Cops And Paramedics Are Still Killing Arrestees By Shooting Them Up With Ketamine

from the i-guess-it's-ok-if-it's-not-on-purpose? dept

Cops -- and the paramedics who listen to their "medical advice" -- are still killing people. A couple of years ago, an investigation by the Minneapolis PD's Office of Police Conduct Review found officers were telling EMS personnel to inject arrestees with ketamine to calm them down. This medical advice followed street-level diagnoses by untrained mental health unprofessionals who've decided the perfect cure for "excited delirium" is a drug with deadly side effects.

People have been "calmed" to death by ketamine injections -- ones pushed by police officers and carried out by complicit paramedics. The cases reviewed by the OPC included potentially dangerous criminals like jaywalkers and disrespecters of law enforcement ("obstruction of justice"). Multiple recordings showed arrestees shot up with ketamine shortly before their hearts stopped or they ceased breathing.

This incredibly dangerous practice of using ketamine to sedate arrestees hasn't slowed down. Instead, it has spread. What was a horrific discovery in Minneapolis is still day-to-day business elsewhere in the country. Cops and paramedics in Colorado are still putting peoples' lives at risk by using ketamine as their go-to sedative.

Police stopped Elijah McClain on the street in suburban Denver last year after deeming the young Black man suspicious. He was thrown into a chokehold, threatened with a dog and stun gun, then subjected to another law enforcement tool before he died: a drug called ketamine.

Paramedics inject it into people like McClain as a sedative, often at the behest of police who believe suspects are out of control. Officially, ketamine is used in emergencies when there’s a safety concern for medical staff or the patient. But it's increasingly found in arrests and has become another flashpoint in the debate over law enforcement policies and brutality against people of color.

An analysis by The Associated Press of policies on ketamine and cases where the drug was used during police encounters uncovered a lack of police training, conflicting medical standards and nonexistent protocols that have resulted in hospitalizations and even deaths.

McClain was killed because paramedics assumed he weighed nearly twice as much as he actually did. They gave him an inadvertent double dose that triggered cardiac arrest. Soon after that, McClain was declared brain dead and removed from life support. McClain was killed for the crime of being suspicious in public (cops were responding to a call about a "suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving their arms.") And he was killed by the people who were supposed to ensure his health and safety.

After his death, Colorado's health department attempted to investigate law enforcement use of ketamine. That investigation appears to have fallen apart before it could really get started. As the AP report points out, there are no uniform reporting requirements for ketamine deployment -- not at any level of government. State requirements are different from federal requirements. Consequently, there's no cohesive collection of data on this drug's use.

Unfortunately, most government guidelines agree cops can use a particularly worthless term to justify the use of the sedative.

Most states and agencies say ketamine may be administered when someone exhibits “excited delirium” or agitation, which is typically associated with chronic drug abuse, mental illness or both.

Even if "excited delirium" was a mental health condition recognized by a large number of medical and mental health entities and governing bodies (spoiler alert: it isn't), police officers aren't qualified to make diagnoses and recommend sedatives after limited interactions with people they're trying to arrest. But government bodies have already issued this permission slip to cops and they use it as often as they can. It's a diagnosis that rarely comes from anyone but a law enforcement officer or official.

The drug is only safe when deployed in controlled settings by healthcare professionals. Even then, there may be complications due to preexisting conditions. Turning it into a tool of arrest tradecraft eliminates all the expertise and replaces it with expedience. It may not go wrong every time. But it goes wrong often enough -- and with deadly consequences -- that no one should feel comfortable allowing law enforcement and EMS crews to make off-the-cuff decisions about its use.

There were 902 reported instances of Colorado paramedics administering ketamine from 2018 to 2020, and almost 17% had complications, including cardiac arrest and oxygen deprivation, the state health department said.

If it increases the chances of death, everyone involved should steer clear of it. EMS personnel are supposed to be lifesavers, not deathbringers. The same goes for cops. Just because someone's uncooperative doesn't mean they need to be subjected to something that could kill them. That a 17% failure rate hasn't slowed this practice down shows how little cops and their first responder buddies care about the lives of people in handcuffs.

