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.

> Personally, I favor hitting people with billy clubs, because it leaves evidence of what happened

You make a decent argument.

   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

Like you say, there's not really a "good" choice, and I am not defending officers' actions during incidents like the killing (murder, IMO) of Elijah McCain.

But those police batons break bones. Also, there's evidence of ketamine sedation: they need to summon paramedics to perform the injection, etc.

So, I don't know. I'm sure we at least agree that the answer is to avoid letting things escalate to that point so frequently.

From the article, it sounds like it is on a completely different list altogether.

"Most states and agencies say ketamine may be administered when someone exhibits “excited delirium” or agitation, which is typically associated with chronic drug abuse, mental illness or both."

In that scenario, the police would be beating the culprit into compliance and we would all be looking at videos on youtube shaking our heads. I'm not saying cops should be carrying hypodermics in their utility belt, but how many non-lethal options do you remove before you have to accept more lethal outcomes?

This is yet another scenario where the US can't seem to avoid violent actions when arresting people and other countries don't seem to have this problem. So what's going on here? I can only see it as another case where violent actions are significantly increased by police behavior.

> other countries don't seem to have this problem

It would help to be more specific about which other countries and when. There are a lot of reasons why things happen in one place and not another.

If I was being restrained, I would far rather be given a hit of ketamine than a hit of a bat.

(From people that seem to know a bit about restraint techniques Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink discussed the use of choke holds on Joe's podacst. They both agreed that it was far better than a smack with a baton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=iUhdc1GAddk&...).

I guess the argument against this is how many people in the US have died from being struck by a police club vs from a police chokehold. I cant recall a single instance of death by police bat.

De-escalation skills can be learned. First class psychological training and counselling could be the norm.

One gains a lot of respect by showing wisdom and courage.

Most scenarios are essentially communication problems to be solved. Not defaulting to the most violent means of "cooperation" is and should be an option for any police force in a 21st century democracy.

Look to the best in the past and in other countries.

Successful policing actually needs skin in the game.

What's really sobering is that, in my personal experiences as a middle-class American white man in his 40s, police have always been really good at de-escalating things.

I haven't always agreed with them, but they have always cooled things down nicely without resorting to violence or even arrests.

Training varies widely by locale, but I believe de-escalation is indeed a nearly universal part of their training. It must also be noted that de-escalation certainly is much easier for the police officers themselves: less hassle, less danger, less paperwork, less repercussions. These people generally just want to get through their shift and get home.

They are certainly capable of de-escalation and, in most instances, are trained and motivated to de-escalate.

So, it's very telling when (nearly always white) officers leap to unnecessarily violent tactics on (nearly always Black) victims.

All of that is seen through the filter of the media. They have a story that they want to sell. They need to grab eyeballs. They are also political, and so they want to push what helps advance their own political goals, even if it tears the country apart.

Specifically, every one of these is subject to selection bias:

  "nearly always white"
  "unnecessarily violent tactics"
  "nearly always Black"

You won't see a news report when the tactics are peaceful, when a black cop is involved, or when the supposed victim is non-black. Nobody is going to riot over that, so why report it? It goes unseen by you, so you get the wrong impression about reality.

A different sort of bias comes into play with word choice, using "victims" to refer to people who typically are violent criminals being apprehended. The word ought to be "perpetrators", "suspects", or simply "criminals".

Of course "the media" focuses on incidents where cops abuse their power.

"The media" also exalts policemen and soldiers as heroes, with countless reminders to thank our "heroes" and millions of hours of Hollywood entertainment devoted to showcasing heroic soldiers and cops. Much of the media denounces the protests as well.

    A different sort of bias comes into play with 
    word choice, using "victims" to refer to people 
    who typically are violent criminals being 
    apprehended. The word ought to be "perpetrators",
    "suspects", or simply "criminals".

Surely you see the irony in using an equally loaded set of terms yourself?

In all of the incidents that sparked outcry, police were shown on video using vastly asymmetrical force against victims who were nonviolent or who had already been subdued. One, Breona Taylor, was in bed when police knocked down the wrong door when serving a no-knock warrant. Elijah, the teen injected with ketamine, was nonviolent and had no history of violence or crime.

There are a lot of incidents of police violence in which the suspect is behaving violently and, in these cases, I have not seen public outcry.

Do you think there are no black cops abusing their power, or that there are no white victims? It's hidden from you by the media because it doesn't fit the narrative of racist white cops abusing innocent black victims.

Statistics paint a different picture. Given that there is a police response to crime, a white criminal is more likely to be shot by the police.

I have seen plenty of public outcry over police violence when the suspect was behaving violently. The riots in Ferguson are the obvious example. Evidence of powder burns and of DNA in the car show that the BLM story was clearly false. The evidence is consistent with the story given by the cop. It's been like that for every case that I've researched, so at this point I'm done with research. It's always the same, more or less.

    Do you think there are no black cops abusing 
    their power, or that there are no white victims? 

I do not think that. Additionally, literally nobody is claiming that. Anywhere.

Not exactly, but pretty close: "it's very telling when (nearly always white) officers leap to unnecessarily violent tactics on (nearly always Black) victims"

You got that distorted perspective from the media bias.

It's just not that way. Some statistics even point the other way.

    So, it's very telling when (nearly always white) 
    officers leap to unnecessarily violent tactics 
    on (nearly always Black) victims. 

I could have been clearer about the context of my statement: I was referring to the police shootings that have made national headlines. My bad.

Nonetheless, while the overall reality of police killings in America is less dramatic than "nearly always", but it worrisomely lopsided. Black Americans are killed by police at a per-capita rate of roughly 2:1 compared to white Americans.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/data-show-de...

