At police urging, Minnesota paramedics injected suspects with powerful tranquilizer

[Satanica]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/1...s-with-powerful-tranquilizer-report-says.html

Police in Minneapolis have been ordered to “never suggest or demand” that paramedics sedate a suspect during a police call, following a recent report that such treatment of suspects had spiked in recent years.

The May 18 order from police Cmdr. Todd Sauvageau says that decisions on sedating suspects are to be made by Hennepin County paramedics, not city police officers, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.

The police policy order coincided with the completion of a report by the city’s Office of Police Conduct Review (OCPR), which showed that paramedics’ injections of ketamine into suspects during police calls had increased from three in 2012 to 62 in 2017, the newspaper reported.
[....]
Police officers regularly ordered paramedics to administer ketamine, the OCPR report says. It then questions why suspects received the drug before being transported to a hospital, “given the immediate effects on breathing and heart function that the drug induces.”

The OCPR report drew conflicting reactions from local officials, the Star-Tribune story said.

Hennepin Healthcare EMS Medical Director Jeffrey Ho and Minnesota Poison Control System Medical Director Jon Cole dismissed the findings as a “reckless use of anecdotes and partial snapshots of interactions with police, and incomplete information and statistics to draw uninformed and incorrect conclusions.”
[....]
“Our policy should be clear,” he said. “Cops shouldn’t direct medical professionals on health-related issues, and medical professionals shouldn’t listen to them.”

 

[Satanica]

http://www.startribune.com/at-urgin...dued-dozens-with-powerful-sedative/485607381/

On multiple occasions, in the presence of Minneapolis police, Hennepin Healthcare EMS workers injected suspects of crimes who already appeared to be restrained and the ketamine caused heart or breathing failure, according to a new city report.

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

On multiple occasions, in the presence of police, Hennepin Healthcare EMS workers injected suspects of crimes and others who already appeared to be restrained, according to the report, and the ketamine caused heart or breathing failure, requiring them to be medically revived. Several people given ketamine had to be intubated.
[....]
“In many cases, the individual being detained or arrested was not only handcuffed, but strapped down on a stretcher in an ambulance before receiving ketamine,” the report states. It raises a “concerning question” over why these people are given the drug before they are transported to the hospital, “given the immediate effects on breathing and heart function that the drug induces.”

The draft report prompted sharply different reactions among local officials. A statement included in the report from Hennepin EMS Medical Director Jeffrey Ho and Minnesota Poison Control System Medical Director Jon Cole dismissed the findings of the report as a “reckless use of anecdotes and partial snapshots of interactions with police, and incomplete information and statistics to draw uninformed and incorrect conclusions.”

“This draft report will prevent the saving of lives by promoting the concept of allowing people to exhaust themselves to death,” Cole and Ho wrote.
[....]
Studies, including some conducted by researchers at Hennepin Healthcare (formerly Hennepin County Medical Center), show it can be useful for trained medical practitioners to sedate and transport patients to the hospital who are agitated or combative.
[....]
To evaluate how the sedative was being used, the Office of Police Conduct Review investigators looked for mentions of the word in police reports, and then reviewed body camera footage from those cases.

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

The police encounters that led to EMS using ketamine ranged from cases of obstruction of justice to jaywalking, according to the report. One man was dosed with ketamine while strapped to a stretcher and wearing a spit hood.
[....]
In one case, Minneapolis police and EMS workers responded to a 911 call about a man who appeared to be in the throes of a mental health crisis.

Four Minneapolis police officers and two EMS personnel responded to the incident and decided to sedate the man, according to the report authors, who reviewed body camera footage of the incident. Upon seeing the needle, the man, who is not named but described as 5 feet 3 to 5 feet 5 with a light build, said he did not want the shot. “Whoa, whoa that’s not cool!” he pleaded. “I don’t need that!”

Regardless, the man was injected with the drug two times and secured to a chair, the report states. Shortly after, he became nonverbal and unintelligible, prompting one officer to remark, “He just hit the K-hole,” a slang term for the intense delirium brought on by ketamine.

