San Francisco police recruit dies after medical emergency during training exercise, SFPD says

In 2020, a cadet with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office also collapsed during one of these drills and died. Allen remembers the incident clearly and warns that this type of training takes proper instruction.

“We’re having people who aren’t experts in combatives teaching this stuff,” said Allen. “In certain situations, it’s been used to traumatize the cadets, where they’re targeted as being weak and so when the person who’s in the RedMan suit is applying the pressure, sometimes they’re doing it in a punitive way or extracting a level of aggression who doesn’t have that aggression and it’s overused.”

Gage said he’s aware of at least 10 other recruits have died around the country in a similar type of training.

“You often have situations where the instructors aren’t properly trained,” Gage said. “There’s all these rules that you have to follow in order to do this in a safe manner. And I suspect we’re going to find many of those rules were not followed.”