This new outrage is hard to summarize in a thread title.

[just Warren]

Apparently in Minneapolis police can order you to be sedated with ketamine and then...

...you are automatically and involuntarily enrolled in a study of the effects of ketamine.

So a cop has the authority to order sedation? How is this a good idea? What other medical procedures can we let cops decide on?  

How does it not violate a person's rights to be involuntarily enrolled in a study? Any kind of study?

A woman was denied access to her inhaler, and instead given ketamine which almost killed her; how is that not malpractice? If cops can decide on medical procedures shouldn't they have all the liability issues that actual, trained, and competent care providers face?

Do these people have any legal options? Or is this going to run into a sovereign immunity thing?

[Perd Hapley]

Minneapolis, Minnesota - is that a blue city in a blue state? Asking for a friend.

[zxcvbob]

Minneapolis, Minnesota - is that a blue city in a blue state? Asking for a friend.

It's a democrat stronghold in an otherwise republican-leaning state.  And it generally throws the elections to the democrats.

[Andiron]

And if you're REALLY lucky,  there's always a chance that the cop is an Somali migrant 

[zxcvbob]

The draft report also raises questions about the role of the ketamine study in decisions about emergency treatment. Body camera footage from one case showed a woman, after being Maced by police, asking for an asthma pump, the draft report said.

Instead, a paramedic gave her an injection of ketamine.

In my ignorant opinion, the cop probably has qualified immunity.  The medic does not and should be prosecuted for assault. 

That's how I would attack this problem if it were up to me; when a cop does something egregious and enlists someone who's not a cop to assist in some illegal activity, you ignore the cop and prosecute the assistant to the fullest extent possible.  "The cop has immunity, you don't.  Sucks to be you"  The point being to isolate the police so nobody cooperates with them.

[TommyGunn]

It probably violates the rights of homo corpus,  were it to get to court.

[RoadKingLarry]

Screwed up part is that someone will have to get violated before it.goes to court.

[Scout26]

It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works...

[Jim147]

He killed me Mal. Killed me with a sword.

[cordex]

I missed the case where the cops ordered the dope ... looked to me like in the cases referenced the decision to administer the ketamine and enroll folks in the study was made by the paramedics.

[just Warren]

From an earlier article linked in the new article.

The report found that officers regularly instructed the medical staff to administer the ketamine.

“Between 2016 and 2017, MPD officers explicitly asked EMS to provide ketamine, either when calling for EMS services or upon arrival of the ambulance eight times,” states the report. “Also, MPD officers assisted EMTs while they injected individuals with ketamine” by physically holding them down while the EMS gave the shot. Many were in handcuffs, and some were in spit hoods.

[RoadKingLarry]

Why the *expletive deleted*ck isn't the ACLU all over this?

[Hawkmoon]

Sounds like great stuff:

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

Common side effects include psychological reactions as the medication wears off.[23] These reactions may include agitation, confusion, or hallucinations.[18][23][24] Elevated blood pressure and muscle tremors are relatively common, while low blood pressure and a decrease in breathing are less so.[18][24] Spasms of the larynx may rarely occur.[18] Ketamine is an NMDA receptor antagonist but it may also have other activity.[25]

If we assume the cops want the stuff administered to help control an agitated subject, how is that a help when a common side effect is MORE agitation, and psychological reactions? Didn't we just have a thread about a guy who kicked a doctor in the recovery room after surgery?

Furthermore, it's prescription only. Any cop "ordering" an EMT to administer the stuff would be practicing medecine without a license, and any EMT who administered it without a doctor on the other end of the comm line ordering it would likewise be exceeding his/her authority.

[Scout26]

I would be very surprised if there aren't a metric butt-load of tilecrawlers calling all the victims promising to get them milliona if they hire them to sue the city, the hospitals, and everyone else even remotely connected with this.

[brimic]

This sounds a lot like the subplot of the movie "Unsane."

[Pb]

At first glance this appears to be pretty horrible.  On second glance too. 

[cordex]

Thanks for the link Warren.

So we have a medical group doing an involuntary study on the use of sedatives to subdue combative patients.  All things being equal that would probably be okay - doing a study on subjects who have a medical reason to be sedated could definitely be a good thing.  That said, it also seems that the study may have become an incentive for the over-application of sedatives in order to increase enrollment.  Cops find out that paramedics are only too happy to dope problem subjects, so they start asking more and the medics just keep pumping the Special K.

Seems like most of the ire here at APS is reserved for the least culpable of the bad actors here.  Police reportedly requested EMS to dope people in custody, but unless the cops were asking like SLC detectives ask nurses to do blood draws it really seems like the greatest fault lies with the guys who were jumping at the chance to sedate patients unnecessarily, as well as with the healthcare group that encouraged it for the purposes of their study.

If a paramedic asked a cop to arrest someone and the cop complied, it would be entirely on the cop if the arrest wasn't necessary and appropriate.  Likewise, if a cop asks a paramedic to sedate a subject it's ultimately up to the medic to first determine the medical necessity of the request prior to breaking out the dope.

In summary:
Cop shouldn't have asked medics to sedate unnecessarily, if in fact the cases they asked were unnecessary.  That said, a police officer should be able to ask a medic to evaluate if a patient actually needs to be sedated.  There are times sedation is the best of all the bad options.
Hospital system really should have structured their study to ensure that involuntary enrollment in the study was properly controlled such that there was no incentive to apply unnecessary sedation.
Medics really, really, really shouldn't have sedated in cases where there was no clearly articulable medical need (if in fact they did), even if someone asked them to pretty please with sugar on top.

My oldest daughter broke her arm when she was five and they gave her ketamine while the ER doc was reducing the fracture.  Kiddo was tough as nails and wasn't even crying when I carried her into the hospital but I'm sure glad they gave it to her prior to setting it.

[MechAg94]

In a recent paper published by the hospital, 57 percent of study patients given ketamine required intubation — inserting a tube in the throat to help deliver oxygen. In a separate paper, which compared ketamine to another sedative, haloperidol, the hospital noted that 39 percent of subjects given ketamine needed intubation, compared to 4 percent with haloperidol.

I agree on where the fault lies.  Also, why would a sedative be used that commonly causes respiratory problems.  That would seem to be a Big Giant Red Flag that would stop its use. 

I guess it will take someone dying to put a stop to it.

[MechAg94]

Sedation after relapse

For Buckley, it started with a relapse.

The 29-year-old said she was struggling with the anniversary of her father’s death, and spent a day last December drinking wine. Her sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous called a friend, who contacted 911 for a welfare check.

Police and paramedics came to her apartment in northeast Minneapolis. Her friend let the police into the apartment, and officers carried her to the ambulance. Buckley acknowledges she was very drunk and uncooperative when they told her she must leave in an ambulance, which she feared she could not afford. But she questions whether paramedics needed to restrain and then sedate her.

First, I think she needs new friends.  Second, I am really starting to hate "welfare checks" and how they are used to justify all sorts of things. 

[cordex]

Also, why would a sedative be used that commonly causes respiratory problems.  That would seem to be a Big Giant Red Flag that would stop its use. 

As far as I know all sedatives are respiratory depressants.