the 2015 NJ State PBA Main Convention
The Paul Meyer response
Portland officer tells how his traumatic injury brought out the best in everybody
In the current era of the NJ State PBA, conventions have made a huge impact by offering
a profound experience that would galvanize a
Hollywood producer. Call it a defining moment,
an emotional moment that brings members to
a prolonged standing ovation and offers motivation to do the job better and reinforcement of
the value of the union.
That event occurred in Las Vegas when Portland Officer Paul Meyer rolled up to the dais.
Meyer has been resigned to a wheelchair
since recovering from the horror of a 100-foot
tree snapping and landing square on his head
during a training exercise on Nov. 19, 2012.
Before he began his remarks, Meyer pledged
that his story would be about, “everybody in the
room.” And he delivered a tale that will no
doubt improve the way everybody in the room
looks at family, work, the union and life overall.
“I have a blank slate,” Meyer would eventually relate about an epiphany that came a
month or so after the incident left him
paralyzed from the waist down. “I realized I
could write my life the way I wanted, teach and
show my children the way to overcome obstacles, work through difficult times and embrace
living life as a positive thinker.”
A SERT team member, Meyer was out on
ATV training drills in a remote area when the
detail headed back for lunch. On one of those
rainy and windy days that are so common to
Portland, the tree rained down, bucked him like
a bronco off his ATV, and he landed face down
in a 30-foot mud puddle. Only the personal helmet he was wearing saved Meyer’s life.
Two displaced vertebrae that fractured his
spinal cord, a broken collar bone, bleeding on
the brain and not knowing what happened the
first 10-12 days following the accident only
begins to describe the extent of this tragedy.
“My wife could barely recognize me,” Meyer
related.
This lesson in positive thinking that is critical
to being a law enforcement officer and how
thick that blue line really is in the department
and the union began with Meyer saying how
lucky he felt to have the chance to learn to use a
wheelchair and have no permanent brain damage. The lessons Meyer wanted everybody in
the room to understand and appreciate about
traumatic on-the-job-injury response began to
unfold almost immediately after the tree
snapped.
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OCTOBER 2015
When the crash came, student and
instructor roles in the training became nonexistent, he said, and the group worked
together to stabilize Meyer’s spine and maintain
his airway, two actions that probably saved his
life.
Meyer’s partner found his wife, Mary, and
rushed her to the hospital. The SERT team flew
his parents in from Texas. Portland Police Association Preside