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Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

332 points by seigando 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
> Paramedics were called and injected McClain with ketamine, but they incorrectly estimated his weight, giving him more than 1.5 times the dose he should have received. He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he was only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams. That’s 7.9mg/kg, not nearly enough ketamine to cause cardiac arrest in someone that size. LD50 in humans is at least 5-10x that. Those officers that had him in a chokehold killed him, and are trying to scapegoat the EMS. There is a name for this behavior: a lynching. Erica Marrero, Kyle Dittrich, Jason Rosenblatt, and Jaron Jones, white cops, murdered an unarmed black man. The entirety of the consequences they suffered? They lost their jobs. The police who declined to enforce the law against them are complicit. Abolish the police.
- qchris 6y ago
  I hope I'm not not regurgitating false information (I'm finding it difficult to find a reputable primary source, since there's a lot of clearly pro-ketamine sites), but I was under the impression that one of the reasons that ketamine has been used both in people and in applications like as a horse tranquilizer is that it's safe dosage range is considerably wide, presenting some margin of error over similar drugs. Obviously it's more than he should have been given (and tbh am pretty uncomfortable with it being given here at all), but my decidedly non-expert opinion (and the official autopsy statement that the "ketamine in McClain's blood was at 'tolerable levels' ") is that there's all sorts of red flags about this situation.
  - sneak 6y ago
    3-4mg/kg is more than sufficient for subduing an adult human. 7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring. Injecting a suspect with a drug without medical necessity or consent is a major human rights issue, and you wouldn’t be far off if you called it rape. The whole thing is quite obviously pig lies; they had dogs and tasers on this 140lb black man who they had already had multiple cops choking out. Nothing about their dodge adds up.
    - anon9001 6y ago
      https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml My goodness that's a lot of ketamine. A "strong" recreational dose would be about 1mg/kg. 2.5mg/kg and the person is anesthetized.
    - jdietrich 6y ago
      7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring. Just barely dangerous. You might see a bit of transient respiratory depression, but the risk of respiratory arrest or clinically significant hypoxia is very low even in an out-of-hospital setting. We have case reports of paediatric patients receiving as much as 50mg/kg without significant ill effect. https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-0644(99)80051-1 https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-0644(99)800...
      - sneak 6y ago
        I think perhaps you assume empty stomach, such as in a normal setting. Those doses are puke probability 1.0 range, which is lifethreatening if the person is unconscious and unmonitored. Ketamine doesn’t really depress respiration that much. If the airway is physically obstructed, however, because nobody had their eye on him...
      - GordonS 6y ago
        It's probably quite dangerous in this kind of setting though, where the person has likely already been beaten, tasered and choked.
- pizza 6y ago
  > There is a name for this behavior: a lynching. For those who didn't know, the police culture becomes quite a bit more sickening when you find out that one of the arresting officers, along with 2 other colleagues, posed grinning in a photo mocking their brutality against McClain just days after he died! Across the street from a memorial to him, no less. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-police-officers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-...
- tomcam 6y ago
  > Abolish the police. Sounds cool. I have had some bad experiences with cops. Suppose someone breaks into your house because of your skin color or political leanings and there are no police. What course of action do you recommend? Spoiler alert. You are also heavily armed.
  - bjo590 6y ago
    If someone breaks into your home what do you think police response time will be? 20 minutes? 40 minutes? An attacker can do a lot of damage and run away in that allotted time. The police will just be there to fill out the paper work after the fact. Whatever course of action you take, do something in addition to or besides call the police.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    So it’s not about abolishing the police. “Defund the police”, which I agree is a bad term, is about focusing some of those funds on social programs and only calling the police for true criminal causes. I am definitely not a conservative on most issues, but I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops. Yes I know the statistics about a gun in the home is more likely to be used accidentally or on purpose (suicide/homicide/accidental shooting) against someone in the home.
    - antioink 6y ago
