Two incidents separated by twelve hours and twelve hundred miles have taken on the appearance of the control and the variable in a grotesque experiment about race in America. The man she was talking about, Christian Cooper, who is no relation, filmed the call on his phone.
They were in the Ramble, a part of the park favored by bird-watchers, including Christian Cooper, and he had simply requested that she leash her dog—something that is required in the area. In the video, before making the call, Ms. Cooper warns Mr. On Monday evening, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a forty-six-year-old black man named George Floyd died in a way that highlighted the implications that calls such as the one Amy Cooper placed can have; George Floyd is who Christian Cooper might have been.
The police made no arrests and filed no summons in Central Park. Amy Cooper has apologized for her actions; she was also fired from her job. Police responding to a call from a shopkeeper, about someone trying to pass a potentially counterfeit bill, arrested Floyd. Surveillance video shows a compliant man being led away in handcuffs.
On Tuesday, in Minneapolis, hundreds of protesters, many wearing face masks to guard against COVID , braved the pandemic to protest at the spot where Floyd died. Outside a nearby precinct house, police cars were pelted with rocks, and officers responded by firing tear gas.
But, within twenty-four hours of the video coming to light, the Minneapolis Police Department fired the officer who had knelt on Floyd and three others who had been at the scene. In November, , police responding to calls of a dispute between a man and a woman in north Minneapolis fatally shot a twenty-four-year-old African-American man named Jamar Clark. The larger question, however, is whether the officers involved will face any legal consequences. The Twin Cities area has been an outsized part of the dialogue about the police use of force.
In , Justine Damond was fatally shot by a police officer who was responding to her own call about a possible assault taking place behind her Minneapolis home. The majority of officers, however, were found to have used reasonable force during the encounters. Most of those killed suffered from underlying health conditions, mental illness or were under the influence of drugs or alcohol — factors that could have heightened their distress and complicated their ability to understand or comply with police orders, a review of the cases found.
Minneapolis police officers were supposed to get training on the dangers of prone restraint as part of a lawsuit settled with the family of David Smith in In many instances, officers were exonerated due to the very risk factors that made the restraint especially deadly. Deaths were blamed, for example, on cocaine intoxication, obesity and heart disease, with restraint listed only as a contributing factor — the conclusion being that victims died primarily from those conditions and not from being held down by police.
The term was used in the case of Roy Nelson Jr. If this is some phenomenon related to exertion, you'd think there would be more cases of excited delirium that don't involve the police.
A least 25 of the 32 of the incidents resulted in wrongful death claims against the law-enforcement agencies that collectively cost taxpayers millions of dollars to defend and, in many cases, to settle. In at least one case, an officer who was cleared of wrongdoing in a fatal restraint incident went on to be convicted of other crimes later.
Thomas Pierson is now serving a sentence in the Walker State Prison. His case bears a striking resemblance to the conviction of former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw , who also was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting women during traffic stops.
Just three years earlier, he and other officers handcuffed and hogtied Clifton Armstrong until the man stopped breathing. Armstrong, who had schizophrenia, had called himself requesting medical assistance. For the families of the victims, the exoneration of officers involved in their deaths deals a harsh blow. Their loved ones are gone while those who choked, knelt on or tased them continue to patrol the streets where they live. Hector Arreola had called twice himself that early morning in January , requesting police assistance and saying someone was threatening his life.
When officers arrived, they found him acting strangely and decided to arrest him for disorderly conduct. They discussed evaluating him for mental illness or "drug-induced mental health issues," court records show. But Arreola resisted and a struggle ensued. He said the struggle continued for six minutes and that officers stayed on top of him for two additional minutes after he was cuffed.
Officers responded that he could. Arreola passed out and was taken to the hospital. He was removed from life support the next day. An autopsy found methamphetamine and amphetamine in his system, but the family argued in a lawsuit that drugs did not kill Arreola; police did. The family of David Smith, the man whose death was supposed to prompt more training for Minneapolis police, expressed similar sentiments through their attorney, Jeff Storms.
And the lack of justice for David and others left our Black communities exposed to further usurpation of their rights, dignity, and lives. Anyone who says differently is lying.
Kansas City, Kansas, police officers used it during the fatal restraint of Craig McKinnis during a May traffic stop. The year-old died of positional asphyxia after two officers tackled him to the ground, put leg shackles on him and put his arms behind his back, according to court records. There were no criminal charges and the two officers still work at the department today.
But medical professionals say just because someone can speak, it does not mean they have enough oxygen to keep their organs functioning. A typical breath volume for an adult male is to cubic centimeters of air, Cole wrote. But the larynx, where sound is produced, requires just 50 to cubic centimeters of air movement to produce sound. Zipes, the Indiana University professor of medicine, said someone can't carry on long conversations if unable to breathe properly, but they might have enough air to communicate respiratory distress.
Any indication of breathing trouble, the policy adds, requires officers to roll the person over to the side or sit them up and call paramedics immediately. Denver, Houston and Phoenix are among those that put an immediate ban on tactics like chokeholds and strangleholds — sometimes referred to as carotid artery restraints — designed to render a person unconscious.
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to end the use of all chokeholds and neck restraints, and a Hennepin County judge ordered the police department to adopt that and other immediate changes. The legislatures in California and New York are considering bills that ban neck restraints and chokeholds statewide.
C de Baca, 47, was restrained outside a Walmart in after destroying property during a schizophrenic episode. Officers handcuffed him and put him on his stomach with his legs pinned behind his back. A spit shield was put over his face. Body camera footage shows two officers fist bump as emergency personnel perform CPR on the unresponsive C de Baca.
The autopsy ruled the death a homicide, and the official cause was excited delirium due to cocaine intoxication complicated by means of physical restraint. They settled for an undisclosed amount last year. Arrests can often be messy, including when narcotics are involved, but officers should be trained in the warning signs of asphyxia, said Kevin Robinson, a lecturer in the School of Criminology at Arizona State University who served on the Phoenix Police Department for more than 36 years.
Even when policies restrict certain restraints or instruct officers to stop using them when suspects go into distress, experts say it requires extensive training to put into practice.
It needs to be a reflex, said Glennon, the Calibre Press owner and instructor.
0コメント