Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny | Hacker News Reader

Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

abcnews.go.com

332 pointsseigando402 comments

Police should never be permitted to direct medical professionals to do anything to a person in their custody unless it is to save their life. Medical professionals should be hyper-trained on how to tell police “hell no” and to report their requests to an independent agency for investigation.

There are other types of scenarios where out of control cops bully doctors and nurses into doing illegal things, two that I have read about:

- forcing a suspect to be subject to anal cavity search by a doctor at a hospital after a traffic stop

- forcing hospital staff to run blood tests on an awake, non-consenting suspect

Everyone who has ever dealt with the medical world for a personal or family problem understands that there are few “sure things” and that something that worked miraculously for someone’s problem might not work for yours, even if they seem like the same problem. Allowing police a position to direct medical care is utterly outrageous and irresponsible.

That said, what was done to Elijah McCain is one of the sickest, most unacceptably fucked up nightmare scenarios I’ve ever heard of. The initial interaction was a result of racist police who then had their victim murdered because they never saw him as a person, just another potential criminal.

Agreed. Police should have less powers, not more.

Medical professionals do refuse! If you remember Alex Wubbels a nurse who refused to do a blood draw stating that she would not unless the patient was under arrest, a warrant had been issued or the patient had consented.

She was arrested, although not charged and was later apologized to. The cop was fired and it also lead to Utah changing its blood draw laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_University_of_Utah_Hospit...

It's used as a treatment for drug overdoses ("excited delerium") which appears to be why it was used here. Of course it's a catch-all term, there's no way to tell offhand just what street drugs someone is on. There has to be a reason it took half a dozen people to hold him down.

Also, there's no mention in this article of police directing the paramedics to do anything. Can you point me to what gave you that idea?

Where in the world did you hear that Elijah McClain was having a drug overdose before the police showed up?!

No one has said that. You are fabricating.

I said that's what ketamine is used for. I never said he was on drugs, as I do not know that. I only said that it's not normal to need a bunch of people to hold someone down.

> It's used as a treatment for drug overdoses ("excited delerium") which appears to be why it was used here.

Why does it “appear” that way?

Please edit your post rather than spreading misinformation.

Those on the scene certainly thought this was the case, which is basically the only reason they use that drug in the first place in the context of an arrest. I don't claim to know one way or another whether they were right, but I would note that dying of a heart attack is inconsistent with ketamine as the cause.

Maybe they gave him too much, but the article leaves one to conclude that this was somehow related to his death even though it never actually says so.

I did get this from Wikipedia, 'After McClain was restrained more officers arrived and audio of the conversation records them saying that McClain was "acting crazy", that he was "definitely on something", and that he had attacked them with "incredible, crazy strength" when they tried to restrain him.'

They did not use the words, 'he was on drugs', but there is a strong implication based on the audio that this is what the police were claiming.

> There has to be a reason it took half a dozen people to hold him down.

This is the kind of rationalization that gets policies like this instituted. Having to be held down by six people isn't a requirement for being diagnosed with "excided delirium," anything is sufficient, because it's not a falsifiable diagnosis. The look in someone's eye can be enough. Talking back can be enough.

Also, by "enough," I mean enough for people who are already reactionaries of the law and order type to rationalize it. If it happened to a hypothetical white guy in some office complaining about his tax bill (who also showed no aggression and only tested positive for trace amounts of marijuana), could you imagine that people would still be alluding to "some reason" why "excited delirium" was actually a cool and reasonable diagnosis?

I mean, this is a violinist massage therapist who volunteered at animal shelters. This event is just more evidence that video will neither save you nor avenge you. You're as likely to be able to keep law enforcement from injecting ketamine into you on a whim as you are to keep law enforcement from being able to search your person or your car. With "There has to be a reason it took half a dozen people to hold him down," the reaction justifies itself.

Well, we'll see when it's examined in court. I see no reason to assume that these particular cops overreacted, either, but yet here we are.

And for what it's worth, the reason could be that they overreacted--everything has a reason and I made no claims about what reasons that might be.

"Excited delirium" is a pseudo-scientific term used by police to justify their use of excessive force: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/chokehold-police-exci...

It's a catch-all term to describe people who have likely overdosed on various stimulants. To argue that it's non-specific is to argue that the police have no way of knowing what medical conditions underlie the problem.

That's why they summon medical professionals, as was done here and in other similar cases.

On the other hand: at least they are asking medical professionals instead of giving shots themselves.

Because that would be blatantly illegal? Never stopped crappy police officiers to do crappy things but hey.

Which is what would start happening if professional medical associations banned the practice.

You say that like its a positive. It would be much more straightforward to prosecute an officer injecting ketamine. The medical "professionals" are catspaws.

The cops involved went back to where they killed Elijah McCain and posed for a group photo, reportedly re-enacting his death.

This is the behavior I’d expect from a serial killer.

Edit: they then distributed or showed this photo to the rest of the precinct. We know because a whistleblower notified the media. To my eye, this means that they expected the rest of the precinct to approve of this behavior, which is extremely alarming.

This shouldn’t be alarming. This is consistent with the behavior we’ve been seeing all year. This is status quo.

It should be alarming - it's important not to get used to such abhorrent behavior, just because it's the status quo.

I cannot maintain a state of alarm for years on end.

The difference between our points is the subtle difference between alarm and surprise. I’d contend that one can be alarmed even if they’re not surprised; although even I am inclined to admit that this is pretty low value pedantry on my part.

> The cops involved went back to where they killed Elijah McCain and posed for a group photo, reportedly re-enacting his death

What compels someone to do that?

Nothing compels them. It is who they are. And they are not alone in being like this.

The better question is, why are so many people in positions of authority like this?

I believe the positions naturally draws people who are bullies. Not that all of them are, but the power over, and respect from the general population is probably very attractive to people who get a kick out of being asshole. Also, while I can't confirm the prevalence, there's a ton of anecdotes you here about shady hiring practices. There's the now popular story about a department refusing to hire people who had too high an IQ, and a friend told me how a department in a large city was attempting to recruit his cousin, despite him being diagnosed bipolar.

That is way beyond what I would consider bullying or asshole behaviour.

> Also, while I can't confirm the prevalence, there's a ton of anecdotes you here about shady hiring practices. There's the now popular story about a department refusing to hire people who had too high an IQ

this is not just anecdotal, and has even been tested in court[0].

0. https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

Another police department got caught bending down the notches on their police badges as a way of signifying how many kills a given officer had, and even had a ceremony for officers first kill. Reports say at least 25% of the precinct participated, probably most knew.

American police live in what we call a “siege” mentality; they believe that they’re the only thing protecting society from chaos and crime. This results in a belief that their actions are inherently just, and that any criticism risks exposure of society to the chaos they’re barely holding back.

It’s not a convincing pitch when viewed in the light of blatant police brutality, but it appears to be what they believe.

Racism. They were celebrating their victory.

take your pick of "us vs them", "thin blue line", or "own the libs"

>This is the behavior I’d expect from a serial killer.

Yes, they're police in the United States...

Minor correction: the victim's name is Elijah McClain.

Minor correction: it was not the same police officers, although from the same police department.

I work as a paramedic, and on occasion have to sedate folks. I have never (and will never) sedated someone at the request of the police. I can think of two occasions where the decision to sedate was a discussion between the cops and I (trying to come up with alternatives). It's also common for me to ask the police for assistance physically restraining someone in order to make the sedation process safer. That's as far as the involvement of the police should go. I agree 100% with your assessment of Elijah McCain's killing.

That being said, sedation is an important tool, and often the safest course of action for a patient that would otherwise be a danger to themselves or others. A prolonged fight can be fatal for someone who is pushing their body further than it should go.

It definitely has to be done correctly though, and given the number of cases where it was very clearly done incorrectly, I do think changes need to be made.

It's unquestionably a lynching. But this is what this perverted culture tolerates. Rather than the public participating in the lynching directly, it has hired professional lynchers.

True, and I think there are lot of deniers of how the racist history of the US influences its racist present.

The mindset that permits people to shrug off the killing of Elijah McClain, and assume he must have done something to deserve it, is the same that celebrated public lynchings.

Could you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? Especially not the ideological flamewar style? We're trying for something other than scorched earth here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.

They're being completely civil. This does not at all sound like an "ideological flame war."

Racism in society isn't an ideologocal point. It's reality. They're pointing out facts that are uncomfortable.

If the "spirit" of HN is truly about intellectual curiosity around things that relate to tech and entrepreneurship, then HN needs to embrace the fact that society ultimately rules over all -- most certainly tech and business.

I fear that your comment here and re-direction to "the rules" is a censorship attempt because this is an uncomfortable thing go think about. Is HN a place where discussion about social problems that infect all of tech, business, and entrepreneurship not allowed? Is talking about racism "ideological"?

Usually I'm responding to an account's recent history, not just one comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253754, for example, affects the priors.

HN has been having lots of discussion about racism, just as the rest of society has been (or rather, societies, since many countries are represented here). If your question ("Is HN a place where discussion about social problems [is] not allowed") comes up, that can only be because of unfamiliarity with the history. If you want to get more familiar, HN Search is a great resource (see the box at the bottom of every page).

The process of how we moderate political and ideological topics on HN is pretty stable by now. If you want to know what it is, check out the past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... There's a lot there; you could start with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396.

People often feel like their most-important topic is under-represented or outright suppressed on HN. Even the most common topic feels "censored" to some people (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962). This is an unfortunate consequence of frontpage space being the scarcest resource on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Don't forget psych evaluations - with the implication that they should be found unfit for release. This one is a favorite of "cops" that don't actually have authority to arrest people or no probable cause for it.

Pretty much everywhere in the world, paramedics are allowed to inject sedatives when treating a patient. Ketamine is used in many places (the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Austria) by paramedics, because it is very safe relative to other sedatives. So the main concern should whether or not police are ordering EMS to administer it when it is not actually required (police do not administer it themselves), since I don't think administering it after an arrest should be an issue if it is actually required.

The article doesn't really give much evidence that this actually happens very frequently. The main piece of evidence is this:

In Minneapolis, a report conducted by the Office of Police Conduct Review found eight of those cases between 2016 and 2018, ranging from officers requesting paramedics use the drug to emergency medical workers asking officers for their opinions on sedating someone.

8 cases across three years in one city, where some of those cases were just paramedics asking for a second opinion, does not seem to indicate a very widespread issue across the US, especially when the city being investigated is know to have a bad police department.

Paramedics here are only allowed to do so if a doctor is not available and there is an emergency waranting using medication. After giving such medication, close monitoring and hospitalisation is mandatory, except if the physician arrives in time and releases the patient (which is very rare in such circumstances). The article never talks about a doctor arriving, an EKG, hospitalisation or any other appropriate measures, from which I conclude that there were none. Which is unconsciable, ketamine isn't "just an aspirin".

First of all, it's a big jump from "the article only mentions 8 cases across the US" to "there were only 8 cases across the US". The case of Elijah McClain, for instance, is in Denver.

And the issue seems to be one of cruel and unusual punishment. At least in the US, people expect the police to use and carry guns. They don't expect them to order paramedics to inject you with weird sedatives when you're under restraint, and especially not to make broadly reasonable decisions while doing so.

Look at the McClain case, he was 140 pounds with six officers restraining him, and they needed to inject ketamine? I wouldn't blame the paramedics for miscalculating the weight, they probably thought this was some enormous muscular man that six police officers couldn't hold down.

I agree that this is something that should never happen at all, but you're hyperbolizing the parent's statement. They didn't say there are only 8 cases in the US, they said it's uncommon.

Taking Minneapolis as an average (parent believes they are worse than average), it happens to .00063% of the population there per year or 1890 Americans per year. I'm having trouble finding the arrest rate in Minneapolis, which would help get to a more accurate estimate.

It shouldn’t happen at all. The amount of people ok with “a little dystopian policing” is disturbing to me.

What do you feel should happen, then, in the rare cases where medical personnel need to treat someone who's uncontrollably violent? Police on their own can be (and are) trained to just physically restrain the guy indefinitely, but paramedics can't treat someone if they're thrashing around.

(I agree it'd be dystopian if police were themselves carrying around sedatives, but that's not happening here.)

> First of all, it's a big jump from "the article only mentions 8 cases across the US" to "there were only 8 cases across the US".

The parent does not make that jump, it merely cites 8 cases over 3 years in one city and asks if there isn't more evidence. And that does not even allege police directing paramedics to do things (as claimed in another thread here), just people discussing the situation with each other.

The article says that 17% of uses in Colorado lead to complications.

—-

Also, I googled “Canada” and “Australia” alone with “Ketamine” “police” and got nothing. Can you support your claim that other countries do this?