      > I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops. Do you know how absurd this sounds to people in actual civilized countries? Kind of amazing how many of you Americans are living in some Wild West fantasy.
      - klyrs 6y ago
        Othering and belittling pours gas on an already polarized topic. If you can't talk about the issue without going there, then you aren't equipped to change minds. If the [keyboard] is mightier than the [gun], then one must show even more restraint in its employ.
axaxs 6y ago
Why are we injecting people during arrests, which by definition are not yet guilty people? Even if nobody had died, this is absurd.
- burfog 6y ago
  Feel free to propose a method, and we'll all object to that. Stopping an uncooperative person is guaranteed to be upsetting to somebody. That is fundamental to the problem. Every method tried so far has been objected to by squeamish people who refuse to understand. If we let criminals run amok, then we get a failed state, and then armed gangs form to impose their own idea of a justice system. I assure you, those armed gangs will be far more brutal than our fancy westernized police system. So we medicalized the problem. That appeases more people than the cheap standardized billy club. We'll just ignore the needle-stick biohazard problem, because at least it won't look like a replay of Rodney King.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    I agree that all restraint methods are upsetting, but "inject with dissociative drugs" should really be a lot further down the list than "hit with stick". Personally, I favor hitting people with billy clubs, because it leaves evidence of what happened and it requires the police to actually take physical action against another human. Giving cops needles full of magic compliance juice seems less responsible to me. The reason people were upset about Rodney King was because it was brutal and easy to understand. Injecting ketamine is also brutal but it's less visible. I cannot imagine anyone ever getting over the fact that they were restrained by authorities and injected into a k-hole. They won't be visibly harmed in any way, but that will absolutely mess someone up for life.
    - mr_spothawk 6y ago
      > Personally, I favor hitting people with billy clubs, because it leaves evidence of what happened You make a decent argument.
    - collyw 6y ago
refurb 6y ago
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?
- axaxs 6y ago
  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?
  - sneak 6y ago
    They did subdue him: they put him in a chokehold, with enough pressure to stop his heart.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    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".
    - axaxs 6y ago
      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.
      - tomcam 6y ago
        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.
xkcd-sucks 6y ago
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.
- robbiep 6y ago
  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.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Also, aren't police claiming that they only use ketamine for people showing "excited delirium", where benzos are probably contraindicated?
  - nerdbaggy 6y ago
    Seems that hospitals love to give out Versed like candy.
- jdietrich 6y ago
  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.
  - sesuximo 6y ago
    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.
ladberg 6y ago
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.
- elevenoh 6y ago
  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.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    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.
    - bjo590 6y ago
      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.
throwaway189262 6y ago
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.
EVdotIO 6y ago
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.
- seigando 6y ago
  This strikes me as falling into the 'interesting new phenomenon' category.
- mateus1 6y ago
  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.
  - GhostVII 6y ago
    That is false, police are not injecting people with Ketamine. As the article says, paramedics are.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      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.
profikid 6y ago
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.
- burfog 6y ago
  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.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    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.
hnlurker 6y ago
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.
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  Or suppose they start acting out after they're injected, that probably shouldn't be considered resisting arrest/assault/etc.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  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?
nottorp 6y ago
This is happening in China right?
- vmception 6y ago
  Agents of the state randomly jumping you, beating you up because of their unilateral and arbitrary determination that you are resisting being randomly jumped, and then injecting you with a sedative and psychoactive so powerful that you die? No, that's a distinctly American version of civil rights. They might also arbitrarily take your property, while everyone gaslights you into thinking that this is a staple of non-American marxist regimes.
