Retired California Correctional Officer Urges Governor Newsom to Protect Disabled Workers and Reject SIBTF Budget Trailer Bill Changes

Monday, June 8, 2026 | 180 | 0

Shawn Denman Logue
06/04/2026

The Honorable Gavin Newsom
Governor of California
1303 10th Street, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Governor Newsom,

I am writing to urge you to oppose the proposed changes to California's Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund (SIBTF) that are being pushed through in the current budget trailer bill, and to insist that any changes to SIBTF go through the regular legislative process where they can be openly debated by the people they will affect.

My name is Shawn Denman Logue. I am 58 years old. For 27 years I served the people of California as a Correctional Officer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I am a mother and a grandmother. I am now on disability retirement because the injuries I sustained in the line of duty have taken my career, my health, and my financial security. SIBTF may be the only protection I have left — and you are about to take it from me through a process that does not allow people like me to be heard.

What 27 years on the job cost me
I did not sit behind a desk. I answered the call. I earned a Unit Citation Award for my actions during a prison riot in which I risked my life to save the lives of inmates and officers. During that riot I watched inmates being stabbed. I watched my partner, Officer Murphy, be airlifted out after a chemical grenade exploded in his hand. I can still hear the inmates screaming, “Mrs. Denman, help me, please.” Those screams still wake me up at night. They are part of why I now live with PTSD, panic attacks, depression, and anxiety, and why I depend on medication just to function.

Long before that riot, at the very beginning of my career, I earned the TRUE GRIT award at the academy — nominated by my peers and my instructor for the resilience, perseverance, and refusal to quit that our profession demands. That award was not the peak of my career. It was the starting line. For the next 27 years, I lived up to it.

These are the injuries I carried while continuing to serve:

• A thigh injury when I was accidentally shot by another officer with a 40 mm projectile during mandatory training.
• Severely bruised ribs after a Correctional Counselor Supervisor L2 assaulted me by throwing a laptop at me.
• PTSD, panic attacks, depression, and anxiety from the riot — conditions that have required ongoing medication and care.
• Severe workplace harassment after I spoke up about officers and supervisors violating California correctional policies that exist to keep us safe. For doing the right thing, I was retaliated against, falsely terminated, and publicly humiliated. I was a single mother. I lost my home. I lost my savings. I lost my confidence. I lost my trust in the institution I had served. But I had Grit. In 2010 I was reinstated by an administrative law judge who ruled that I was wrongly fired.

The final injury that ended my career.

I suffered a catastrophic fall caused by negligence — negligence confirmed by both CalOSHA and a California state judge. I was hospitalized for three days. The damage is lifelong:

• Central vestibular dysfunction — a brain injury causing confusion, memory loss, nystagmus (rapid involuntary eye movement), concentration problems, balance issues, and blurry vision.
• Spinal stenosis, bulging and slipped discs in my upper and lower back, with numbness and constant pins-and-needles. Simple things — like putting on my own shoes — are painful.
• Bulging and slipped discs in my cervical (neck) spine.
• Chronic migraines from the brain injury. Sunny days are hard. I cannot enjoy them without medication.
• An esophageal condition that causes food to lodge in my throat and forces me to vomit. Eating in public is humiliating.
• Torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders requiring surgery; scar tissue; and bursitis that locks my shoulders so I cannot raise my arms above my head.
• A torn meniscus in my left knee.
• Sciatic nerve damage in both legs.
• A broken finger, torn tendons, and median nerve damage — I can no longer close my right hand.
• Carpal tunnel from a wrist injury.
• From the cumulative stress of all of it: heart disease, heart palpitations, and high blood pressure.

What workers' compensation will not cover
I still have healing to do. I need intensive therapy for my brain injury. Workers' compensation has denied me psychological therapy. It has denied me massage therapy. It has delayed physical therapy for my central vestibular dysfunction. The system that was supposed to take care of officers like me is not. SIBTF was created for exactly this gap — for severely disabled workers whose combined injuries leave them far more disabled than any single injury alone would explain. SIBTF is not a windfall. For me, it is the difference between scraping by with what dignity I have left and complete financial collapse.

This is not how Sacramento should work
What is happening right now is not ordinary legislation. There are no open hearings. There is no transparent debate. There is no public scrutiny. Changes that would gut SIBTF for people like me are being buried inside a budget trailer bill and rushed through before anyone affected can be heard. That is not how a democracy is supposed to function. That is changing the rules in the middle of the game so injured workers — people who have already given everything — get shut out before their claims are even decided. It is wrong. It is unjust. And it amounts to balancing the budget on the backs of disabled workers.

What I am asking of you
Remove the SIBTF provisions from the budget trailer bill. If California needs to revisit SIBTF, do it the right way — in open committee, with public hearings, with testimony from the injured workers it will affect, and with full legislative debate. That is the bare minimum that disabled Californians deserve.

A final word
I protected the people of California for 27 years. I protected your constituents. I protected your neighbors. I protected your family. I did not turn my back on them when it was hard, when it was dangerous, when it cost me my body, my home, and my peace of mind. I am asking you to do the same for me now — and for every disabled California worker whose claim is about to be erased by a single line buried in a budget bill.

In my profession, we talked about grit — the trait that carries you through 27 years of a job that breaks most people. So my question to you is simple: Governor Newsom, do you have GRIT? If you do, please vote NO on these SIBTF provisions, and demand that any changes go through the full legislative process where the people they will harm can be heard.

Thank you for your time. And thank you for hearing me.

Sincerely,

Shawn Denman Logue
Retired Correctional Officer, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Retired — 27 Years of Service
Unit Citation Award Recipient