> Ketamine is used in many places (the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Austria) by paramedics,

The original claim did not say anything about police. You interjected police. However, I searched for "australia paramedics using ketamine" in DDG. The first page was nothing but pages regarding Colorado. Page 2 returned a more relevant study of Australian paramedics using Special-K[0]. I then searched "canadian paramedics using ketamine", and again first page totally about CO with page 2 yielding relevant results[1].

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1742-6723.12... [1] https://ajp.paramedics.org/index.php/ajp/article/view/763

Original claim seems accurate.

I guess that makes sense. However, it seems like perhaps the interjection is paramedics since the top level article is about police (mid)use of k.

"...paramedics are allowed to inject sedatives when treating a patient."

Firstly, eliminate qualified immunity in the USA. Until everyone can be held accountable for their actions, this convo is moot.

> Pretty much everywhere in the world, paramedics are allowed to inject sedatives when treating a patient.

I don't know how you define pretty much everywhere, but in the EU it's illegal pretty much everywhere. [0]

I know in practice those laws get ignored, but, as a paramedic or doctor, you could get into trouble if someone decides to sue over it. The reality is that the law isn't on your side on this issue.

[0] https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/chafea_pdb/assets/files/pdb/200...

If you want the evidence that this happens frequently read the MPD civilian oversight report[0] on the subject.

In my opinion the main issue is the "excited delirium" diagnosis. One of the main symptoms of "excited delirium" is "Police Noncompliance"[1] which makes the police an essential part of its diagnosis.

[0] https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/File/1853/Pre-Hospit...

[1] https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/media/publications/acep_repo...

> He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he was only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams.

315 milligrams is still.. a lot. Especially injected into the bloodstream (I presume?) all at one time. Enough to really wrangle your marbles even if you're used to that kind of stuff.

edit: To expand, that's about the dosage most people would get delusions of some sort, but not be 100% immobilized. That is a recipe for disaster around angry cops.

edit2: It's bio-availability is actually twice as high intramuscularilly than insufflated.. well you wouldn't be fighting the cops but dear god I would not want to experience that.

I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight.

But yes, it’s a lot.

How do you estimate the weight of a person?

I know how much I weigh, but I don't know how much anyone else weighs. I guess some other people don't even weigh themselves so don't even know how much they weigh.

How do you estimate it?

Height + bellysize + muscle size?

Right... how do I get a number from looking at those?

Compare those values to your own weight, and pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic.

> pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic

I don't think I've ever heard an adult male ever mention their own weight in public. You can see why it'd be hard to estimate when you don't have any data.

You’ll have to get a job at a county fair running the weight guessing attraction to get enough data. There’s no other way to do it, it’s how we all figured out how to estimate the weight of a human. I’ll call my friend Chucky, he’ll get you a gig in a traveling carnival for the summer.

Or simply any job that requires checking IDs. Bouncer, bartender, cashier in a store that sells alcohol/cigarettes, etc.

Huh, I have never seen weight specified on any ID.

Every US ID and driver's license I've ever seen (and I've seen many) list height and weight.

Watch a fair amount of boxing and practice that way.

> How do you estimate the weight of a person?

Practice. In theory if you're doing this a lot, you should be able do a decent job of estimating +/- 10%, which is more than accurate enough.

There are certainly other complications (some medications are dosed on "ideal body weight" (ignoring subcutaneous fat), etc...)

I'll second this. Climbers tend to get at least half-way decent estimating the weight of other climbers because it's pretty relevant if you're lead belaying somebody.

In fairness, we're usually estimating the weight of people of fairly fit builds, but with some practice estimating people of other builds, I agree that you'd get within 10%.

One more reason to leave drugs to qualified personell.

A very large part of police work is providing and reacting to descriptions of suspects. If there is no training on this provided then this seems to be a very large oversight. Based on the fact that police constantly arrest and harrass people who 'matched the description' perhaps there is no training, or perhaps the officers simply don't care and are just looking for a person that fits their bias.

I would be really surprised if they estimated this poorly and would guess they were just irritated by him and decided to up the dose as punishment. If I am wrong then they receive zero training when estimating weight and multiple officers are terrible at it. To mistakenly confuse a 140lb for 220lb is poor judgement to the point that it strains credulity.

FWIW: My wife work in health care and just a couple of months or so told me how difficult it can be to estimate the weight of a person. She had recently seen some pictures with examples of persons and their actual weights and it had surprised even her.

It doesn't strain credulity for me. Most descriptions of the black victims of police brutality by law enforcement inflate them to a monstrous size, and use animal metaphors to describe their terrifying faces.

Never underestimate the degree to which racism is driven by actual, irrational terror.

There are actually documented cases of police officers in the early 20th century requesting heavier calibers and hotter loads from gun manufacturers because they believed their firearms were incapable of stopping an enraged <slur deleted>.

Biologically, this is utter nonsense. But the belief that black people are tougher, stronger, and more capable of withstanding pain and drugs is a surprisingly common belief. Doctors are notorious for downgrading black pain in clinical situations as compared to white patients, and administer less pain killers.

The uncomfortable truth is that authorities regularly misidentify black men as being bigger/taller/older/darker than they actually are. Whether that's an issue specific to police indoctrination or to American culture in general, it's clearly part of what happened here.

Apologies to the HN users who will be incensed at the notion of race playing a role in this situation.

> Apologies to the HN users who will be incensed at the notion of race playing a role in this situation.

No apologies necessary, receiving a dose of reality is good for them.

So true.

Even today a common misconception among white doctors is that black people have thicker skin than white people or even that their nerv endings are less sensitive.

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patient...

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, cops in the early 20th century requested larger calibers and hotter loads from gun manufacturers because they believed black people survived gun shots better than white people.

Police in the U.S. are usually extremely overweight. They might not know that a healthy 5'10 adult should weigh 150 pounds.

That seems like an overly generalised thing to say.

There are FBI reports that say the same thing, referenced here:

https://inpublicsafety.com/2015/01/tackling-the-obesity-epid...

and here:

"FBI: 80 Percent Of Police Officers Are Overweight"

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/08/14/fbi-80-percent-of-police...

Why on earth would you come to challenge something without first checking if its true?

> 315 milligrams is still.. a lot. Especially injected into the bloodstream (I presume?)

Iv dose for induction of general anesthesia is ~3-5 mg/kg. Or ~5 mg/kg intramuscularly.

The main thing with ketamine is that it causes tachycardia/arrhythmias and increases blood pressure. While that can be desirable for people in shock, it is a big problem if the person is already under proarrhythmic drugs (e.g. cocaine).

In Europe, we use antipsychotics for similar situations (haloperidol).

I’m pretty sure the lit goes up to 8 mg/kg for IM. In the case of a 100lb pt, that’s what, 50kg? So they give the pt 6 mg per kg. It’s not out of the range of sanity, all else equal.

Key point though: you wouldn’t give the pt 8 mg/kg in a fucking bolus. Time to onset for sedative effect is fast (10min or so); time to peripheral adverse effects can easily take an hour. You’d start way lower than 8, and work your way up if you needed to.

> So they give the pt 6 mg per kg. It’s not out of the range of sanity, all else equal.

Well yeah, but as I understand it the goal is not to intubate in this case, right? So in my opinion, 6 is already way too much.

In fact, I don't think we can agree on a safe standard dose in this case. Which suggests that it's not the right choice of drug for that use case...

It is a lot by recreational standards, but the anesthetic doses of ketamine are higher than the recreational doses.

I’ve seen club kids go into what I can only describe as an ‘ambulatory trance state’ at the dosage levels you speak of.

I talked down one or two people from completely destroying their environment while in such a state, by using deliberately de-escalatory calming techniques.

I’m aghast the police would use such a substance because it is indeed a recipe for disaster when mixed with their expectations of behavior.

Where can I learn de-escalatory calming techniques?

Social workers and ER nurses, in particular, have field-tested practices for dealing with people who are anxiously disoriented — or violently psychotic - in a manner which resolves the situation peacefully.

All I can say for what I did at the time was an intuition that I was confronted with a half-tranquilized, large confused ape and so acted as to prevent them from panicking and running amok with calm words, movements, and (most importantly I suspect in that state) caring touch.

People taking ketamine in clubs usually use much less than k-hole or anaesthetic doses, because the effects are more conducive to partying. They generally take small bumps over the course of a night.

I really doubt the club kids to saw had taken anything like the equivelant of 300mg or 500mg taken IM (2x the bioavailability of intranasal), or even intranasally. If you are standing, 50-75mg taken intranasally can cause transient, trance-like states like you describe. 100mg taken intranasally (50g IM equivalent) is enough such that most people couldn't safely walk, and would have closed-eye visuals almost like a lucid dream. 150mg intranasally will guarantee a k-hole for most people, and 300mg plus would render all but those with extreme tolerances unconscious.

It's probably obvious, but the doses I mention are regarding pharmaceutical ketamine, straight from the vial, rather than for street ketamine.

Let’s say these particular kids had access to the good stuff. Cooked straight from the vial, albeit from Mexico or some further place. Done by the plateful and not in bumps.

I should also add that the ones whom I had to talk down were probably also on heaven-knows what other substances at the time.

Why are we injecting people during arrests, which by definition are not yet guilty people? Even if nobody had died, this is absurd.

There are some good uses cases . You arrive on scene and the patient is injured and agitated and lashing out. EMT is having a hard time as well. You need to give them something. Basically Benzos or Ketamine, and Ketamine is much safer and can relieve pain

Yes, but drugs should only be administered by suitably trained and educated professionals such as EMT and health care professionals. Not police!

Many (not all) police departments cross-train police officers as EMTs. The two are not mutually exclusive and, in many ways, complement each other.

Full time EMTs aren’t trained enough to make good decisions about when it’s appropriate to administer ketamine and how much to give. A cop who did some EMT training but doesn’t use the skills full time is going to be even worse.

I am very much against the idea of police using ketamine, but I believe all street officers should be fully trained EMT's as well.

Paramedics were the ones who killed Elijah McClain with ketamine.

Putting aside that police shouldn’t be utilizing drugs period, there is zero justification for administering drugs to someone who isn’t a danger to themselves or others, as was the case for McClain. It makes more sense when you realize that the Aurora PD is eighth in the nation for police killings per capita.

My fiancée has to deal with kids in the ER who got injected with too much ketamine by overzealous EMTs all the time. I don’t think limiting it to EMTs will solve the problem.

Someone with a minimum amount of training and who makes something close to minimum wage making these kinds of decisions is scary.

It wasn't the police who gave the med. It was paramedics.

I always had the impression that emergency departments used haloperidol or chlorpromazine because they don't cause increased intracranial pressure like ketamine nor respiratory depression like benzodiazepines. I'm sure it varies for individual experience.

If a suspect is restrained enough to be injected with a needle, then the police have already overpowered them. If an EMT has not judged that a sedative will medically help their patient, the right answer for the police is hand and ankle cuffs. Ordering administration of a sedative is purely for the officers' own desires - to make their jobs easier in the future and to extra-judicially punish.

If you are resisting arrest, you may still be presumed innocent of the original crime. However you're almost certainly guilty of resisting lawful arrest, which is usually a misdemeanor.

There's no exemption that allows innocent people to resist lawful arrest.

This is not to say that injection sounds like a great solution for everyday arrests.

Of course, the definition of "lawful arrest" is pretty flexible these days and can seemingly include arrests that are blatantly unlawful, like some cops deciding to assault a random passerby on the street because they don't like the look of them or are unhappy about legal conduct like photography. Is it okay to resist under those circumstances? According to a judge or a police officer, probably not, but at the end of the day you'd probably win the case. If you survive.

> According to a judge or a police officer, probably not

I'd naively hope that a judge wouldn't side with a police officer here, but I think the fact that resisting arrest is inherently criminal is a pretty big flaw in the US legal system.

I live in a jurisdiction [1] where resisting arrest is not criminalised in the same sense as the US, and the idea that a police officer could unlawfully arrest you and then immediately have lawful grounds if you resisted is very alien to me.

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resisting_arrest#England_and_W...

Since the '70s it feels like law enforcement (and juries to some extent) are informed by two movies much more than the Constitution and case law: Dirty Harry and Death Wish.

I saw a interesting clip on TV a while back where they played several clips of various popular police dramas in which the main characters use wildly illegal or unconstitutional tricks to get confessions from criminals. Things like physically assaulting them while contained and. turning off cameras in interrogation rooms to do so. The point it was trying to make was that this "desensitized" people to police violence. Of course, the criminals in the clips were things like child predators, serial killers, etc. so it was all justified.

https://youtu.be/MF--2o71w44

This is a pretty good video analysing law enforcement and how it got to become the way it is through the analysis of Dirty Harry.