Filed Under: ems, excited delirium, ketamine, police

Photographer's Bullshit Arrest By A Dallas Transit Cop Nets Him A $345,000 Settlement

from the get-out-your-checkbook,-Joe-Public dept

Dallas residents are now going to be $345,000 lighter thanks to the actions of one Dallas Area Rapid Transit cop. (via Reason)

DART officer Stephanie Branch decided the law was on her side when she demanded photographer Avi Adelman stop recording EMS personnel dealing with an apparent overdose. Officer Branch claimed Adelman's photography violated the medical privacy rights of the person being attended to, saying things about HIPAA (not at all relevant here) and "establishing a perimeter." Branch was in the wrong. She was violating DART policy by shutting Adelman down and she compounded this error by making twenty-three "false or misleading" statements in her report of the arrest.

Adelman spent 20 hours in jail after being charged with criminal trespassing. That charge was dropped and DART itself apologized to him for the actions of its "rogue" officer. Officer Branch escaped being held liable for violating Adelman's First Amendment rights as the right to record public employees in public areas wasn't clearly established in the Fifth Circuit until a year after Adelman's arrest.

His Fourth Amendment claim moved forward though and Officer Branch appealed the stripping of her qualified immunity on this count. Her appeal was rejected by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found Branch's arrest of Adelman unreasonable. As the court pointed out, Branch's actions directly violated a DART policy issued two years before the 2016 incident. Branch tried to reclaim her immunity shield by claiming ignorance, but the court shot that down.

Branch’s mistake was not reasonable. She didn’t misinterpret an unclear policy or law; she simply failed to learn about DART’s updated policy. And “an officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws [s]he is duty-bound to enforce.” Heien, 135 S. Ct. at 539–40.

It's good to see Adelman will be compensated for his violated rights, but this settlement comes courtesy of Branch's employer, which means Officer Branch really isn't being held responsible for violating the photographer's rights. When qualified immunity is stripped, another shield usually takes it place. Government employees generally benefit from indemnification, which ensures they won't personally be out any money no matter how often they lose lawsuits.

This indemnification helps plaintiffs, since it pretty much guarantees they'll get paid. But it doesn't result in greater accountability, as can be observed in multiple cities where law enforcement officers are costing residents millions of dollars every year, year after year. If there's no direct financial pain, officers who engage in abusive behavior aren't deterred from violating rights in the future.

Between DART policies and circuit precedent, no transit officer should make this same unreasonable mistake again. It's too bad taxpayers have to keep paying for these expensive learning experiences.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, avi adelman, dallas, dallas area rapid transit, dart, ems, false arrest, filming police, stephanie branch

Appeals Court Denies Qualified Immunity For Transit Cop Who Arrested A Journalist For Taking Pictures Of EMS Personnel

from the try-to-keep-up-(with-policy-changes) dept

Last year, a federal court offered its sympathies -- but only limited recourse -- to a photographer who suffered a bogus "stop photographing us" arrest at the hands of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) cop.

Avi Adelman, a freelance journalist, was photographing EMS personnel responding to an apparent overdose. DART officer Stephanie Branch decided this just wouldn't do. She approached Adelman and got between him and the scene he was photographing. The officer then started laying down bullshit about "establishing a perimeter" and how his documentation was violating the HIPAA rights of person being attended to.

(If this crap about "HIPAA violations" sounds familiar, it's because law enforcement officers either don't understand how HIPAA works or they hope the person whose Constitutional rights they're violating doesn't understand how HIPAA works. This was the same excuse used by a Denver cop to detain a journalist who was recording the apparent arrest of a naked mentally-ill person in the middle of a public street. Just in case there are any cops lurking here, HIPAA violations occur when someone releases private medical info to unauthorized parties. It never happens when someone is suffering a medical emergency in a public area.)

Back to the DART case: despite Officer Branch including twenty-three false or inaccurate statements in her account of the arrest, she managed to dodge being directly held responsible for her violation of Adelman's First Amendment rights. Since the Fifth Circuit didn't clearly establish a right to record public servants until 2017, Adelman's 2016 arrest happened too soon for him to use that precedent to pierce Branch's qualified immunity. But Officer Branch was still on the hook for the Fourth Amendment violation. She appealed, but going up a level hasn't changed anything for the officer.

On appeal, the Fifth Circuit has upheld the lower court's decision, preventing Branch from eluding responsibility for violating Adelman's Fourth Amendment rights. Branch claimed she was unaware of the photography policy DART had put in place in 2014, which expressly permitted the actions Adelman was engaged in when Branch decided to arrest him.