  - guscost 6y ago
    If you care about hearing a serious response, I think most Americans would agree that this protocol is on the wrong side of the line, but at the same time not thoroughly murderous in intent. It sounds like an extreme tactic that should be re-thought, and it is perfectly legal and normal for me to share this opinion or organize votes for change. In China there are “execution vans” with no other purpose even suggested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van
    - vmception 6y ago
      > In China there are “execution vans” with no other purpose even suggested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van From your article > Liu was convicted > a reprieve after appealing > given a retrial Your entire article describes convicted death row prisoners, whether we agree with or respect China's due process at all. Why did you think it bolstered your argument to talk about Chinese due process in an article about a lack of due process in the US? beCaUsE wE cAN taLk AbOut iT? that's gold, its really the icing on the cake.
      - guscost 6y ago
        You think all the other non-“notable” people executed in one of those things got the appropriate legal protections too? Anyway I’m just trying to say that if you want to apply the most unfriendly interpretation to some happening in America, in order to compare it to “non-American Marxist regimes”, at least be consistent.
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
> 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.
- dirtnugget 6y ago
  I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight. But yes, it’s a lot.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    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?
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      Height + bellysize + muscle size?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Right... how do I get a number from looking at those?
        rdmirza 6y ago
        Compare those values to your own weight, and pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic.
dirtnugget 6y ago
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.
- hh3k0 6y ago
  That makes me wonder, could they use a confession by someone they pumped full of ketamine an hour prior?
  - dirtnugget 6y ago
    Yes. I did not want to claim this but it was my first thought.
rvnx 6y ago
Sounds like the worst idea ever. Hope these practices will stay in the US only.
- GhostVII 6y ago
  Also happens in Canada (https://communityedition.ca/paramedics-in-wr-will-soon-administer-ketamine-and-fentanyl/ https://communityedition.ca/paramedics-in-wr-will-soon-admin...), they administer it for pretty much the same reason as in the US. And Australia.
  - vmception 6y ago
    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.
  - sesuximo 6y ago
    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
- tjpnz 6y ago
  First I've ever heard of this and I'm stunned. Who are they trying to arrest? The Incredible Hulk?
  - IanDrake 6y ago
    Anyone high on meth is pretty much the hulk.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      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.
GhostVII 6y ago
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.
- corty 6y ago
  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".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  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. 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.
Yc4win 6y ago
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.
- wittyreference 6y ago
  > 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.
  - tmp538394722 6y ago
    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.
    - FpUser 6y ago
      They're plain fucking murderers and should rot in jail. That is all about it. It is just too bad that the land of free telling every other country how to behave does not seem to give a flying fuck about the egregious behavior of their own agents. Well not unless the case gets much publicity on FB and the likes.
tehwebguy 6y ago
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.
- dkersten 6y ago
  Agreed. Police should have less powers, not more.
- lsllc 6y ago
  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_Hospital_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_University_of_Utah_Hospit...
- Natsu 6y ago
  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?
Yc4win 6y ago
Cops are some of the stupidest, most violent people in our society. In many jurisdictions you can be disqualified from law enforcement if you are too intelligent, because they just need their thugs to follow orders and not to ever think. Cops have absolutely no business ordering a paramedic to do anything.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > In many jurisdictions you can be disqualified from law enforcement if you are too intelligent There's obviously at least one department that did this at one point in time because of the notable lawsuit allowing it, but what is the source for it being a practice in “many jurisdictions”?
purpleidea 6y ago
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.
fortran77 6y ago
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.