Interesting presentation

Thankfully we don't use "almost certainly guilty" as the criminal standard in the US. So, you're still injecting an innocent person with drugs to detain them.

In america if the police are killing you, resisting that death is a crime. If someone had attempted to stop the police from killing George Floyd, they would have been arrested and charged.

You can imagine the confusion that arises when plain clothes police seize people.

In most countries you can get off the hook for pretty much anything if you had a good reason to fear for your life.

In some countries it's even enough that a police officer is acting (obviously) unlawfully, giving you the right to resist.[1]

[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html

In my country (Canada), using firearms for self-defence is almost universally regarded as illegal. However, when police officers exerted a no-knock warrant on the wrong person, and they defended themselves using firearms, they were found illegal, because it was judged that armed intruders violently barging through and threatening you in your home is one of the rare cases where the situation is so outrageous that it is justified. In the US, despite owning guns for self-defence being legal, you will be found guilty of murder for this, and certainly be found guilty of resisting arrest.

Generally this is the case, very often because either dead men tell no tales or the victim was a minority (see Breonna Taylor) . A while back though in TX there was a case where cops executed a no knock raid beginning with a flash bang and the homeowner shot 3 of them. The homeowner was not the target of the raid. He was found not guilty of attempted murder. I am sure the court fees and lost job destroyed his life though. Mug shot also appears to show he was very much roughed up in the process.

There are many instances of people using weapons in self defense and then police arrive and kill the gun owner. For instance; Jemel_Roberson' a black armed security guard that subdued a shooter in a bar. Cop showed up and immediately killed the security guard then lied that he was given multiple commands to drop the weapon. Witnesses said the cop arrived and shot the guard within 5 seconds. Later police changed their story and said it was just a case of friendly fire, very sad nothing can be done. And nothing was done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jemel_Roberson

Elijah McClain did not resist arrest.

> I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies! I don’t eat meat! But I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I’ll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I’m a mood Gemini. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Ow, that really hurt. You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. Oh, I’m sorry I wasn’t trying to do that. I just can’t breathe correctly.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elijah-mcclains-last-words...

The source you're citing doesn't even address the assertion you're making, so that's a bit misleading to post. Looking for a source for your claim I found this, which adds some detail: https://youtu.be/lfzJzAm-OV0?t=63

> There's no exemption that allows innocent people to resist lawful arrest.

It's a bit murkier than that in the US. In some states you can't even resist unlawful arrest, but in all states you're allowed to defend yourself against _excessive_ force.

In practice that's probably a bad idea, but if you survive the retaliation from somebody who's armed and who has already proven themselves prone to excessive use of force then you might win the ensuing court case.

It says that on the books that you’re allowed to defend against excessive force, but they’ll still charge you for assault for bleeding on their uniform. (And then only retract this when the media outcry becomes too difficult to ignore.)

Being charged is not the same as being found guilty. Cops are not lawyers or judges.

Being charged is enough to hold you for 3 days, as well as to put you on probation for a couple months afterwards, even if the charges are dropped. This happened to a friend of mine when he was frustrated with an inland border control roadblock and didn't want to answer the questioning officer. He did not resist, was not violent in any way. He simply politely declined to answer.

In the end it cost him over a grand to get his car back and to pay for drug tests required by the probation. Again, he was never actually charged with anything.

Policing in this nation is fundamentally broken. The bad cops know how to use the system to brutalize people without consequences, and the rest of the police close ranks and protect them while they do it.

In addition, for most people, if you miss work for 3 days without an explanation, you'll be fired. If you miss work for 3 days and tell your boss it was because you were arrested, you'll also likely be fired. You'll now also have to answer "YES" on job applications where they ask you whether you've been arrested for anything (even if eventually charges were dropped or you were found not guilty). As an innocent person, the mere brush with law enforcement can have long-standing negative effects on your life.

Yes, fantastic point. My friend was fortunate to own his own business, but he did miss some scheduled stuff and had to explain it to his customers.

If it's just your word against theirs, they might as well be. Everybody is against you except for your low-paid advocate (the public defender) who's working on 100 cases at the same time as they're working on yours. It's different for the wealthy.

Cops are not lawyers or judges, but cops can make your life hell totally legally. There are people who are forced to sign away their right to protest in order to be let out of jail for a charge that is totally dropped.

I don't love the government-owns-your-body aspect to this.

> If you are resisting arrest

Alas, when someone is or is not "resisting arrest" is not something that is particularly well-defined. It's usually "when the officer says you are resisting," regardless of the actual facts at hand.

My point, basically, is that if a cop grabs you unexpectedly, and you push them away (a reasonable, normal reaction): the next thing you hear is "stop resisting!"

The crime of "resisting arrest" needs to go away.

Interesting reading: https://bostonreview.net/race-law-justice/lisa-cacho-jodi-me...

I have no clue, the first time I read about ketamine was in a article [1] about upcoming partydrugs in The Netherlands. In that article they mention that ketamine is generally used as a anesthetic for horses. But having things done to your body while you cannot decide about that is just horrible and should be banned.

[1] https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/ketamine-steeds-populairder-gro... (Dutch)

In an ideal world, sedation is more humane than beating or shocking a suspect into submission, when there is no other way to get them under control.

If I and other HN commenters are not mistaken, ketamine is commonly used for this purpose in hospitals around the world.

However, leaving the theoretical behind... Elijah McClain was murdered by police for the "crime" of acting oddly. There was no reason for them to use force against him whatsoever. He was unarmed and committed no crime.

His death hurts me because he was, broadly speaking, "one of us" - an eccentric and intelligent person.

Based on all I have read about his life, I think many HN readers would recognize aspects of themselves in Elijah.

The common scenario is someone being arrested who is also is a state of excited/agitated delirium. Someone in that state will likely be combative but won't be able to comply with directions. Your only options would be to physically restrain the individual (which might be very difficult to virtually impossible depending on what you have on hand and how agitated the person is) or sedate them. The article implies that police are coercing paramedics into giving ketamine. I'm pretty skeptical of this. Any delirious person being treated by paramedics would be on the way to the ER for evaluation. The cops and the paramedics would be working together to ensure that the patient is safely restrained/sedated. But the paramedic would in essence be taking over control of the patient (likely with a police escort to the ER).

Police forcing people to do drugs. People that can't refuse it. Is revolting and insane, and distroys any possibility of fair defense of course. What would be next, escopolamine by default in any declaration?

Setting aside the fact that this kind of thing happens at all: How is ketamine the drug of choice?! Although it has a very high active dose:fatal dose (alluded to in other comments), accepted practice for "chemical restraint" is Thorazine+Valium (or equivalent); ketamine is basically never used for behavioral "sedation" by any medical professional.

Our Ed takedown drug is midazolam. I can’t see benzos being safe being given by non-medics. The safety profile of ketamine is excellent (as I’m sure you know)

Having said that it blows my mind that it is considered necessary or appropriate to give someone ketamine to restrain them.

Also, aren't police claiming that they only use ketamine for people showing "excited delirium", where benzos are probably contraindicated?

Seems that hospitals love to give out Versed like candy.

The use of chemical restraint in a law enforcement setting is an appalling breach of human rights, but ketamine is by far the safest option in an out-of-hospital setting, especially when you don't have any sort of patient history. I'm sure that someone has been killed by a single clinical dose of ketamine, but I'm not sure how. Ketamine isn't a very good chemical cosh, but at least it's a safe one.

Anyone administering chlorpromazine and a benzodiazepine in this setting is criminally negligent - if the "patient" (and I very much hesitate to use that word in this context) has taken another CNS depressant, they're in deep trouble.

It’s a candidate for safest only if it’s being used where required by a trained administrator. And those two factors probably outweigh the choice of drug in their effect on lethality.

It’s used “a lot” by the EMS. It’s doesn’t lower your blood pressure like Versed can, and ketamine has some pain relief properties.

I would guess the problem is those already intoxicated on opiates, or even alcohol, as many arrestees are.

Adding a bento, like valium, to that mix is extremely dangerous because of the synergistic effect on respiratory depression.

If you're intoxicated on opioids, you are not going to be violently resisting arrest in the first place.

Not guaranteed

No, it's not guaranteed, it would depend on how intoxicated you were.

For the purposes of this discussion, I thought it was safe to assume we were talking about doses that could actually alter your behaviour; high doses of opioids do not make exactly for agresssive behaviour, while lower doses are unlikely to have an impact either way.

Ketamine is also a CNS depressant and would have the same compounding effect when mixed with alcohol, it's a wholly inappropriate drug to administer to someone who was in a state of "alcohol-induced excited delirium"

The amount of opioids on the streets of the US (and elsewhere) is staggering. Many people are on a cocktail of different street drugs (meth + heroine where I live). You don't want to be adding a benzo like valium to someone who has opioids in their system due to respiratory depression.

It's completely insane that, in America, police are allowed to direct paramedics to inject a person with _anything_. Anesthesiologists go through how many years of schooling and training? And even then, nobody is injecting kids with shit on the street.

I was first confused when I learned about the McClain story; I had known Ketamine to be a recreational drug, and i had never heard of cops injecting something into a person they were arresting before. Since I have become better educated, I am much more concerned about staying in America long-term. This is not how normal law enforcement should be operating.

The cops didn't "legally" direct the injection. The don't have the authority to do that. In my opinion (as a paramedic), that makes the compliance of the medics with the cops request even more disgusting.

Sedation (even involuntary sedation) is an important tool for EMS (outside the context of law enforcement). It was used totally inappropriately here, and everyone involved should be facing criminal charges.

I dislocated my ankle rock climbing a few years ago and had to be taken to the hospital. After a few doses of morphine had zero noticeable impact on my pain, they gave me ketamine so I couldn't feel the pain of the reduction (aka pulling my foot out and moving it back into place).

The ketamine experience was far worse than my fall and any subsequent pain I experienced, and I would gladly take the pain of the reduction over the ketamine any day. It basically felt like I was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Think of the hypnosis scene from "Get Out" where you can feel your consciousness slipping away but you're not asleep either. I could hear everything happening around me but couldn't move a muscle or feel anything. My perception of time went out the window and it felt like I was in an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes.

I thought I couldn't talk because I couldn't feel my mouth or move any other muscles, but realized I was actually speaking my thoughts after I heard a friend in the room responded to something I thought in my mind.

Overall, 0/10 would not do it again and the thought that police use it to pacify someone during an arrest is sickening.

Damn. This has me wonder: had you ever done a psychedelic prior to this?

I had ketamine during wakeful surgery.

Loved it. Grateful it was available.

But I had prev. experience w/ psychedelics & had learned/practiced how to: let go, place attention on what's positive & cease to have expectations.

I imagine there's also got to be a difference between getting it for a planned surgery that you can prepare for, vs having it thrust on you suddenly during a traumatic and painful experience. Kind of hard to let go in that situation.

An arrest sound like one of the worst set and settings to get dosed with ketamine. The person being arrested might not know what they were injected with. The person might not trust the police. The person is being detained against their will.

And several doses of morphine usually have at least some effect on the body/mind

Some people are immune, or almost immune: https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-norway-ntnu/gen...

As other people have said, preparation is a big part of enjoying it. Any hallucinogens without knowing what to expect would be scary.

Regarding place attention on the positive: Check out Sam Harris interview with Francoise Bourzat. She goes into depth about so called negative trips and feels they are just as important and useful as positive ones. I'm not sure I can summarize why, but she suggested that even negative experiences can be mindfully approached and handled well.

> My perception of time went out the window and it felt like I was in an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes.

This was my exact experience with disossiatives as well. I think they can be effectively and safely used, but there's a real danger there. Disossiatives like ketamine and DXM are incredibly powerful.

After my experience in that same eternal void I struggled with a fear that what I'd experienced was the natural state of consciousness, and what would happen to me for eternity after I died. I didn't actually believe it, but the fear was still there and talk. Took a few months for it to wear off.

Sounds terrible. In a recent surgery in pre op they gave me Versed/Midazolam. I was so spacey it was weird and kinda scary. I can’t imagine what ketamine would be like

Versed is pretty wild, even at preinduction doses. You can learn to be OK with it, but it was a little scary for me too, the first time I had a procedure that involved it.

That procedure also most likely involved ketamine - I don't know for sure, it was a long time ago and nobody told me the names of anything but the Versed and that only because I asked, but I had totally uncharacteristic recurring nightmares and emotional problems for the next little while afterward. When all of that came back up during planning for the surgery I had to have last year, my surgeon noted that that sounded in his experience like ketamine side effects, and that this time I'd be getting propofol, which is not at all a dissociative, instead. And, sure enough, I was just fine after that surgery, despite it being much more invasive and thus painful in its aftereffects.