That is... not good. How do you explain that?

Crime rate is different. There are at least 3 ways to do the statistic:

1. What race has the biggest number being killed by cops? (answer: white)

2. What race has the most per-capita being killed by cops? (answer: black)

3. What race is most likely to be killed by cops if they get in a police confrontation? (answer: white)

The obvious solution for non-equality with #2 is to fix the culture so that conflict with the cops is less likely. Don't do crime. If you are stopped by cops, be fully compliant and don't look like a threat. When stopped by the cops, don't even think of reaching for something they can't see. You just wait, and then you'll be able to sort things out in court.

Eh, we also should fix the non-equality with #3. It shouldn't be more excusable to shoot white people.

yikes.

"Not injecting people with a drug without their consent" is not the equivalent of "let criminals run amok."

I have trouble reconciling the notion that after someone has been restrained to the point where it is considered safe to inject them with a drug, they find it necessary to inject a drug for the purpose of restraint.

It's a bit like placing your knee on the back of someone's neck who is already handcuffed and crying for his mother. Unnecessary, cruel, and dangerous.

So there are only 2 options, violence by armed gangs and violence by state-sponsored armed gangs? What is there to understand when it comes to police brutality? Not that western European police is without faults, but this feels just wrong on many different levels

I live in a country where we don't inject people with ketamine on the street, nor do "criminals run amok". We also don't have armed gangs imposing "their own idea of a justice system", and we have fewer police killings in 25 years than the US has in 25 days.

I imagine your comment is probably symptomatic of the major societal issues within the US; it certainly worsens the image of the US to those fortunate enough to live in a Western nation which isn't actively regressing.

   I live in a country where we don't inject people with
   ketamine on the street, nor do "criminals run amok". 
   We also don't have armed gangs imposing "their own idea 
   of a justice system", and we have fewer police killings 
   in 25 years than the US has in 25 days.

As an American, the parent poster is an unfortunate and common example of the sort of attitude that is common here. It is at least partially the result of America's geographic isolation: most Americans have never been to a place where there is low crime and low police brutality and thus literally cannot even imagine it.

I would like to point out the America, one's treatment by police varies greatly.

I'm a white man in my 40s have never witnessed police brutality firsthand. In all my interactions with police, they have acted properly and de-escalated things nicely, even when perhaps I didn't agree with them.

This is the experience shared by many (most?) Americans who, once again, have trouble imagining experiences other than their own. They imagine that nearly all police are just, and therefore victims of police brutality must have done something to deserve the violence.

Essentially, it is the "just world" fallacy writ large. People like to think that the world is just, and therefore like to think that those who experience misfortune have done something to deserve it. It is more pleasant than realizing we live in a country where the police sometimes act in shockingly violent and inappropriate ways.

I do know many people who have experienced awful treatment by police. And of course in recent years much light has been shone upon this misconduct.

> most Americans have never been to a place where there is low crime and low police brutality and thus literally cannot even imagine it.

nit: They haven't been to a place where there is low crime, low police brutality, and high population density. To most observers, most of the US is low crime and low police brutality. From this perspective, violent police are a city problem where things are so out of control that the police have no choice but to act that way.

(I don't why this is getting downvoted. I'm certainly not condoning the state of affairs, just trying to elaborate on the perspective that keeps supporting the uniformed criminals)

What country is that? And, you realize that the US has 300m people, correct? You will have to compare per-capita stats, not total numbers.

> And, you realize that the US has 300m people, correct? You will have to compare per-capita stats, not total numbers.

The UK has a population of almost 70MM. The factor of ~5 needed to account for population pales in comparison to the two orders of magnitude difference between 25 days and 25 years.

If you've seen the video footage of Elijah McClain you’d know there was no good reason for it to have been administered.

If it's ok for us to deal with violent people by:

a) gunning them down in the streets

b) beating the shit out of them

c) injecting them with hilarious overdoses of drugs and crossing our fingers

then why would we pay for police?

If that's ok, we might as well go back to old west times and just have everyone carry revolvers, possibly calling the town apothecary with his bottle of ether if we think we need it. It'll be way cheaper than maintaining a standing police department.

The whole point is that police are supposed to be trained and equipped to handle disturbances without harming the person being detained. There are options for this, including that so rarely used tactic, defusal.

Like, we pay police overtime. Cordon the person off, give them space but don't let them leave, wait until they get hungry even if it takes 12 hours, and then bribe them with pizza to come quietly. Build rapport with them over the entire incident. How often do we see that strategy deployed before we fall back to injecting ketamine?

Almost every police encounter event ends without incident. There really seems to be an issue right now with selection bias of these events.

I agree there is always room to consider other ways of handling outlying incidents. Injecting drugs into people violates so many principles of freedom it seems hard to justify it.

The pizza idea could work in some cases but I think we also have to realize that some people being taken into custody are irrational either from mental illness, and/or drug use, could be armed and/or violent, and cordoning them off may work or it may not. And then a potentially armed, violent, and irrational person is a threat to innocent people. The police have many objectives and one of those is to take suspects into custody safely so they can have just administrated. However, the safety of the public might be of higher priority and if asked to make a choice between hurting a suspect that appears irrational and violent so as to not risk the liberties of the public or respecting their liberties but putting the liberties of the public at risk, they’ll choose to optimize for the former.

Policing will never be perfect and there is a reasonable amount of error we should tolerate. And there should be accountability. I do agree that it would appear, at least from the stories that tend to make the news, that diffusion could be employed more.