JRKrause 6y ago
Tangentially related, ketamine was what they dosed the kids stuck in the cave with prior to dragging them out last year.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dj_gitmo 6y ago
  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-ketamine-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/health/thailand-boys-cave-ket...
rootsudo 6y ago
Wow, he went out in a k-hole. Interesting and scary experience.
bobowzki 6y ago
I'm an anesthesiologist. This is insane.
- throwawayWSQA 6y ago
  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.
  - thethethethe 6y ago
    > how is being an anesthesiologist relevant? Uhhhh anesthesiologists are experts in administratering sedatives to humans safely. The connection here seems pretty obvious to me...
    - throwawayWSQA 6y ago
      If you re-read my comment, you'll see that "administrating sedatives to humans safely" is specifically what I consider irrelevant.
      - thethethethe 6y ago
        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.
notassigned 6y ago
I don't think it's helpful to assume the police were racist.
- tmp538394722 6y ago
  Racism is a system. The police are (a major) part of that system.
- esperent 6y ago
  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.
  - notassigned 6y ago
    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.
    - Spearchucker 6y ago
      If it happens once that's once too many.
    - wonderwonder 6y ago
      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.
aazaa 6y ago
> 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-bring-attention-death/story?id=71523476 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.
- gwright 6y ago
  > 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.
  - aazaa 6y ago
    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.
    - 6y ago
Fizzadar 6y ago
The saddest part about cases like this is that they in no way surprise me anymore.
jungletime 6y ago
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.
Kapura 6y ago
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.
- JshWright 6y ago
  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.
coronadisaster 6y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X4PUwrq8tA (NSFW, maybe... but very troubling either way)
andi999 6y ago
So can stuff you say after administering ketamin used in court against you?
ezoe 6y ago
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?
- honksillet 6y ago
  No. The paramedics gave it. The article is (I think intentionally) misleading.
honksillet 6y ago
The article is misleading. It's framed as if police officers are giving Ketamine when in fact paramedics (medical personnel) are.
kepler1 6y ago
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.
- wonnage 6y ago
  Violent crime has been on a decades-long decline.
  - person1234 6y ago
    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.htm 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 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db329.htm
ezoe 6y ago
Wow. Another reason I will never set my foot on US jurisdiction. It's just too dangerous. The law doesn't exist at all.
- adventured 6y ago
  In terms of there being no law, it could be worse, you could be in eg Japan, where the police openly cozy up to the Yakuza and intentionally allow & support them in operating as a $6 billion per year criminal syndicate that de facto runs Japan's business and political systems with zero opposition (it's not even illegal to be a member, nobody will touch them). Now that's fully institutionalized zero law jurisdiction in action, they don't even pretend in Japan, corruption is an integral part of the fabric of the system. The law is whatever the Yakuza says it is.
- kuzimoto 6y ago
  The vast majority of people in the US go throughout their entire lives having perfectly normal interactions with the police. This does not represent "normal" police behavior. > The law doesn't exist at all. This is just hyperbole. I bet you can find cases of police behaving poorly in any country.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    > The vast majority of white people in the US go throughout their entire lives having perfectly normal interactions with the police. FTFY.
    - deleted 6y ago
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      - deleted 6y ago
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- strombofulous 6y ago
  This is confusing to me because it seems like you're responding to the golden example of how this problem can be dealt with - the nurse refused, the corrupt officer was fired, and the relevant law was changed when it was brought to light. What could change in this story to make you more comfortable?
mcguire 6y ago
What happened to the paramedics in these cases? The overdoses described seem like serious malpractice.
iamericfletcher 6y ago
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?
alex_young 6y ago
Primum non nocere
igneo676 6y ago
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 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 :-)
- bluntfang 6y ago
  what do you think about rubber bullets and other "less than lethal" weapons that kill people sometimes?
nojvek 6y ago
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.