Based on that, I'll echo what others here have already said: the thought of being given a surprise high dose of ketamine, in the context of a situation that also involves the use of violence against one's person, is horrifying, and complex PTSD is the least severe consequence I can imagine.

Are you experienced with drugs? Because most of my friends think ketamine is one the greatest drugs you can do. It would have probably a lot more fun if you were in a comfortable place, like your house, hanging out with your gf or something.

Some of the most chill and relaxed moments of my entire life have been on ketamine. I only do it occasionally because of the nasty chronic side-effects, though.

Do your friends generally take drugs involuntarily and without informed awareness of the effects and without a trusted trip sitter the first time they do something new and with associated negative circumstances (like a broken bone or an arrest)?

That's GP's point I think: the context of the experience makes all the difference.

Ah, the comment was edited after I replied, oops. Yes.

(Though I don't believe whether it's enjoyable in the right setting has much to do with whether cops should be using it. I get that this is a defense of ketamine as a recreational drug, but e.g. alcohol would probably be un-fun if the first time you experienced it was at a high dose during either surgery or an arrest, and that one's widely accepted as a reasonable recreational drug.)

Nope, not experienced and don't plan to be. I totally believe it could be a nice experience in a different setting, but I doubt that experiencing it in the hospital or mid-arrest would ever be enjoyable.

SWIM is a tremendous fan of injected ketamine

> Think of the hypnosis scene from "Get Out"

this is EXACTLY right.

> an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes.

if you maintained the ability to interpret audio and visual inputs, then probably 20-30 minutes, if SWIM had to guess.

> the thought that police use it to pacify someone during an arrest is sickening.

this is EXACTLY right.

reminds me of the psychonaught/rapist sex therapist guy who was mega-dosing women with MDMA or 2CB before forcing himself on them.

Yep, I think the empty void feeling was only a few minutes and after that ended it took like 20-30 minutes to be able to open my eyes and regain motor control.

FYI, SWIM means Somebody Who Isn't Me, which is often used on psychedelic enthusiast forums.

I had almost exactly the same response the first time I took ketamine. This is despite being experienced with psychedelics (all extremely positive lifechanging experiences), and despite that I was safe at home, knowing what I was taking. The only problem was that I was in a bad state of mind.

It is truly disturbing to imagine going through that during an arrest, with no idea what is happening

Welcome to the K-Hole.

Yes this is commmonly known as a K-Hole. It's worse than a bad trip from what I've heard.

Ketamine is a party drug especially common among young gay people here in Brazil. It's usually briefly inhaled so I'm guessing very low doses. The 500mg mentioned in the article sounds terrible.

"Yes this is commmonly known as a K-Hole. It's worse than a bad trip from what I've heard."

No, it doesn't have to be bad at all if it's not used in a bad setting and most people enjoy the effects. It wouldn't be a common drug otherwise. See https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/d3dxzq/we-asked-people-ab...

Ah, I stand corrected! Thanks for the info.

Accidentally doing too much ketamine and badly k-holing (by snorting) is one of the worst experiences of my life. Maybe the worst. It was exactly as you described, it's like you're being cut off from reality and have no way back. It's like being plunged into the bottom of the ocean, darkness, everything real is distant, you try to move but you can't - it's like someone has unplugged all your sensory organs and limbs.

And it comes in waves -- just when you think you're coming out of it, it pulls you back down.

I swore off ketamine for life after that and don't plan on ever touching it again. I would take a bad comedown from stimulants over that. I would take the feeling of hopelessness, anhedonia, and thorough depression from a bad MDMA comedown any day. To be fair, both things only happen if you do too much, it's avoidable, and it was entirely my fault for not weighing the dose.

And I still think therapeutic ketamine for depression should be studied and trialled and legal. But still, K-holing was an absolutely horrifying experience and I don't recommend it to anyone for any reason.

And it probably was only not even worse because I was also on MDMA.

It can be absolutely wonderful if you're properly prepared though, just lying in your bed with a dim pink light on listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms or something, enjoying escaping your body for a while and floating around in an undefinable sea of warm nothingness.

However, it absolutely sounds like it could be hell if you're not prepared though - especially in police custody, but even just fighting against it in a party situation where you want to exist and be social could be problematic.

I've dislocated my shoulder four times this year. The last three I've asked them to stop knocking me out w/ketamine for the reasons you describe, and just put it back while I scream; which I find quite preferable.

As a youth I did all the drugs and hallucinogens there are and most of them are _nothing_ compared to an anesthetic dose of ketamine. It's the most disassociate experience I've ever had. It feels like you're grasping at your consciousness but can't quite get hold. The hallucinations are incomprehensible. I was told my screaming was heard in the waiting room.

Tony Timpa died because of this and the two cops compressing his lungs by standing on his back. And the cops suffered no consequences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X4PUwrq8tA (NSFW, maybe... but very troubling either way)

It's worth reading up on Ketamine and its use medically before coming to conclusions based on this article. Notably:

1. EMTs are generally under the oversight of a head doctor and aren't supposed to take actions outside of what they're directed to do there. Even if instructed by a LEO

2. Ketamine is a relatively safe drug used for a variety of purposes. While it may calm down someone experiencing stress, it can also stabilize patients en-route to the hospital

While this situation may be a miscarriage of justice,we needn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Source: https://youtu.be/Dj4eBa7z03U

Also, the source here is a professional EMT and worth checking out for more points and more information. Prep Medic is awesome :-)

what do you think about rubber bullets and other "less than lethal" weapons that kill people sometimes?

Alcohol and ketamine is a known bad bad combination. 500mg is a damn lot of ketamine and morally there is no difference than drugging someone against their will by non medical people for no medical purpose.

Cops also use pepper spray. It's against someone's will, by non-cooks, for no culinary purpose.

Cops also use electric stun guns. It's against someone's will, by non-electricians, for no electronic purpose.

Mind proposing an acceptable method of restraint? Go ahead, and see people tear it apart as a human rights violation.

It's much like the hopeless situation in bad schools, where all possible methods of discipline have been banned. Things are a mess if we deny the need to impose proper behavior by force.

And cops use bullets, too. Soldiers use even better bullets, and these are a super effective method of disciplining people with great longterm success in reducing repeat offenders.

But the cost on the detainee (who is to be presumed innocent, who may be in distress themself, who may have a psychotic episode due to some unknown cross-reaction with medication or the like, who may be deeply scared) is much, much, much higher, which is why this sort of thing almost never happens where I live (not the US, obviously).

I feel there are good reasons to assume that force-injecting someone with a megadose of Ketamine without their knowing what they're getting, understanding what they're getting into, competent assistance during what follows, in a profoundly bad state of mind, likely in deep fear, under heavy stress, while being restrained (otherwise, how would you inject?), with no knowlegde of their medical history or current condition, administered by laypeople, who would be completely useless in case of complications – I believe that isn't quite the same as tasing someone, or using pepper spray. While it's not visible in the way beating injuries are, that sort of thing has big potential to really deeply traumatize and mentally scar people for a long time.

Cops here do not have such powers and no one has tried to give them such powers, so far; I hope it stays that way. If someone has to be sedated, a doctor and an ambulance have to be summoned, and the then-patient has to be brought directly to a clinic that can take care of them; all in a medical setting from that point, not primarily an arrest (though, of course, depending on the situation, they may not be allowed to just leave once they're lucid again). This is only ever to be done in case of people in a psychotic episode that cannot be calmed otherwise or the like, it's not something to put into annoying detainees to make them shut up and be easier to handle. Any emergency doctor willing to inject such drugs without proper medical indication would take on big personal risks.

And, finally:

> Things are a mess if we deny the need to impose proper behavior by force.

Things are a mess as well if the tools to do so are passed out without checks and safety mechanisms that are appropriate to their effects. Letting cops shoot people at will while there are other, less severe options, that's awfully bad. And letting them drug people into submission while there are other, less severe options, that too is really bad.

1. "Soldiers use even better bullets"

Almost universally not true. The Geneva convention prohibits many types of bullets that are allowed for civilian use. Hollow points, for example. And there are good reasons why they're allowed for civilians and not war.

2. It's not fair to give us a sanctimonious lecture about how great your country's police procedures are without stating your country. Put up, or drop the lecture.

I mean, imagine the chutzpah if you're German!

I believe soldiers have bullets with a lot more kinetic energy behind them than bullets fired by ordinary police guns; that said, I'm not a gun person, so maybe a police small arms shot is more effective against people than one fired by an assault rifle.

Besides, the policy I described is what (AFAIK) most of Europe implements at the moment (might be all of Europe even), including Germany. I don't quite see why stating that requires chutzpah.

That wasn't intended as a sanctimonious lecture at all, but since there already is a lot of "nothing less drastic could ever work" in the comments, I thought I'd give an example of another policy that works well. I'm well aware there is no police force or security apparatus without fault, they all get some things wrong (and some are outright atrocious, like in Belarus currently), not trying to make it sound like some EU police service is perfect. I don't know where the US police falls on that spectrum, though reading US news makes it seem like they do have some serious issues currently. This particular policy doesn't exactly help, either.

"I don't know where the US police falls on that spectrum, though reading US news makes it seem like they do have some serious issues currently. "

Well that's the problem, isn't it? You read news coverage of the US. The observational bias there is huge. Consider:

The US is a country of 320 million. As of Brexit, larger than the EU and homogeneously English speaking with homogeneous press and institutions. The EU is smaller with 23 languages or so and a patchwork of everything.

So if a Eastern EU cop beats the shit out of a homosexual in jail who would ever find out?

At least in Greece it's pretty well documented that cops sodomized Albanian migrant workers with broomsticks. But you wouldn't know that unless you happen to have an Albanian wife who lived in Greece.

An Italian squad of carabinieri was just disbanded because it turned out to be running a drug dealing and extortion racket. This is literally current news. Have you heard about it?

Spanish police took COVID as an opportunity to abuse their power. National scandal in Spain, I haven't read any non-Spanish (and I mean Spain Spanish, not Spanish language) news about it.

In Hesse police computers were used to find out the personal details of a left-wing politician to send them neo-Nazi affiliated threats. Armed agents of the Germany with neo-Nazi links is quite the scandal today in Germany.

Notice the bias in my examples:

Spanish police - I'm half Spanish

Italian police - I'm half Italian

Greek police - My wife is Greek speaking Albanian.

German police - I suspect you're German so I specifically googled German police abuse

Notice I don't have specific French police abuse examples... because I don't speak French! I'm sure a google search will quickly inform me of Algerians young men beat to a pulp by a gendarme.

In general, as EU citizen living in the US for over a decade, I find that the EU perspective of the US couldn't be more wrong.

[EDIT] grammer

As an aside, about bullets.

Sure, the military has access to more powerful rounds. Aircraft cannons, for example. But they don't typically load the soldier's rifles with rounds more powerful than what a civilian can buy.

- Soldiers' bullets really don't have more kinetic energy than civilian ones. For one, a civilian can always hand load, and get whatever K.E. they want (until they blow up their gun's chamber). Also, civilians can buy military rounds. Either surplus or whatever.

Smaller bullets means soldiers can carry more ammo. Not as important in the trenches of Europe, but crucial in the jungle colonial wars, I mean freedom wars, since WW2.

- Also, the military only wants a bullet powerful enough make it through any reasonable personal armor. The idea is that a bullet that isn't powerful enough to exit the body will cause more damage by tumbling inside and/or be more difficult to remove -> it's a way around the Geneva conventions that mandates rounds hold themselves together

- Third hunters, by law, have to use a bullet with a certain minimum K.E. The .30-06, for example, was initially used as a military round, but is today a popular deer hunting round. It has been replaced in the military by the much smaller, weaker, round used in the M-16.

The civilian .30-06 is considerably more powerful round than the AK-47's, whose round is considered too powerful for a modern rifle.

- Check out the perfectly legal, if expensive, .50 BMG.

Police small arms are equal to military small arms, but usage is different.

Police get better ammunition for destroying human flesh, due to treaty restrictions on the military. Police can get all of the military small arms ammunition.

Police normally leave rifles locked up in their cars.

But surprisingly, even in “good schools”, when the same offense happens by minorities vs. non minorities, it is criminalized when done by minorities.

I was amazed at the stories my son told me about kids getting caught with drugs, hitting a coach, vandalizing property and all that happened was that the parents got called and a few days of suspension and the police were never involved. Because “kids will be kids”. Of course this is in a high income district.

When I was previously married living in a predominantly minority neighborhood - great neighborhood, lower income minority school district - my step daughter would tell me about the even the most minor of offenses where administrators would get the police involved.

There have been plenty of studies showing the unequal treatment of Black and White kids.

