I'm glad to see that this post continues nearly two years after the actual incident. It is vital that all of us as divers, Public Safety Divers or not, discuss topics such as this and try to make things better and safer.
To anyone skimming through the posts, I am an Indianapolis POLICE Department diver and was present soon after the initial report and was quickly in the water searching for the IFD diver who lost his life nearly two years ago. In ref. to metaldector's comment about "minor changes" let me say this...that quote was taken out of context more than I can possibly express. I have nothing to hide here.
Since the accident, one of two accidents involving IFD divers in the last four years, sweeping changes were made in both the IFD and IPD dive teams. The National Academy of Police Diving (really the only agency of its kind at the time) was immediately called in as an outside agency to evaluate and make reccomendations regarding how the teams functioned and trained. All IFD diving was suspended immediately pending review. Obviously, the NAPD reccomended several changes in the way that IFD conduct their diving/training operations. At the same time, the incident was reported to OSHA, IOSHA, and NIOSH, all of which came to Indianapolis and conducted indepth investigations. After all reports were filed, IFD fired their outside dive trainer, the same trainer present at both accidents. IFD then began an extensive search for a new training method. Both IFD and IPD, as well as many of the departments in the surrounding area, adopted a training philosophy developed by Dive Rescue International. DRI is easily the premier public safety diving agency in the country. It has been a long, tough road. The change has been night and day.
I will not continue to bore you with the other details of how things have changed, but believe me when I say that they have changed. Indianapolis is a large city with large police and fire departments. We train extensively and are extremely busy dive teams. We take the business of public safety diving extremely seriously. Please do not get the impression that we are a small, backwater, fly by the seat of our pants operation. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anyone would like to discuss anything else related to this topic, I'd be glad to answer your questions the best that I can. Thanks.