332 points by seigando 6y ago

> Paramedics were called and injected McClain with ketamine, but they incorrectly estimated his weight, giving him more than 1.5 times the dose he should have received. He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he was only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams. That’s 7.9mg/kg, not nearly enough ketamine to cause cardiac arrest in someone that size. LD50 in humans is at least 5-10x that. Those officers that had him in a chokehold killed him, and are trying to scapegoat the EMS. There is a name for this behavior: a lynching. Erica Marrero, Kyle Dittrich, Jason Rosenblatt, and Jaron Jones, white cops, murdered an unarmed black man. The entirety of the consequences they suffered? They lost their jobs. The police who declined to enforce the law against them are complicit. Abolish the police.

qchris 6y ago
I hope I'm not not regurgitating false information (I'm finding it difficult to find a reputable primary source, since there's a lot of clearly pro-ketamine sites), but I was under the impression that one of the reasons that ketamine has been used both in people and in applications like as a horse tranquilizer is that it's safe dosage range is considerably wide, presenting some margin of error over similar drugs. Obviously it's more than he should have been given (and tbh am pretty uncomfortable with it being given here at all), but my decidedly non-expert opinion (and the official autopsy statement that the "ketamine in McClain's blood was at 'tolerable levels' ") is that there's all sorts of red flags about this situation.
- sneak 6y ago
  3-4mg/kg is more than sufficient for subduing an adult human. 7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring. Injecting a suspect with a drug without medical necessity or consent is a major human rights issue, and you wouldn’t be far off if you called it rape. The whole thing is quite obviously pig lies; they had dogs and tasers on this 140lb black man who they had already had multiple cops choking out. Nothing about their dodge adds up.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml My goodness that's a lot of ketamine. A "strong" recreational dose would be about 1mg/kg. 2.5mg/kg and the person is anesthetized.
  - jdietrich 6y ago
    7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring. Just barely dangerous. You might see a bit of transient respiratory depression, but the risk of respiratory arrest or clinically significant hypoxia is very low even in an out-of-hospital setting. We have case reports of paediatric patients receiving as much as 50mg/kg without significant ill effect. https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-0644(99)80051-1 https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-0644(99)800...
    - sneak 6y ago
      I think perhaps you assume empty stomach, such as in a normal setting. Those doses are puke probability 1.0 range, which is lifethreatening if the person is unconscious and unmonitored. Ketamine doesn’t really depress respiration that much. If the airway is physically obstructed, however, because nobody had their eye on him...
    - GordonS 6y ago
      It's probably quite dangerous in this kind of setting though, where the person has likely already been beaten, tasered and choked.
pizza 6y ago
> There is a name for this behavior: a lynching. For those who didn't know, the police culture becomes quite a bit more sickening when you find out that one of the arresting officers, along with 2 other colleagues, posed grinning in a photo mocking their brutality against McClain just days after he died! Across the street from a memorial to him, no less. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-police-officers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-...
tomcam 6y ago
> Abolish the police. Sounds cool. I have had some bad experiences with cops. Suppose someone breaks into your house because of your skin color or political leanings and there are no police. What course of action do you recommend? Spoiler alert. You are also heavily armed.
- bjo590 6y ago
  If someone breaks into your home what do you think police response time will be? 20 minutes? 40 minutes? An attacker can do a lot of damage and run away in that allotted time. The police will just be there to fill out the paper work after the fact. Whatever course of action you take, do something in addition to or besides call the police.
- scarface74 6y ago
  So it’s not about abolishing the police. “Defund the police”, which I agree is a bad term, is about focusing some of those funds on social programs and only calling the police for true criminal causes. I am definitely not a conservative on most issues, but I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops. Yes I know the statistics about a gun in the home is more likely to be used accidentally or on purpose (suicide/homicide/accidental shooting) against someone in the home.
  - antioink 6y ago
    > I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops. Do you know how absurd this sounds to people in actual civilized countries? Kind of amazing how many of you Americans are living in some Wild West fantasy.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      Othering and belittling pours gas on an already polarized topic. If you can't talk about the issue without going there, then you aren't equipped to change minds. If the [keyboard] is mightier than the [gun], then one must show even more restraint in its employ.

axaxs 6y ago

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

burfog 6y ago
Feel free to propose a method, and we'll all object to that. Stopping an uncooperative person is guaranteed to be upsetting to somebody. That is fundamental to the problem. Every method tried so far has been objected to by squeamish people who refuse to understand. If we let criminals run amok, then we get a failed state, and then armed gangs form to impose their own idea of a justice system. I assure you, those armed gangs will be far more brutal than our fancy westernized police system. So we medicalized the problem. That appeases more people than the cheap standardized billy club. We'll just ignore the needle-stick biohazard problem, because at least it won't look like a replay of Rodney King.
- anon9001 6y ago
  I agree that all restraint methods are upsetting, but "inject with dissociative drugs" should really be a lot further down the list than "hit with stick". Personally, I favor hitting people with billy clubs, because it leaves evidence of what happened and it requires the police to actually take physical action against another human. Giving cops needles full of magic compliance juice seems less responsible to me. The reason people were upset about Rodney King was because it was brutal and easy to understand. Injecting ketamine is also brutal but it's less visible. I cannot imagine anyone ever getting over the fact that they were restrained by authorities and injected into a k-hole. They won't be visibly harmed in any way, but that will absolutely mess someone up for life.
  - mr_spothawk 6y ago
    > Personally, I favor hitting people with billy clubs, because it leaves evidence of what happened You make a decent argument.
  - collyw 6y ago

refurb 6y ago

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?

axaxs 6y ago
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?
- sneak 6y ago
  They did subdue him: they put him in a chokehold, with enough pressure to stop his heart.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  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".
  - axaxs 6y ago
    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.
    - tomcam 6y ago
      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.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago

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.

robbiep 6y ago
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.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Also, aren't police claiming that they only use ketamine for people showing "excited delirium", where benzos are probably contraindicated?
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  Seems that hospitals love to give out Versed like candy.
jdietrich 6y ago
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.
- sesuximo 6y ago
  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.

ladberg 6y ago

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.

elevenoh 6y ago
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.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  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.
  - bjo590 6y ago
    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.

throwaway189262 6y ago

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.