That's a different school, run by different people. It does not prohibit attendance by students of any race. The only bias I see is that of the parents, who pay a housing premium to avoid being associated with some kinds of people.

The local people choose the school board, which then chooses the school policy and administration.

School policy is limited by what is allowed and by what seems to work. If the parents usually are quick to discipline students for misbehavior, then parents will be relied upon to do so. If the parents ignore or encourage misbehavior, there is no reason to involve them. The police will be called instead.

No, same district. Different punishment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/03/police-pun...

Still, you elected a school board that would permit that difference, and you chose where to live.

If telling parents gets students under control at one school, and it doesn't work at the other school, punishment will be different. You could get to that policy by trial and error, without any knowledge of the racial makeup of the student body.

Right.

A) Because someone who lived in my school district where rent was $600 a month - I had a house as part of the “gentrification” movement pre real estate bust - could pick up and move to a better school district like I did in the opposite side of the metro area over an hour away where the rent is now $2000/month.

B) if minorities are treated differently in the same school district, why would the majority care? Are you now going to argue that if you are a minority and face statistically unequal treatment by the criminal justice system you should move out of the city? state? country?

Things are different, yes, but I'm not seeing any racism on the part of the school administration or school board.

You are in "a high income district". You were in "lower income minority school district". I don't know the racial situation in your current district, though I could probably guess right. It's realistic, though not very nice, to imply that "minority" is the opposite of "high income".

For the discipline difference, it's enough that there is an income difference. That explains everything. There is no need to mention race.

The high-income people, of any race, care about education and discipline. Getting a kid to behave is usually as simple as telling the parents.

The low-income people, on average, don't give a damn. Telling a parent about bad behavior will just generate a tirade of insults. Calling the police works, so that is done.

It's unfair to the low-income people who aren't terrible. Well, life isn't fair. The group you associate with will determine how you are treated.

It's realistic, though not very nice, to imply that "minority" is the opposite of "high income".

Hint: Not only are “some of my best friends Black”, my parents, my wife, my children, and all of my family is too. Please don’t go all “woke” on me.

For the discipline difference, it's enough that there is an income difference. That explains everything. There is no need to mention race.

Studies show that it happens in the same district...

The high-income people, of any race, care about education and discipline. Getting a kid to behave is usually as simple as telling the parents.

Right because poor people don’t care about education.

The high-income people, of any race, care about education and discipline. Getting a kid to behave is usually as simple as telling the parents.

Uhh, this isn’t new. I went to a private school growing up. By definition if they were paying to go to the school I went to, they weren’t poor. I saw myself how much different the “bad” White kids were treated than the Black kids.

The group you associate with will determine how you are treated.

Oh that’s all I have to tell my six foot 3 son to do! Make sure he has one of his White friends with him (he usually does) when he hangs out so police won’t wonder what he’s doing in our part of town.

He was going to walk from school one night down the street to a Waffle House after a football game to meet his other classmates. His friend group is like the rainbow coalition, but this one night he wasn’t sure whether his non-Black friends were going to the game and walking down there with him. We told him if not, just take an Uber. Two Black kids walking down the street were an easy target for harassment. Not by other kids - kids aren’t as stupid as the older generation - they were worried about being harassed by the cops.

I'm nearly the opposite of “woke” but I try to be nice, and that wording reminded me of this awful Biden quote: “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids”

As a general rule, yes, poor people don't care about education. That's typically a contributing factor to being poor. Exceptions are common.

Poor areas and poor families have a sort of cultural rot. Some have given up. Some see other things, often less honest or less productive, as an easier path to getting by in life. Some fear loss of friends if they choose a different path in life. In those areas, a kid who does well in school will be attacked by peers.

So at home, the parents are not reading to kids. The parents are not asking about homework. The parents are not taking away sources of entertainment that distract from success. The parents are not bothered by a non-A grade or in a panic over a below-B grade. Instead, the parents are creating chaos. The parents are getting arrested, coming to blows while drunk or high, and cranking up the TV volume. Very often, the families are broken. Sometimes the kids don't even know their father. All sorts of non-academic nonsense is glorified. The priorities are just all wrong. That is not an environment that promotes discipline, studying, or academic success.

If teachers are really treating black kids of equivalent income and wealth different from white kids, that is interesting. It's particularly interesting because teachers are among the most “woke” of all, commonly marching for BLM while accusing the MAGA crowd of being racist. In the name of BLM people have torched black neighborhoods (both business and residential) and torn down statues of people who fought against slavery, and the arrested people have included numerous teachers.

Life isn't fair, so some hints for your son: wear a nice suit, speak crisp standard English, and keep the grooming strictly traditional. Basically, adopt the mannerisms of a lawyer.

Life isn't fair, so some hints for your son: wear a nice suit, speak crisp standard English, and keep the grooming strictly traditional. Basically, adopt the mannerisms of a lawyer.

You did see the article I posted where Ving Rhames had five cops show up to his house pointing guns at him because they thought he was breaking into his own home? Should he have been wearing a suit in his own home?

No “acting White” doesn’t keep you from getting pulled over. My (step)son grew up in the burbs all of his life. No matter how “White” he talks he will still be treated with suspicious. So he is suppose to wear a suit everywhere? Do you tell your son to wear a suit when he is going to play basketball?

I know for a fact according to statistics I make more than twice the median in my county - the most affluent in the state and one of the top 25 in the country - the benefit of working for BigTech remotely while living in the south, I’m by no means rich - and yes we still get looked at suspiciously walking into our own homes.

So you mean all Black people have to do is wear a suit everywhere and they won’t get harassed? You have singlehandedly solved racism, police misconduct, the disenfranchisement of minorities, racial profiling, etc in one sentence!

And no, teachers come from their communities just like cops do. Do you really think they earn a degree and automatically become “woke”?

So poverty couldn’t possibly be caused by systemic racism, educational funding based on property taxes, the War on Drugs that habitually punishes minorities more than Whites for the same offenses that also makes it harder to get a job.

My son is actually paranoid of cops when he goes to play basketball. But anyway, life isn't fair, and if you're having a problem then there are things you can do to improve perception. The lawyer look/mannerisms get you out of the "might be lower class" bucket, which is where the fear and hostility comes from. Although I admit that being white can help avoid that bucket, any white person can put themselves into the "might be lower class" bucket with awful grooming choices. Facial tattoos will do it, a slurred voice will do it, etc.

The kind of people who become teachers are generally not the kind of people who become cops. The education is radically different. So that is a different starting point and a different path to the career. The teaching degree is nearly 100% “woke” garbage, none of it practical in the classroom. Some, for example the methods for reading instruction, has even been proven to be actively harmful.

Educational funding has nearly nothing to do with educational success. The per-child budget for the DC schools should make this very clear. Culture is nearly everything. Some cultures are toxic.

The lawyer look/mannerisms get you out of the "might be lower class" bucket, which is where the fear and hostility comes from.

So should Ving Rhames had “the lawyer look” in his own home? Would that have stopped five cops from coming to his house? If the Black guy sitting in his own home who got shot by the cop because she thought she was entering her house not have been shot if had gone to sleep in a suit not been killed?

Do you also tell your female relatives if they dress appropriately they won’t be raped?

Can you give us examples of cases where the police are running out of legal options in their use of force?

They're not injecting this with tranq darts. Someone who is restrained enough to inject with a syringe, is already restrained enough. Probably with handcuffs/leg-irons/etc., but some cops also like to kneel on necks.

There is another method you neglected to mention: deescalation.

From all I've seen of US law enforcement, this seems to be applied very seldom, with cops actively escalating the situation and quickly reaching for tools of violence (beatings, batons, pepper spray, tasers, guns).

Most (all?) of the rest of the western world doesn't have these issues to anywhere near the degree the US does. Nobody in their right mind outside of the US would be justifying injecting people with massive doses of disassociative drugs, yet some people in the US think this is OK. That kind of says it all, really.

If someone is waving a knife or gun about and is a danger to others, I would say there is a moral difference. I am assuming that the police use it mainly for cases like that, but that is just an assumption. It still seems better than shooting at them. The linked article doesn't say anything like that though, but it is quite low on details leading to the arrest.

If someone is waving a weapon around I really doubt the police are getting near enough to inject drugs. There seems to be zero good reason for the use of this.

A paramedic isn’t going anywhere near a person waving a gun or a knife to inject them. This is only for people who are already restrained.

Sounds like the worst idea ever. Hope these practices will stay in the US only.

Also happens in Canada (https://communityedition.ca/paramedics-in-wr-will-soon-admin...), they administer it for pretty much the same reason as in the US. And Australia.

Seems more like these are narcostates with excess inventory.

Imagine landing that government contract. Imagine approving that government contract. Think about who these people are. Use your noggin.

At least they say that ketamine must be approved by a physician first. Also a bit weird that I can’t find any other articles saying this. Maybe I am searching the wrong thing

First I've ever heard of this and I'm stunned. Who are they trying to arrest? The Incredible Hulk?

Anyone high on meth is pretty much the hulk.

A taser is basically ineffective when used on somebody high on PCP. If they're violent enough, you basically either need a tranq dart or a gun.

Meth is a problem everywhere yet cops still manage to apprehend suspects without anyone dying of a drug induced heart attack in the process.

And I swim all the time without drowning, yet swimmers drown all the time. So what?

This isn't a software function, there are thousands of factors involved and a cop is walking in knowing a handful. I don't think you're being realistic.

Set aside the ethics, legality, and saneness of doping an arrestee for a moment. Anyone know if this impacts the arrested person's 5th amendment rights?

Once you administer a mind altering drug against that person's will, any and all statements made by that person ought to be out of bounds for using against them at trial.

Or suppose they start acting out after they're injected, that probably shouldn't be considered resisting arrest/assault/etc.

I was going to ask the same question. After this injection, is there a minimal time before you can spontaneously decide to make a confession without a lawyer?

This is happening in China right?

USA

I presume OP was being sarcastic.

Drugging your suspects makes sense. It's hard to justify injuring someone before they're proven guilty. Traditional methods like tasers and pepper spray tend to leave evidence thats too obvious to the courts.

What worries me most about this is that ketamine on its own is psychoactive to a degree where it can cause hallucinations. I believe it is usually given in order to minimize pain, alongside a real sedative like midazolam before narcosis. By itself, it is really more fuzzy than sedating.

Ever seen someone come out of narcosis? They talk a lot of stupid things.

That makes me wonder, could they use a confession by someone they pumped full of ketamine an hour prior?

Yes. I did not want to claim this but it was my first thought.

To use a powerful animal tranquilizer on a human being just to make some cops' job "easier" is about the most abhorrent, sickly thing I have heard in years. I don't want to read any more of this.

To think of all the complications in a person's body from experiencing a drug that puts your conscience in a literally black hole (K-hole) is just sick. It's wrong.

> powerful animal tranquilizer on a human being just to make some cops' job "easier"

You’re waxing hyperbolic. It’s a sedative drug used in normal human clinical practice, and in many settings is preferable because it has -fewer- risks of complications than other sedatives. And while I’m highly critical of it’s being used without strict medical protocol, I’ve worked psych ED enough to understand that there are occasionally absolutely, 100% ridiculously “agitated” patients that are going to have to be brought in, and will not do so without large amounts of physical force - something that is also prone to unfortunate complications.

Elijah McClain was not “ridiculously agitated”.

The video shows that police escalated every chance they got.

After receiving a phone call of a “suspicious person” they went from in their car to hands on Elijah in less than 10s.

In a matter of minutes Elijah was on the ground surrounded by a dozen officers.

They’re saying “was he suspected of anything”, “why are we here”?

They don’t even know why they’re there... but they know that they need to indiscriminately dominate a young black man until he’s puking and crying and ultimately has a heart attack.

Ridiculously agitated, my foot. They (Police) create the situation, then they (Police) prescribe ketamine. These are not the people who should be making these calls. No one should be allowed to have this kind of latitude when dealing with another human.

> They don’t even know why they’re there... but they know that they need to indiscriminately dominate a young black man until he’s puking and crying and ultimately has a heart attack.

And this, for the benefit of folks here who still want to treat these incidents as individual aberrations, is what BLM is about.

Sure, police can be good or bad, sometimes make mistakes, etc... But POLICING, as it is practiced in this country, is a horrifying disaster. And at this point it seems almost completely beyond rescue. We need new cops, new practices, new laws, new equipment, new training. I don't see how you "reform" a culture like that.

> I don't see how you "reform" a culture like that.

You do it through hard work on real reform at the local level, something that BLM (the organization) isn't really interested in. I don't agree with everything but the ideas outlined here https://www.joincampaignzero.org are a good start. Some communities are in much worse situation than others and I think new leadership is urgently needed in many of these places (i.e., vote for change).