When the man began to regain consciousness, the officer asked the EMS responder — all unnamed in the report — how much more ketamine he had with him, according to the report.
“I can draw more,” said the EMS staff.

“You’re my favorite,” replied another EMS officer.

They injected him with another dose of ketamine.

“We’ll have to end up putting a [breathing] tube in,” the officer stated.

On the way to the hospital, the man lost consciousness and stopped breathing, according to the report.

He regained his pulse and began breathing again sometime later at the hospital.

In a statement Thursday, Kelly Spratt, chief ambulatory officer for Hennepin Healthcare, said ketamine has “fewer side effects than other drugs and can ultimately save lives.”

Spratt said the incidents in the report account for only a small percentage of those involving ketamine each year. His office has recently reviewed the draft and believes it contains inaccuracies, he said, though he did not provide specifics.

“We believe the draft report contains data that is private and, as we assess that, we won’t respond to questions about specific cases cited in the report,” he said. “We have reviewed the four cases mentioned in the draft report that involve use of ketamine by Hennepin EMS and have concluded that those met the protocol and were medically justified.”
[....]
In a separate case detailed in the report, police sprayed an intoxicated woman in downtown Minneapolis with mace, and she appeared to have an asthma attack. The woman, who was not actively resisting police, asked for an asthma pump. Instead they handcuffed her to a stretcher and gave her ketamine, the report said.

Shortly before the body camera video cut out, an EMS worker asked, “What does ketamine do to asthmatics?”

In this case, it stopped the woman’s breathing, according to the report. She was resuscitated later at the hospital.

“It is also important to note that it appears no crime was committed, no threat to the safety of officer or paramedics was evident, and the individual was located less than six minutes from HCMC at the time she received a ketamine injection,” the report said.
[....]

 

[thatsmallgrl]

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

Jaywalkers are the most dangerous human beings on the planet. They should be sedated at all times.....

Seriously? That's completely unnecessary.

I get if someone is being combative and hard to restrain, but maybe inject them with something else then? Slippery slope.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

Damn.

 

[Dead Stephanie]

Oh HELL no! Dose me up with Valium if you have to, but Ketamine would more than likely kill me... Why is an animal tranq even an option?

They are actually talking about treating my husbands epilepsy disorder with ketamine. He’s kinda excited

 

[Sejanus]

Free high!!

 

[Dead Stephanie]

Don’t door

That's awesome! I hope it works! <3

thank you! We do too!!!

 

[notchback]

I know me well enough to know that a Benadryl can knock me out for 12 hours, I fear Ketamine could put me in a coma!

What a lightweight. On nights when my Trazodone and Ambien can't get me to sleep, I'll take 4 Benadryl tablets also. Sometimes I still lay away for hours. Insomnia sucks.

 

[Dead Stephanie]

What a lightweight. On nights when my Trazodone and Ambien can't get me to sleep, I'll take 4 Benadryl tablets also. Sometimes I still lay away for hours. Insomnia sucks.

I bought melatonin the other day to try that for going to sleep.

 

[Dead Stephanie]

Trazodone gave me hideous nightmares! I did weird shit on Ambien... I just smoke enough indica to get to sleep.

Traze done me the same way. Nightmares about snakes. It was horrible. Never had ambien, was scared I would kill someone or sleep drive on it

 

[lithiumgirl]

Wow ... at first I just thought big deal ... some people need help to come down and officers need to be safe, but the jay walkers and the guy strapped to the quiet chair with the spit hood changed my mind ...

 

[Jellybean1711]

I have a friend who was riding her motorbike home from work one afternoon . down a really steep hill. She skidded in loose gravel, sailed over a fence, still seated Eon the bike and her right leg slammed into a tree. She left seven inches of her femur embedded in the tree, which the EMS had to pull out with pliers. She told me that they gave her Ketamine before they moved her into the the helicopter to fly her out, She said it felt like her brain had shrunk and she could still feel the pain. but it was like it was happening to someone else , not her.

 

[Ripley]

They are FUCKING LUCKY no one died.

 

[thatsmallgrl]

I bought melatonin the other day to try that for going to sleep.

I take melatonin every night. I can't sleep without it.

Been taking it for two years now. I hope it works for you too.