EVdotIO 6y ago

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.

seigando 6y ago
This strikes me as falling into the 'interesting new phenomenon' category.
mateus1 6y ago
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.
- GhostVII 6y ago
  That is false, police are not injecting people with Ketamine. As the article says, paramedics are.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    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.

profikid 6y ago

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.

burfog 6y ago
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.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  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.

hnlurker 6y ago

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.

EamonnMR 6y ago
Or suppose they start acting out after they're injected, that probably shouldn't be considered resisting arrest/assault/etc.
gus_massa 6y ago
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?

nottorp 6y ago

This is happening in China right?

vmception 6y ago
Agents of the state randomly jumping you, beating you up because of their unilateral and arbitrary determination that you are resisting being randomly jumped, and then injecting you with a sedative and psychoactive so powerful that you die? No, that's a distinctly American version of civil rights. They might also arbitrarily take your property, while everyone gaslights you into thinking that this is a staple of non-American marxist regimes.
- guscost 6y ago
  If you care about hearing a serious response, I think most Americans would agree that this protocol is on the wrong side of the line, but at the same time not thoroughly murderous in intent. It sounds like an extreme tactic that should be re-thought, and it is perfectly legal and normal for me to share this opinion or organize votes for change. In China there are “execution vans” with no other purpose even suggested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van
  - vmception 6y ago
    > In China there are “execution vans” with no other purpose even suggested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van From your article > Liu was convicted > a reprieve after appealing > given a retrial Your entire article describes convicted death row prisoners, whether we agree with or respect China's due process at all. Why did you think it bolstered your argument to talk about Chinese due process in an article about a lack of due process in the US? beCaUsE wE cAN taLk AbOut iT? that's gold, its really the icing on the cake.
    - guscost 6y ago
      You think all the other non-“notable” people executed in one of those things got the appropriate legal protections too? Anyway I’m just trying to say that if you want to apply the most unfriendly interpretation to some happening in America, in order to compare it to “non-American Marxist regimes”, at least be consistent.

dj_mc_merlin 6y ago

> 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.

dirtnugget 6y ago
I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight. But yes, it’s a lot.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  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?
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    Height + bellysize + muscle size?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Right... how do I get a number from looking at those?
      - rdmirza 6y ago
        Compare those values to your own weight, and pay attention when you hear someone’s weight to see if it matches your heuristic.

dirtnugget 6y ago

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.

hh3k0 6y ago
That makes me wonder, could they use a confession by someone they pumped full of ketamine an hour prior?
- dirtnugget 6y ago
  Yes. I did not want to claim this but it was my first thought.

rvnx 6y ago

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

GhostVII 6y ago
Also happens in Canada (https://communityedition.ca/paramedics-in-wr-will-soon-administer-ketamine-and-fentanyl/ https://communityedition.ca/paramedics-in-wr-will-soon-admin...), they administer it for pretty much the same reason as in the US. And Australia.
- vmception 6y ago
  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.
- sesuximo 6y ago
  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
tjpnz 6y ago
First I've ever heard of this and I'm stunned. Who are they trying to arrest? The Incredible Hulk?
- IanDrake 6y ago
  Anyone high on meth is pretty much the hulk.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    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.

GhostVII 6y ago

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.

corty 6y ago
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".
- deleted 6y ago
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quadrifoliate 6y ago
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. 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.