The rhetoric that you are using is supremely dangerous. Look what is going on in Portland as the police and local political leadership have withdrawn from the basic goal of public safety and ensuring a peaceful, civil community. It is devolving into warring tribes. It is actually astonishing to me that it hasn't escalated further than it has but I see that this weekend things have changed a bit as some new tribes arrived resulting in brawls/skirmishes/fighting between the tribes as opposed to with police.

To advocate or even suggest that policing, as a system, is irredeemably flawed and can't be reformed is to actively invite in chaos and civil unrest. Instead of a civil police force you will end up with an ad-hoc collection of private security, thugs, violent gangs, protection rackets, and so on. Due process will not exist and whatever problems you attribute to the current system will be much, much worse in this new "system".

> You do it through hard work on real reform at the local level, something that BLM (the organization) isn't really interested in.

But aren't you making the same type of over-generalization as the comment you are replying to?

I think there are many within the BLM movement who are working towards thoughtful change at the local level within their respective communities. But just like any large organization, the most extreme viewpoints tend to get the most attention, and those within the organization with the loudest voices tend to be the ones who push for the more extreme agendas.

I think it's important to keep in mind that any large organization is made up of individual people who each have their own opinions, motivations and goals, and often times those may be in conflict with the broader messaging of the group.

Your last paragraph really lost me though. I get it that you are addressing the most extreme version of the original post, but for me personally that didn't seem very constructive and I didn't find the appeals to fear mongering very convincing either.

> Instead of a civil police force you will end up with an ad-hoc collection of private security, thugs, violent gangs, protection rackets, and so on

Uh... I don't think that's what I said, at all. I said we need new cops and a new law enforcement organization, because the old one is polluted beyond redemption.

Perhaps I assumed a bit too much. You did indeed suggest that everything had to be replaced as opposed to discarded. I don't see how that is practical in the real world though.

I still would argue that your generalization that all policing is broken is very dangerous rhetoric and I don't think it is true). Civil society exists in part because of a tacit assumption that the police are always there to "police". At some level we agree to be policed. The non-police outnumber the police so there has to be some basic agreement that people will behave for it to all work.

If you convince everyone that the police as a whole are irredeemably bad/evil/racist etc. you've destroyed that tacit agreement and that civil society breaks down. We are seeing glimpses of that in the places where politicians and DAs have decided to put a pause on basic policing. A lot of people are discovering they don't have to behave.

The reason they do that is the policing doctrine changed.

Escalation of force to compliance.

They are literally trained to do that.

The fact that ketamine is also used by veterinarians is unremarkable. Almost every common human antibiotic is also used for fish; are broad-spectrum antibiotics “fish drugs”?

Ketamine is routinely used by paramedics, I think more routinely in Western Europe than in North America.

The real question is whether it is appropriate for police to request the use of sedatives while effecting an arrest; and you could argue in some cases that it is entirely appropriate even if your only priority is the wellbeing of the arrestee.

> To use a powerful animal tranquilizer on a human being just to make some cops' job "easier" is about the most abhorrent, sickly thing I have heard in years. I don't want to read any more of this.

I used to drink. Heavily. Enough where I would lose control and neighbors would call 911 because they were concerned. I was removed from my home and handcuffed and brought to the ER more than once. A couple times I went smoothly, but a few times I fought back, hard. One time I was told it took 5 people to subdue me and I kicked an ambulance driver in the head. Another time I fought so hard against the handcuffs that I have permanent nerve damage in my right wrist. I also have shoulder problems that may have stemmed from being restrained by police.

I would’ve rather been ketamined than kick an ambulance driver in the head or have nerve/physical damage to my body. If you’ve never completely lost control of yourself and fought against multiple people, you have no idea what they’re dealing with. Once I got to the ER, they dosed me with haloperidol anyways shrug Might as well have been ketamine when I was being detained.

I hate cops, but I think ketamine could potentially help in some situations where someone has lost their goddamn mind and is fighting back hard.

Edit: This all happened in the 3rd Precinct of Minneapolis, famous for murdering George Floyd

Ketamine is one of the most used human sedatives. It's also available by prescription (esketamine) and I know someone who used it under medical supervision.

This use is also medical, to try to help calm people who have major drug overdoses and save their lives. As with all things medical, sometimes things go wrong. It's not clear to me that the ketamine had anything to do with the death, nor does the article even make that case. Cardiac arrest is the literal opposite of what one would expect of someone dying of too much ketamine.

Instead, it talks about police training... even though medical professionals are the ones who inject this on site. There's a reasonable call for medical standards and study, but not a whole lot else.

Policemen do one of the toughest jobs in society, especially in places where crime is high. Society owes them a great debt for enforcing the law because there are some hard criminals out there who would run amok if a weak and ineffective police force were the norm.

Armchair criticism of the police with zero consideration for their point of view is not helpful to anyone, most of all victims of crimes.

Well said.

They do, and this is precisely why we must prosecute the bad policemen with extreme rigor. We allow them to use lethal force against our fellow people on the condition they do so only as a last resort and in order to protect society.

We should not forget that condition.

Definitely but the conversation is about the use of ketamine, not prosecution of bad policemen, which everyone universally condemns.

If the police are acting like Judge Dredd and murdering people then a weak and ineffective police force is exactly what you have.

Is there some empirical metric where this can be demonstrated as true?

Wait... The police injected a ketamin? Does he have a medical license? Did they informed the patient... I mean suspect and got a consent? This is a whole new level of dystopia. How could this be legal?

No. The paramedics gave it. The article is (I think intentionally) misleading.

Answer me this...if an EMT is able to administer ketamine via injection to an "out of control" "suspect" at a "crime scene", lethal dose or not, why on earth couldn't the police officers, who are armed, protected, and highly skilled in restraining individuals, subdue the subject with handcuffs and or leg restraints? Perhaps some pepper spray, or a net gun that renders them to the ground unable to freely move about?

> 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.

From the very beginning this story makes no sense. Suspicious is not a crime.

An earlier story makes things seem even worse:

> While McClain was making his trip to the store, someone had called 911 to report a suspicious person. Referring to McClain, the caller described him wearing a mask said he looked "sketchy" but added that "he might be a good person or a bad person." When asked, the caller told the operator that there were no weapons and that no one was in danger. The operator advised him that officers were on their way to check it out.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/happened-elijah-mcclain-protests-b...

Wearing a ski mask in public during the summer, although odd, is not a crime, either.

> Wearing a ski mask in public during the summer, although odd, is not a crime, either.

I don't know much at all about the McClain case, but your statement seems to have a flawed assumption that a crime is required before police can legitimately get involved. Policing doesn't only occur after a crime is committed. A big part of policing is about deterrence: being visible, talking with people in the community, investigating suspicious activity, double-checking that nothing is wrong, etc.

From the story I linked:

> When officers Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema stopped Elijah McClain on his way home, one telling him that he was "being suspicious," according to police body camera video. McClain responded, "I have a right to go where I am going."

> The officers immediately grabbed McClain, who repeatedly told them to let him go.

This has nothing to do with being visible, talking with the community, investigating suspicious activity, or double-checking that nothing is wrong.

I wasn't responding to the specifics of that case. I was responding to the implied assertion that a crime is required before police interaction is justified, which is wrong. I tried to make that clear but apparently I wasn't clear enough.

Using that flawed assumption to argue that the police did something wrong in the McClain case is just noise. It distracts from understanding the facts of the matter.

Tangentially related, ketamine was what they dosed the kids stuck in the cave with prior to dragging them out last year.

Fascinating. The end of the CNN article about this is incredible:

> Richard Harris, the Australian anesthesiologist, was one of only two cave-diving anesthesiologists in the world. "I didn't think it would work at all," Harris told National Geographic. "I expected the first two kids to drown and then we'd have to do something different. I put their odds of survival at zero."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/health/thailand-boys-cave-ket...

In most of these police death stories, there's at least a _tiny bit_ of a rationale for the police behavior.

In the case of Elijah McClain there's absolutely nothing I've seen or read in reliable news sources that indicates the police had any reason to be forceful with him or even to arrest him. It is simply outrageous.

Holy smokes. This shouldn't happen. Ketamine is also an amnesiac, which means this could be used to erase the memory of your violent arrest and abuse by police.

I've seen a bouncer inject something into a guy thrown out of a bar in Seattle, many years back. Not sure if its used by bouncers too.

The article is misleading. It's framed as if police officers are giving Ketamine when in fact paramedics (medical personnel) are.

What happened to the paramedics in these cases? The overdoses described seem like serious malpractice.

The saddest part about cases like this is that they in no way surprise me anymore.

So can stuff you say after administering ketamin used in court against you?

I'm an anesthesiologist.

This is insane.

what and why? Specifically, what and why is insane and how is being an anesthesiologist relevant?

Note, I don't think police should inject anyone with a substance (personally, I'd rather get shot with a bullet than involuntarily shot with an anesthetic), but how is being an anesthesiologist relevant?

The question: "should cops direct paramedic to administer K shots" is an ethics, or a religious, question. Not a medical one. Certainly relevant medical questions can inform the debate; questions such as "how to determine safe and effective dosage of an anesthetic in field situations" "What does the person experience when involuntarily subjected to this drug?".

A very important medical question can be: "How lethal is this technique?" So that the technique's lethality can be properly classified for street use.

Subjecting the person to mortal danger is not anesthesiology. It's ethics, law, and religion.

> how is being an anesthesiologist relevant?

Uhhhh anesthesiologists are experts in administratering sedatives to humans safely. The connection here seems pretty obvious to me...

If you re-read my comment, you'll see that "administrating sedatives to humans safely" is specifically what I consider irrelevant.

You comment is pendatic and assumed that OP is commenting specifically on the ethics of this practice. OP could just be commenting on the safety of the practice, where their expertise is highly relavent.

Wow, he went out in a k-hole.

Interesting and scary experience.

Primum non nocere

Disclaimer: There is so much that can go wrong administering drugs without somebody's medical background (like just getting the weight right in this case), random variables (say ate grapefruit beforehand), or just sheer dumb misfortune. Then there is the dystopian nature of yet another layer to diffuse responsibility. This is tragic, and I hope doesn't set precedent.

All that out of the way. Why is this on here? This seems to be just run of political muckracking to reinforce the narrative of "we live in an oppressive police state". Granted, I think society can do much better. This is ABC news, and I can say with a high level of confidence, we are very likely not getting the full picture here. I'm not one to normal point out guidelines, buts here we go:

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This uptick in political content is really not doing this community a service.

This strikes me as falling into the 'interesting new phenomenon' category.

Policemen without any medical training are injecting and murdering people with drugs.

This is a disturbing (and new) phenomenon. At least for someone outside the US.

That is false, police are not injecting people with Ketamine. As the article says, paramedics are.

This is technically true and misses the point. Police are ordering paramedics to inject it.

(edit: to be clear, I am saying that yes, ordering somebody else to do it is morally equivalent to doing it yourself... if it's wrong to do it yourself, it's just as wrong to order somebody else to do it)

Pointing out that the police aren't injecting it themselves is like pointing out that [insert name of murderous dictator here] didn't actually kill anybody with their own hands.

There is a huge difference between police injecting it and police ordering trained paramedics to inject it. The comment I was responding to was implying that it was dangerous for police to administer Ketamine because they are not trained, and I was saying that is not an issue since they are not the ones administering it.

I don't think police should be ordering EMS to administer Ketamine, but even if they are that is far different from doing it themselves.

The decision of whether or not to administer any drug should always be in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, and if that decision is not made by the person receiving the drug it should be made by somebody sufficiently detached from the situation so that they can make a good clinical decision as to how to medically treat the person for a condition they are suffering from. A cop who has someone in a chokehold is not sufficiently detached from the situation.

You cannot say “give them ketamine” and just leave the dose up to the paramedic and call it safe.

Police cannot "order" a paramedic to do anything to a patient. They can phrase it as an order, and the paramedic _should_ tell them to get stuffed, but that doesn't always happen (clearly...)

Ordering a paramedic is as criminal as doing it themselves. "Suggesting" it might be fine if the paramedics are free to say "no", but ordering using medication by non-doctors is criminal behaviour over here...

There are many instances of police officers arresting paramedics, nurses and firefighters for ridiculous reasons while they are trying to do their jobs as first responders. That includes refusing to break the law, such as when a nurse knows performing a procedure without a court order is assault.

The administration of medically unnecessary ketamine does not belong in the toolbox of things that the police request, or more realistically "order". It is irresponsible to assume police will defer to judgement of professionals with training and a code of ethics, when they are solely focused on making a person comply.