But Officer Branch's actions were so obviously unreasonable, another officer and an EMT had this conversation while Branch was hassling the journalist. From the decision [PDF]:

DFR 1 – He was just taking pictures right?
Officer Cannon – Yea[h] that’s why I don’t know why she’s giving him a hard time[.]
DFR-1 – Why is she going crazy?
Officer Cannon – I don’t know[,] that’s going to be on her[.] [H]e can take all the pictures he wants[,] that’s why I’m not getting involved in that. . . .
DFR-1 – He knows he wasn’t doing nothing wrong so. . .
Officer Cannon – I don’t know why she . . . . There was no need for that[.]
DFR-2 – Yea[h] I don’t know where that idea came from but this is . . . because there is freedom of the press[.]

Her own agency came to this conclusion after an internal investigation:

“Adelman was not breaking any laws and would not lead a reasonable person to believe that he was committing a crime or had committed a crime or [was] about to engage in committing a crime. . . . [T]herefore the arrest of Adelman for criminal trespass was not based on sufficient probable cause.”

It also had this to say about Branch's actions:

“The evidence indicates that Officer Branch did violate the DART Administrative Employment Manual and did not refrain from activity which was illegal or could reflect negatively on DART when she made various inconsistent or mistaken statements on her DART Police [I]ncident Report . . . and made the arrest of Avi Adelman for criminal trespass.”

The court points out in a footnote that even if Branch was not present when the 2014 policy permitting photography was instituted, this failure to familiarize herself with DART policies is on her.

Branch asserts that she was reasonable in believing she had authority to order Adelman to leave because she was on sick leave when DART implemented the new Photography Policy that permits the public to take photos on DART property. [Branch was on sick leave from May 2014-January 2016. The policy was enacted June 2014.] The old policy apparently would have prohibited Adelman from being on DART property if he wasn’t using it for “transportation purposes.”

[...]

But Branch’s mistake was not reasonable. She didn’t misinterpret an unclear policy or law; she simply failed to learn about DART’s updated policy. And “an officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws [s]he is duty-bound to enforce.” Heien, 135 S. Ct. at 539–40.

The case now goes back to the lower court where it seems likely Officer Branch won't be able to talk a jury into siding with her should the litigation reach that point. The established right to photograph public servants came along a little bit too late to help Adelman on his First Amendment claims, but at least he can still go after Branch for her bogus arrest and the night he spent in jail.

Filed Under: avi adelman, civil liberties, dart, ems, free speech, photographing police, qualified immunity, stephanie branch, transit police

Cops Are Telling Paramedics To Inject Arrestees With Ketamine. Worse, EMS Crews Are Actually Doing It.

from the horrific-behavior-by-all-involved dept

Something strange and disturbing is going on in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cops have been instructing paramedics to use certain drugs to subdue arrestees, which is about as advisable as allowing paramedics to instruct officers on use of force. Cops don't know what's best for arrestees in terms of medical care. The fact that paramedics have been following their instructions is the most disturbing fact of all. As the Star Tribune reports, cops telling EMS personnel what to do has put people's lives in jeopardy.

Minneapolis police officers have repeatedly requested over the past three years that Hennepin County medical responders sedate people using the powerful tranquilizer ketamine, at times over the protests of those being drugged, and in some cases when no apparent crime was committed, a city report shows.

On multiple occasions, in the presence of police, Hennepin Healthcare EMS workers injected suspects of crimes and others who already appeared to be restrained, according to the report, and the ketamine caused heart or breathing failure, requiring them to be medically revived. Several people given ketamine had to be intubated.

The paramedics are fully complicit in this horror show. They're overriding their own knowledge and medical training with catastrophic results. This atrocious behavior was exposed by a report from the Office for Police Conduct Review. The report showed ketamine injections increased from three in 2012 to 62 in 2017. It wasn't until this report was delivered to police that anyone decided to do anything about it. The Minneapolis Police Commander has now forbidden officers from instructing EMS crews to sedate a subject.