Yc4win 6y ago

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.

wittyreference 6y ago
> 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.
- tmp538394722 6y ago
  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.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    They're plain fucking murderers and should rot in jail. That is all about it. It is just too bad that the land of free telling every other country how to behave does not seem to give a flying fuck about the egregious behavior of their own agents. Well not unless the case gets much publicity on FB and the likes.

tehwebguy 6y ago

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.

dkersten 6y ago
Agreed. Police should have less powers, not more.
lsllc 6y ago
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_Hospital_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_University_of_Utah_Hospit...
Natsu 6y ago
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?

Yc4win 6y ago

Cops are some of the stupidest, most violent people in our society. In many jurisdictions you can be disqualified from law enforcement if you are too intelligent, because they just need their thugs to follow orders and not to ever think. Cops have absolutely no business ordering a paramedic to do anything.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> In many jurisdictions you can be disqualified from law enforcement if you are too intelligent There's obviously at least one department that did this at one point in time because of the notable lawsuit allowing it, but what is the source for it being a practice in “many jurisdictions”?

purpleidea 6y ago

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.

fortran77 6y ago

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.

JRKrause 6y ago

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

deleted 6y ago
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dj_gitmo 6y ago
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-ketamine-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/health/thailand-boys-cave-ket...

rootsudo 6y ago

Wow, he went out in a k-hole. Interesting and scary experience.

bobowzki 6y ago

I'm an anesthesiologist. This is insane.

throwawayWSQA 6y ago
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.
- thethethethe 6y ago
  > how is being an anesthesiologist relevant? Uhhhh anesthesiologists are experts in administratering sedatives to humans safely. The connection here seems pretty obvious to me...
  - throwawayWSQA 6y ago
    If you re-read my comment, you'll see that "administrating sedatives to humans safely" is specifically what I consider irrelevant.
    - thethethethe 6y ago
      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.

notassigned 6y ago

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

tmp538394722 6y ago
Racism is a system. The police are (a major) part of that system.
esperent 6y ago
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.
- notassigned 6y ago
  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.
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    If it happens once that's once too many.
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    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.

aazaa 6y ago

> 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-bring-attention-death/story?id=71523476 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.

gwright 6y ago
> 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.
- aazaa 6y ago
  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.
  - 6y ago

Fizzadar 6y ago

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

jungletime 6y ago

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.

Kapura 6y ago

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.

JshWright 6y ago
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.

coronadisaster 6y ago

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

andi999 6y ago

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

ezoe 6y ago

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?

honksillet 6y ago
No. The paramedics gave it. The article is (I think intentionally) misleading.

honksillet 6y ago

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

kepler1 6y ago

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.

wonnage 6y ago
Violent crime has been on a decades-long decline.
- person1234 6y ago
  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.htm 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 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db329.htm

ezoe 6y ago

Wow. Another reason I will never set my foot on US jurisdiction. It's just too dangerous. The law doesn't exist at all.

adventured 6y ago
In terms of there being no law, it could be worse, you could be in eg Japan, where the police openly cozy up to the Yakuza and intentionally allow & support them in operating as a $6 billion per year criminal syndicate that de facto runs Japan's business and political systems with zero opposition (it's not even illegal to be a member, nobody will touch them). Now that's fully institutionalized zero law jurisdiction in action, they don't even pretend in Japan, corruption is an integral part of the fabric of the system. The law is whatever the Yakuza says it is.
kuzimoto 6y ago
The vast majority of people in the US go throughout their entire lives having perfectly normal interactions with the police. This does not represent "normal" police behavior. > The law doesn't exist at all. This is just hyperbole. I bet you can find cases of police behaving poorly in any country.
- pstuart 6y ago
  > The vast majority of white people in the US go throughout their entire lives having perfectly normal interactions with the police. FTFY.
  - deleted 6y ago
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strombofulous 6y ago
This is confusing to me because it seems like you're responding to the golden example of how this problem can be dealt with - the nurse refused, the corrupt officer was fired, and the relevant law was changed when it was brought to light. What could change in this story to make you more comfortable?

mcguire 6y ago

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

iamericfletcher 6y ago

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?

alex_young 6y ago

Primum non nocere

igneo676 6y ago

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 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 :-)

bluntfang 6y ago
what do you think about rubber bullets and other "less than lethal" weapons that kill people sometimes?

nojvek 6y ago

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.