There are enough terrible public policy decisions where people later claim "we didn't know". People are saying now this is a recipe for abuses and unnecessary deaths.

I know they are not personally injecting the drugs themselves.

But if they are requesting, ordering and even determining dosages is completely disturbing and inappropriate.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure where you're getting that information. Ketamine is administered in pre-hospital settings only by paramedics. Police cannot give it nor can they order medics to do so.

I don't think it's helpful to assume the police were racist.

Racism is a system. The police are (a major) part of that system.

Absolutely true. However, there is not much assuming being done. The absolutely stark, clear, and unassailable fact that many police in the US are violent, racist thugs has been repeatedly shoved into my face over the last few months. Not all of them are, by any means. But even the good cops are part of a system that enables and rewards racist, thuggish behavior.

Well I can't argue with that since you said 'many' police in a country of 350+ million people. But what is many? 5? 100? 1000? It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen. If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it. Business as usual.

If it happens once that's once too many.

This is a nonsense argument. Police in the United States kill civilians at a rate more that 3x the rate of the next first world nation. In almost all cases of police acting with bias, those same officers are surrounded by other officers who do nothing. All of these bystanding officers are guilty of the same crime. These cases are just the ones that are brought to the national attention there are many more that are not. In very many of these cases several police body cameras just stopped working or were not on.

"in reality, things like this almost never happen" I am willing to bet your life experience is very different than those of minorities.

" If the guy had pulled out a gun and shot the cops in the head, we wouldn't have heard a thing about it" Not sure what you base this on, I feel like to could be based on nothing but the narrative you are attempting spin. Is your argument that police should be more aggressive based on what could happen? Should police just gun everyone down because they may have a gun and pull it out and shoot them in the head?

In this country, police have godlike life or death power, every instance of police killings should be heavily scrutinized by neutral parties and stringent protocols put in place to prevent it with harsh criminal penalties for those that dont follow the rules. How you can just shrug and accept any cases of police brutality is beyond me.

1. I am black. 2. There is no police brutality in my area, or crime for that matter. 3. I don't shrug and accept police brutality, those are your words. 4. I am not trying to spin a narrative, merely point out a narrative that is being spun by the media that directs attention away from actual solutions in favor of self-dealing sensationalism.

Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made.

What area is that? Can you link to some stats.

There are very few areas on the United States with no crime...

"Cops are humans. It is illogical to assume that there will be no mistakes made." They are but when they make mistakes people die or are sent to jail for decades or are stripped of their property. To give people this much power and shrug and say its a mistake is not acceptable. Very often these same cops have many / dozens of complaints against them and they still continue to act with impunity because they know that they are not going to be punished. A mistake is a mistake, 10 / 15 mistakes in and it is a pattern, extrapolated out over tens of thousands of officers and it is a systematic problem.

>It's easy to pick these instances and assign blame retrospectively when in reality, things like this almost never happen.

In reality USA has 3-10x the number of police shootings per capita than a random western country (heck, worse than many developing countries of even dictatorships).

So, yeah, the metrics are off.

If your counter-argument is "yeah, but US has more crime too", then maybe think long and hard if your whole legal system, approach to crime, society goals, etc, are justified then....

“Good” cops regularly stonewall investigations into bad cops, and vote for police unions that will do everything in their power to literally allow bad cops to get away with murder.

To suggest it isn't useful suggests it doesn't have massive amounts of explanatory power (which it does)

I've googled up the bodycam videos of the incident [0]. I think, the police started acting the way they did, because the suspect didn't stop when the police clearly asked him to do so, and pushed one of the officers when they grabbed him.

It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8

>It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently.

What about if the white person in the same situation wasn't even asked to stop in the first place?

It's not just about "how police treats blacks vs whites who refuse to stop" but also about "how often police asks blacks vs whites to stop".

That would be fair if you could detangle if from specific suspicious behavioral patterns. Like wearing a mask (pre-pandemic) in a neighborhood where robberies by mask-wearing perpetrators are common.

Is it illegal to wear a mask? If the answer is no then the police have no right to stop him for wearing a mask. Police having the leeway to determine what is suspicious vs having to obey the law is what leads to thousands of minorities being stopped, roughed up and arrested for resisting arrest. If you are a minority and do nothing wrong, how many stops for being black would it take before you became a little defensive or frustrated? Imagine your life being constantly interrupted by uniform wearing people with a track record of killing people with your complexion.

Elijah was wearing headphones. Since you’ve seen the video, how long from the moment the police are out of their cars before they put their hands on Elijah?

Would you put your hands on someone Who showed no physical resistance in that amount of time?

The Police escalate quickly, and then, since the situation has escalated, feel justified in their response, which killed Elijah. They killed Elijah.

Well, how many people wearing masks (pre-pandemic) would be trying to avoid getting identified while committing a robbery? How many people pushing the officer away would be trying to attack them next? Does police have a way of knowing in advance, whether this exact mask-wearing arrest-resisting individual is actually a threat?

I don't think it is entirely fair to put 100% of the blame on the police. A much healthier solution would be to try de-escalating general tensions between the police and the population.

They don’t have a way of knowing! Exactly!

This is why we shouldn’t be employing people whose job it is to snatch people they don’t know anything about, who just assume you’re a threat until YOU PROVE that you’re innocent.

"I don't think it is entirely fair to put 100% of the blame on the police. A much healthier solution would be to try de-escalating general tensions between the police and the population." Right, its not the fault of the armed people with godlike power to kill, arrest and detain to their hearts content based on nothing but a feeling or bias. Its the fault of the people being harassed and killed for not properly genuflecting before the the ones killing them. I am sure your user name is meant to be in jest but I am having a hard time thinking you are not just a human bot in a call center that is bad at their job.

Well, the day-to-day job of these armed people is to deal with other violent, and often armed people, before they go out on the general public.

Besides, there are quite a few cities that have considerably limited the police power by now. Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland for example. The safety of regular law-abiding people has considerably dropped. Murders are up, gun sales are up, almost every type of violent crime is up.

If you don't like police, go ahead, move to one of these cities. Or at least, search for some videos from them on DuckDuckGo.

I find it very disheartening and hypocritical to hear anti-police rhetoric from people living in 7-figure-property neighborhoods, completely shielded from the problems that the police is supposed to solve.

And no, I am not a human bot in a call center, I happen to be a Canadian that is actually satisfied with the way RCMP works here. And I don't understand why our southern neighbors would rather shoot themselves in their feet and have their cities burnt, than try to copy some techniques that do make police more efficient up here.

I'm not a person living in a 7 figure property neighborhood, and the cops definitly make this worse.

If you want to know about how great the RCMP, you should read how nice they are to help local police departments to give free one-way tours into the forest at night in the winter to minorities, by very helpfully shielding them from the evil bureaucrats.

Based on OP's arguments, I am not so sure he sees this as a bad thing.

I am sure you are satisfied, your police force kills civilians at a rate 1/3 that of the US. What techniques work there that we are ignoring? Does your police force use de-escalation? Majority of ours does not.

Perhaps the problems that the police are meant to solve are in part caused by the police? If I was always treated as a suspect after a while I may start to become resentful. If I was a minority representing 13% of the general population but represented 38% of the prison population I may start to become resentful and argue that there is a problem. Your argument that just because people live in peaceful 7-figure neighborhoods they should be grateful to the police for suppressing the riff raff, poor and minorities is very grating, classist and very much racist.

The NYPD has a budget of $10 billion dollars, and the only limits imposed on it were to please stop beating, murdering, framing and raping people. If those limits are too stringent I am not really sure where to go from here.

Let me give you some anecdotes.

I have been ticketed for speeding on both sides of the border. RCMP makes is extremely professional. The whole conversation almost sounds like getting a bill from a roofer guy, explaining how to pay it and why you should check your roof more often. U.S. cops have a lot more of the "Ha-ha, now you're mine, bastard" attitude. I was extremely polite and complying both times.

Police often camps out in public events, like car shows, building trust with people. Silly things like giving stickers to kids and letting them climb on police ATVs for pictures, or officers showing off the tech in their cars to car enthusiasts.

When it comes to controversial topics, optics is everything. When a couple of student protestors blocked a major train line protesting against an oil pipeline, and commuters got really pissed off, since they couldn't get to their workplaces, the officer arresting them looked like a 60+ year old grandma with the "stop fooling around, kids" look. Nobody got hurt and the media got zero chance to blow it to any kind of a scandal.

"U.S. cops have a lot more of the "Ha-ha, now you're mine, bastard" attitude." I am not sure how this helps your argument. You are saying that right off the bat the cops were aggressive for no reason and you were polite. How is that situation any ones fault except the cops?

Just to give some local context about Portland. We're getting some reforms pushed through, and it's now very likely the Mayor will lose his runoff election to someone that has promised far more substantial reforms. That said, the police continue to behave in unaccountable ways including blatantly violating the law on camera. This is going to be a very prolonged fight for reform.

Explaining how the US got to this state is a long discussion, but it helps to understand the origin of the police here in the south was to catch escaping slaves, and in the north was to keep "undesirables" out of wealthy neighborhoods. In more recent times politicians have used the War On Crime rhetoric to motivate people out of fear to vote for them, even though actual violent crime has been steadily falling.

The Canadian approach to police violence is the starlight tour -- rather than bringing someone to jail, drop them off in the middle of nowhere to freeze overnight.

Some parts of the US could take this approach, but there's a lot of places in the US that are either too nice out or there's too many fast food restaurants/Starbucks to take shelter in

Dude, I hit a cop with my car one time and I didn't get so much as stopped. So yeah. It's different.

May you share some details on that, because, with all due respect, it sounds unrealistic. Unless you've omitted some big piece of the puzzle.

Sure, I don't mind; it was something like 15 years ago anyway, and obviously didn't amount to anything in the first place.

Baltimore PD officers wear black uniforms. One night one of them was standing in the middle of the street I was driving down, and there weren't enough streetlights in that section. I was doing something like 40 in a 30, and the first thing I knew that anything was wrong was when I heard a loud thump from my left side. Looking in the wing mirror, I could see the guy in the light of the upcoming streetlight, where the one I'd last passed was too far back to show him.

So I pulled over and got out, because of course I did; I saw no personal benefit in complicating my upcoming arrest with a chase. Imagine my surprise when, on seeing my white skin, short hair, and slacks-and-button-down professional attire, he waved me off and went back to what he'd been doing!

In retrospect, I have to figure the mirror clipped something on his belt, rather than the car striking his actual person. But the fact remains that, had I not been white or not been easily "read" as an "upstanding citizen" type, I'd have been in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Especially since, being as I was on my way home from a visit to my connection, I had a quarter ounce of pot in my left front trouser pocket. Remember, this was back before decriminalization, more than a decade before dispensaries even existed in this town; not only that, but my guy hadn't had any baggies that night, so he just gave me the smaller portions he got from his own guy, who mostly did street work. So it would've been charged as possession with intent, and that's a felony.

The time I hit a cop with my car while I was carrying wasn't a major reason why I quit smoking that shit entirely a couple of years later, but never having another few seconds of that kind of sheer terror was not absent from the list of reasons why I was glad when I did quit.

Just imagine if I were a black man, though. That cop could have shot me dead on the spot and who'd have said a word? I mean, I so obviously would've had it coming, a drug dealer doing drug dealer crimes and, if that weren't enough, I swerved my car to try to murder a police officer in the middle of it. Probably had a gun in my back pocket, or in the glovebox at least. Who would dare blame an officer of the law for doing what he had to do in the face of an obviously murderous criminal like that?

...is what white people would mostly say. But that's the thing. I had that moment of terror because I was acting like a damn fool - I could drive more carefully and just quit buying pot, and I did. People of color can't "live more carefully", or "just quit" having their skin. And there is a night in my past that, if I had skin of a similar shade to theirs, it'd be through bars that I saw the next sunrise - if I had lived to see it at all.

I don't blame you for saying it sounds unrealistic. I'd probably likewise have some trouble taking a story like that seriously on its face, except that I happened to live it, and a lot of other wild stories too. But there are far more stories that I haven't lived, and some of them sound as wild to me as the one I've just told sounds to you. That's how life is, though. The world is far wilder than any one of us, with our individual and limited perspective, ever gets to see. If we want to understand how things really work in the places and times and lives that we don't get to see, we have to listen to the stories people tell us who do see those things - listen, and not assume that they must be lying, any more than you would assume I had been lying to you just now.

If you take anything away from this conversation, I hope you'll make it that.

Thanks for sharing your story. I truly wonder through, how much was it about your skin color vs.:

1. The professional attire and the fact that you pulled over and apologized.

2. The cop being busy with something else that's more important than busting a random pothead.

I didn't apologize! Dude was sixty feet away still standing in the street when I got out of the car, I didn't say anything and neither did he. He looked me once over, waved me off, and forgot me.