Ketamine is a dangerous drug. The police know this. They classify it as a "date rape" drug, capable of putting people into deep sedation and altering their memories. Healthcare providers know this, too, which is why they're often hesitant to use it as a sedative if the subject has preexisting breathing problems. Ketamine can kill under these circumstances. When used as a first response in the sedation of detainees, medical histories aren't available and the outcome can be death.

Allowing police to "prescribe" sedatives is a horrible idea. The report shows Minneapolis cops nuked arrestees with a powerful sedative just because. In many of the cases examined, there appeared to be no reason to escalate to a dangerous sedative.

To evaluate how the sedative was being used, the Office of Police Conduct Review investigators looked for mentions of the word in police reports, and then reviewed body camera footage from those cases.

“Multiple videos showed individuals requiring intubation after being injected with ketamine, and [police] reports indicate that multiple individuals stopped breathing and/or their hearts stopped beating after being injected with ketamine,” the report said.

The police encounters that led to EMS using ketamine ranged from cases of obstruction of justice to jaywalking, according to the report. One man was dosed with ketamine while strapped to a stretcher and wearing a spit hood.

Unbelievably, the story gets worse. Those dosed with ketamine at the suggestion of police officers suffered rude awakenings at Minneapolis hospitals. Hennepin Healthcare went ahead and enrolled detainees in its ketamine study without their consent. Supposedly consent isn't actually required by law, which makes a sort of cosmic sense when you're studying the effects of a date rape drug. "Enrollees" could opt out afterward, but that offers little comfort when you've been sedated so heavily you need a machine to breathe for you.

This study exacerbated Hennepin Healthcare's ketamine problem. Ramping up dosings at the request of cops had already increased the number of life-threatening reactions to the drug. This incentive allowed this to carried over to day-to-day work, resulting in EMS personnel using ketamine whenever possible, even without verbal shoves from under-educated cops.

Body camera footage from one case showed a woman, after being Maced by police, asking for an asthma pump, the draft report said.

Instead, a paramedic gave her an injection of ketamine.

“If she was having an asthma attack, giving ketamine actually helps patients and we’re doing a study for agitation anyway so I had to give her ketamine,” the unnamed paramedic told a police officer, according to the report.

After receiving ketamine, the woman’s breathing stopped, and medical staff resuscitated her, according to the report.

Of course, there's an explanation for all of this. It comes courtesy of Hennepin Healthcare's top official. And it sounds like something written by police officers, rather than an expert in the medical field.

Dr. William Heegaard, chief medical officer for Hennepin Healthcare, said ketamine can be a lifesaving tool when paramedics encounter people showing signs of “excited delirium,” a condition when severe agitation can lead to death.

When you're fighting a losing battle against negative press, the worst thing you can do is name a condition that originated with the pseudoscience of 19th century insane asylums and was revived by the manufacturer of Tasers to help law enforcement agencies bullshit their way through court cases involving citizens tased to death by cops.

In the past, Taser has hosted seminars and sent out pamphlets on excited delirium to police and medical examiners’ groups across the country; sued medical examiners who listed their stun guns as a cause of death; and even gave law enforcement agencies a ready-made statement for when someone dies after police shock them with a stun gun: “We regret the unfortunate loss of life. There are many cases where excited delirium caused by various mental disorders or medical conditions, that may or may not include drug use, can lead to a fatal conclusion.”

Heegaard's hospital and staff engage in highly-questionable behavior and he's trying to pin it on a condition most of the medical community doesn't recognize as an actual syndrome. This whole debacle shows just how far cops have strayed from the "serve and protect" ideal. This is all about making things as easy as possible for officers accompanying detainees to medical care facilities. They want them knocked out, even if it raises the risk of killing them.

It also shows how easy it is for abusive behavior to spread when it's originating from law enforcement officers. Paramedics know better. They know they're the first line of defense against further injury or trauma. And they're willing to throw that all away just because a cop tells them to dope up compliant detainees.

On top of everything, there's the skewed incentives of Hennepin Healthcare, which has found a way to gather subjects for studies by sedating them so heavily they can't possibly object to anything. There should be a whole lot of people in both fields filing for unemployment. But that isn't how thing work when cops are involved. New policies will be put in place and everyone who fucked citizens with unneeded ketamine injections will just go back to work with a mental note in place reminding them to be a bit more careful when abusing the public's trust.

Filed Under: ems, ketamine, minneapolis, minnesota, police, studies, wtf