And that's just my point. Based entirely on how I looked, he judged the incident to have been a harmless accident and not worth pursuing, despite that I had a felony charge worth of dope in my front pocket at the time. Pretty important, if you get to make that bust! But he never had any idea of the chance that passed him by, because, to him, I looked like somebody who wouldn't.

What I'm saying is, think for a minute about how that could've played out differently if, in that cop's eyes, I'd have looked a different way.

>So I pulled over and got out, because of course I did; I saw no personal benefit in complicating my upcoming arrest with a chase.

>not been easily "read" as an "upstanding citizen" type, I'd have been in a hell of a lot of trouble.

This may have had more to do with with him waving you off than anything else. The type of people police are purportedly there to handle are not those who would do what you did. If this is Baltimore we're talking about, he may be tuned to a much more violent type of normal criminal encounter. Keep in mind that given the limited resources of the judicial system, they are better spent on more disruptive crimes to the social fabric.

Perspective is important in these things. Those that come to you to be dealt with are practically priority zero. They know they screwed up, and as long as you (the officer) is okay, then all's good. They'll sort themselves out.

It's the ones that don't the police are out and willing to do paperwork for.

Oh? And suppose he'd assumed when I got out of the car that I was going for a gun? They tell you these days that you do not ever get out of the car during a traffic stop unless instructed, and while this wasn't precisely a traffic stop, it wasn't all that far off - and I was far too frightened to be thinking about being careful with my hands. Or even to be thinking, really; I knew I was about to go to jail, and all I could fit in my mind beyond that was, I had better not try to make things even worse.

That officer made the judgment he did in a matter of seconds; as I noted in another comment here, I didn't have time to speak, or to take so much as a step toward the officer, before he waved me off - which was just as well in retrospect; God alone knows what I'd have said. But if any one aspect of the gestalt I presented had in any way varied from "harmless", he might well have drawn on me, and if he hadn't done that then he'd for damn sure have come over to see whether I was drunk or high or whatever the hell. And then he would have found my dope, and I would have gone to jail that night.

None of that would have happened because I was actually dangerous! He wasn't wrong to read me the way he did. But I was still extremely lucky that he did read me right. I could very easily have been less fortunate. And given everything I've seen in twenty years living in this town, I am very sure that the vast bulk of my good fortune that night lay in the accident of my having light skin.

Freddie Gray could talk about that, I think, if he were still alive to talk about anything. The federal consent decree that followed his death did not come about in a vacuum. And it is not in a vacuum that BPD officers interact with other citizens - both like and unlike myself - of this city.

>That officer made the judgment he did in a matter of seconds; as I noted in another comment here, I didn't have time to speak, or to take so much as a step toward the officer, before he waved me off - which was just as well in retrospect; God alone knows what I'd have said. But if any one aspect of the gestalt I presented had in any way varied from "harmless", he might well have drawn on me, and if he hadn't done that then he'd for damn sure have come over to see whether I was drunk or high or whatever the hell. And then he would have found my dope, and I would have gone to jail that night.

I don't see that as a "Thank God I'm White" outcome half as much as a "Thank God, he has something better to do!"

He could have been: -Covering the exits of a hiding place of a known dangerous offender -recon -signaling someone or waiting for a signal from someone on the down low -waiting on an informant -up to no good in a part of town he shouldn't even have been on the beat in, and really not looking to explain why he was even there to make an arrest. -on some other Op

To assume it was simply because you were white with no other data is really quite the knee jerk. Everything for a reason, and especially so with cops; a lone cop to boot.

Heck, you don't know. He might have been glad even if you were of a much darker complexion to see a brotha dressed for the office, pulling over and making every attempt to make himself easier to deal with rather than the alternative of a brotha in a trench coat/baggy clothes with a hand in his...oh shit!

Street wisdom is a thing. Supposedly, the better cops try to cultivate it amongst their numbers.

I get it's in vogue to assume that everyone is out to curbstomp the melanin enriched, but damn man. Cut the guy some slack. I mean he waved you off. Now I wish more cops extended the favor back, but, that's how it goes. Sometimes you get the ticket, sometimes you get let off the hook.

Yeah, I mean, that all sounds perfectly reasonable in a vacuum. But like I said before, none of this happens in a vacuum.

So what you're really doing here is, you're asking me to choose which to give greater credence. On the one hand, your reasonable-sounding thoughts in a vacuum about some purely theoretical interaction of cop and "brotha" (really?)

On the other, my so far twenty years of living in the city of Baltimore. Granted, as as a white man. But nonetheless, with eyes, ears, acquaintances across pretty much the whole spectrum of skin tones - two decades living in a busy city, you have time to meet a lot of people, especially when you do what most white people in this town don't do and use public transit a lot - and a subscription to the Sun paper. Plus, on top of my own experience and that of other people who've shared theirs with me, the outcome of the recent DOJ investigation, which accurately found "widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory policing in the city" [1] and that "...the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) had engaged in a pattern and practice of conduct that violates the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and certain provisions of federal statutory law." [2]

So, left to weigh all of that in one hand, and your vacuous theorizing in the other...look, I get that you're coming at this in good faith, and I respect that. But do you really need me to explain in detail how and why this effort falls so far short of the mark?

You're arguing essentially that Baltimore cops deserve the benefit of the doubt on questions of racial bias in policing. As I said, in a vacuum, sure, that seems reasonable. But, though I'm sure it's as tiresome to hear it repeated as it is to have to say it over and over again, none of this stuff happens in a vacuum. And the argument you've made is totally unable to survive outside one, because even the most cursory look at the recent history of policing in Baltimore is enough to see that the benefit of the doubt is in no way here deserved.

Even under the Trump administration, the US Department of Justice doesn't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt. The Baltimore Sun journalists who follow, investigate, and report on the actions of police in this city, they don't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt. [3] The folks I've known and whose stories I've heard in this town, for whom grossly excessive violence and abuse of power on the part of police have been a regular feature of life in their communities, they don't give Baltimore cops the benefit of the doubt, either. In light of all that, why should I? Why should anyone?

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime...

[2] https://consentdecree.baltimorecity.gov/

[3] https://news.baltimoresun.com/cops-and-robbers/part-one/ https://news.baltimoresun.com/cops-and-robbers/part-two/ https://news.baltimoresun.com/cops-and-robbers/part-three/

I wasn’t aware that refusing one police instruction was grounds for summary execution.

Ok what about when they took a selfie at the site of the incident, essentially mocking Elijiah's McClain's death?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-...

> It would be fair to call it racism, if there was another instance of a white suspect acting the same way, and getting treated differently.

That comment really didn't age well, did it? I think just about anyone can see what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse and recognize that racism was a factor in the disparate treatment.

By this point we don't have to assume it.

And it's not even up to the individual, racism is systemic in police, part of their everyday talk, their (real, not lip service) training discussions, their protocols, etc.

Okay. So what's your alternate theory for why Elijah McClain was murdered?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24252167.

I'm confused. The police aren't administering the drug, EMS is. Can't you just solve this by telling EMS not to administer it unless they feel it's needed?

It's not a life-saving drug, it's literally never needed. Guy was 140 lbs. There's not a 140 lb man I couldn't subdue myself, probably. And I'm just an out of shape programmer. Why do six cops feel they can't do the same?

They did subdue him: they put him in a chokehold, with enough pressure to stop his heart.

Because when the feedback loops on his 140lb musculature are blocked and he will keep going to the point of permanent damage... and when his ability to feel pain is decreased... and there's a very real concern for hyperthermia, rhabdomyolysis with an extended struggle, dysrhythmia, then maybe ketamine becomes the better option.

That being said, ketamine should be an EMS decision to minimize risk to patient and others, not "at LE direction".

So cops are doctors now? Or EMS even? Neither have any real medical training, at all. No offense meant, EMS grind for little money, but they're not medical doctors.

Narcan I was already uneasy about, but it saved real lives in obvious situations. This is absolute lunacy.

Do you have any idea how many medical procedures cops are trained on? It’s a lot. They aren’t doctors but they are required to assist medically and stabilize until EMT arrives.

Specifically no, but I do know they are trained. That said, training is just that. If you see X, do Y. And sure, net, it's a positive thing. But again, they aren't medical doctors. It's not always IF THEN. Oftentimes it's IF AND NOT THEN.

Either way, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of arguing life saving procedures. My entire point is that we should not be injecting people with non emergency drugs like Ketamine.

Actually, we should be giving patients. Ketamine is an extremely safe drug for paramedics to give for the safety of the patient and those around them. Especially in cases of excited delerium where the person may actually die because of it. In these cases ketamine is absolutely an emergency drug.

> My entire point is that we should not be injecting people with non emergency drugs like Ketamine.

Instead your argument seems to be that we should be subjecting people to significant risk from rhabdo, hyperthermia, which to be clear can be entirely significant.

It’s not about the training of police, it’s about the track record of police misconduct and coverups. Any additional tool in the tool belt of police to commit aggression is worrisome.

Excited delirium is a really, really sketchy diagnosis. There's certainly no good clinical evidence to suggest that ketamine is an effective treatment.

The guy with the gun who gets to murder with impunity said to do it.

This is what happens when medical personnel refuse illegal police orders:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_University_of_Utah_Hospit...

Graphic video of police abusing the nurse who refused:

https://youtu.be/ihQ1-LQOkns

Any time you think you have a simple solution to a problem and your explanation to fix things starts with “just”, stop and think for a moment that perhaps someone else has already thought up your simple solution.

They don't administer it unless it meets all criteria in their protocols. Something like administering Ketamine would be under a standing order meaning that the paramedics would not need to consult with medical control prior to administration. There would need to be a post-call consultation with medical control to document it and explain why it was given in addition to everything being documented in the patient care report given to hospital staff at the time of transfer of patient care.

The amount of fuckery American police get away with frankly really amazes me. These are humans, not animals. How did everything even get to this situation where police think potential criminals can be treated like slaves and random shit injected in their bodies.

I guess most people here have never been in public safety or law enforcement.

The number of drug-addled, violent, danger-to-themselves-and-others people encountered in the US is unusually high and increasing.

This is compounded by the inability (right now) of the justice system to either put them into either suitable treatment programs (with mandatory detention, essentially) or incarcerate them (a gradual but steady decline in prison space and willingness to hold and prosecute them - this is a real problem).

When you have someone crazed out of their mind, hitting/punching, shouting obscenities, spitting and biting at you and others on the street, being polite isn't going to cut it.

Of course it's worthy of debate whether administration of drugs like this are appropriate and desired by the public at large. But defined as a law enforcement tool just like non-lethal weapons, they are (currently) totally legitimate to use to subdue someone who's being violent and a harm to self and others.

The mistake here was the wrong dose, not the principle. Mistakes happen, it's our job to make sure they don't happen normally.

Please don't join the knee-jerk protest against some symbolism that police are using this to "torture" people or commit some atrocity. Especially if you've never even been near someone exhibiting psychotic rage (and who likely just committed property damage or violence against another person). You act based on a symbol - depriving public safety and law enforcement of tool after tool because you see one or two bad examples - but then don't ever have to deal with the consequences of your choices for the rest of the law abiding forces acting to protect you every day.

Violent crime has been on a decades-long decline.

That statistic specifically refers to violent crime. The original poster is referring to mental illness and drug usage.

They are correct that occurrences of mental illness have increased over time: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190315110908.h...

As well as overall drug usage (one way to measure is via overdoses): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db329.htm

Let me start with that first link, because it's a doozy. You said "mental illness have increased over time", but the paper said that _certain_ mental illnesses increased in _young_ Americans. Off that bat, that representation of the facts is not right. But even worse, you are applying this to a discussion about belligerence towards police, and the _types_ of mental illness mentioned by the paper starts with, that's right, depression.

I do not envision depression making a person more likely to lash out in a police confrontation. In the comment chain here, this is also presented in a the-sky-is-falling kind of narrative about the danger of the streets in the US. I'm going to be honest, this is upsetting to me. I was willing to listen to where you're coming from. Is this how police think? I don't like that thought.

If the police kill people, scrutiny should happen. The same is true of doctors, dentists, or any other profession with serious consequences to people's wellbeing.

If you can't handle that scrutiny, change professions.

Look at the bodycam video[1] of this "arrest." Everything that happened to that man was a tragedy, not for any of the reasons you listed. It was a gross misuse of force against a completely innocent person. They treated him like he was subhuman and fabricated a storyline that led to his death.

Even more disgusting, they went back to the site of arrest to take a selfie [2], essentially mocking this dead man.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uI9cBHgCS4 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-...

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