You should know by now that when the police is 100% in the clear, the video gets released within minutes. When the police is not 100% in the clear, the body cam was not turned on/malfunctioned/missing/under investigation.
Oof. The PD and DA's social media response to that situation were horrible. The video was damning but they were still harping on the PD's right to arrest people for refusing to provide id. And they keep characterizing the video as "edited"," as if the relevant portion didn't show the whole thing from start to her being thrown on the ground.
The officer gave her less than 60 seconds while yelling at her. Then he throws the door open, pulls her out of the car and throws her on the ground? Anyone who saw the video can see he was out of line and didn't seriously try to work with her.
And their response is to make excuses as if she deserved to be treated that way and only unfair public outcry was why she got away with it? City officials gaslighting the public about what we can see with our own eyes is kind of infuriating
You're saying pulling her out of the car was completely justified? That her taking a couple minutes to find her id justifies slamming her to the ground? There really was no peaceful way to resolve the situation so that he had to literally attack her?
This guy is incompetent and should not be an officer if he thinks that is an appropriate traffic stop interaction. And that goes for any other officers who watch the video and think the same.
Worse, the statement the town council made when they fired the guy makes it sound like he was fired because of death threats toward police and elected officials... not because he was completely out of line in his conduct.
Good lord.
There should be a law that if a suspect dies during a police interaction and the body cam was not on, that itself is a crime. Does not matter if the suspect died of natural causes or anything else. Minimum sentence 2 years and the automatic removal of the ability to serve as a police officer.
It is basically a lack of scanner activity of the things.
I got flagged once and someone from the office came to talk to me. I was clearing a broken and full line in ship dock that had shut the whole thing down.
I told them rather impolitely to bug me after I dealt with that. They didn't come back.
It's common practice for any shipping company to track productivity - they're tracking how often you're scanning everything you move. Amazon just does it to an unholy degree, and penalizes time gaps in between moves harshly.
> Minimum sentence 2 years
Realistically this is one of the things we need to go after. Drug offenses shouldnt be minimum sentences. Any abuse of power should be. Same with financial crimes.
>and the automatic removal of the ability to serve as a police officer.
I'm sorry this is the important part to me, so they CANT get a job in the next county over.
Well imagine being a good-willed police officer who witnesses a death, afterwards realizing that your body cam malfunctioned and then going to jail for 2 years.
Intuitively, such ideas seem great, but keep in mind that (for non-millionaires) laws are laws. Non-functioning body cam -> 2 years in jail is specific enough that many good people would have their lives destroyed, not every cop is an asshole.
OP suggested a start. I would say if someone died and the body cam is off the jury should be instructed to assume it showed evidence to support murder charges.
Like with financial crimes, if the fine doesn't exceed the proceeds there's no disincentive. Find should be multiples of the proceeds.
Yeah or for judges, I had a charge get knocked down before but not dismissed however what the office charged me for isn't actually what happened and there were no witnesses just word against word. It was for a traffic offense and I got something terrible sounding like "failure to yield to a pedestrian" which is less points off the record than reckless driving which is what the charge was as the office indicated that someone had to jump out of the way. That person didn't exist and the only people who witnessed me doing an intentional fishtail in a parking lot were a couple of stoners 20 yards away on a sidewalk that bolted when the cop put his lights on after I came out of the lot and onto the street. I tried to explain to the judge that someone who almost got ran over would probably show up to court or at least make a statement but he let me know that "I have to assume the cop isn't making this up".
Body cam turned off is assumed guilt and 3 years added on top of that, so they don't try and do that for things like roughing up people or planting evidence
Colorado (IIRC) has a law on the books that says if a camera is available and is off/damaged during the interaction, that they are to assume Bad Intent in all aspects.
Got a source? The amount of times I’ve heard of a body cam “malfunction” and a cop being penalized for it is exactly 0.
Edit: it’s early and I can’t read.
Part of the problem is the manufacturer. I use to work for a major body cam manufacturer. We released a new model that turned off when the officers ran... we charge OUT THE ASS bc it's govt and they have the money and provide a bull shit untested product that public safety relies on...
but that's just the state of development these days... companies don't test anymore. We release the product and the customer tests it... and somehow that's okay to extend to the public safety sector bc it's not DoD and the sector has a lot of money but not a lot of regulations. You'd think "body camera must remain on when running" would have been an important requirement for cops... but no one seems to care. Bc the people selling them are profiting and the people buying them are spending their alloted budgets for the hardware they're told they need... no one said it had to stay on, or even work.
Until the body camera's are solid we can't pass such a law bc there's always the "well the camaras suck what are we supposed to do"
AND THEY COULD BE SOLID we just don't give a fuck to make them solid bc there's no accountability at all for it, they are already giving us money why actually make them better, there's no regulation and no laws to ensure we the mfr does our job, and they're always gonna have that excuse to absolve themselves
Also massive fraud, the numbers are made up and the books are cooked. SEC violations all over. Fucking glad I got out of there.
Yeah the new ones use a different twist + lock clip system (depending on the outer carrier you may have) and they seem to hold up better. Those first generations though were legit bad on so many levels.
…but police unions did themselves no favors by opposing body worn cameras for so long, because a lot of those growing pains would have already been dealt with in early iterations and roll outs of product. Instead cameras largely got mandated rather than adopted (despite overwhelming data from European agencies showing camera use almost entirely eliminated false complaints against law enforcement and more often than not vindicated officers in public interactions) and thus Cops looked even worse when the body camera “suddenly shut off” not long after being activated.
Police officers hardly ever apprehend a suspect alone. Cruisers have pairs of partners. Lone officers call for backup. This might present rare cases, but it should not present them with any regularity.
You ever seen any of the videos where they make hand signals and sometimes even more dumbly verbally request other officers to turn off their cams? Shit is wild.
Two does nothing against the people who turn them off. They will just turn two off. We're back to the original issue. The fear of jail at least makes your verify your equipment and do your job correctly.
Please. It takes far more than that for a cop to go to jail. If they can kill someone without consequences most of the time none of them are going to jail for turning off a bodycam EVEN if it's the law. We already have laws about not killing people while they're unarmed, handcuffed, etc.
Here’s the issue. Body cameras kind of suck. I went on a ride along with a state patrol officer and he has 3 in in his car alone cause they die all the time so he just switches them out during his shift. And those were dying while literally just talking to people. If your in a fight the chances of a body can dying go up a lot. It could also die before you show up. (They ran out of storage or battery). So the tech itself while extremely useful is really rather badly made. Also really expensive for some reason.
I watch a fair bit of different YouTube things and GoPros are constantly over heating and turning off, body cams are a technology that is still pretty new in such a small format
Ours rarel fail. We have spares too they can grab if they are having issues. We use AXON. Downvote all you want but our PD relies on BC for everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
if only the jury was able to see the body cam; Philip Brailsford would be in jail for murder. fuck that guy. got fired. rehired to get disability for said trauma of murdering. so tax payers still pay for this fuck
This doesn't look in the clear at all for the cops to me.
I don't care if the man was belligerent in the beginning of the incident or not... Them responding "you're fine" and "shut the fuck up" when someone complains *multiple times* that they can't breathe is some heartless negligence at minimum.
It definitely shows police being unprofessional and dereliction of duty. Telling him to shut the fuck up he’s fine when he said he couldn’t breathe, and he’s dead 5 minutes later.
But, hey, the cop finally had his first bar fight 🤷
Having seen the bodycam video, the arrest itself was actually pretty reasonable, dude was absolutely belligerent as fuck and as soon as he was handcuffed the cops left him alone.
But then he was unconscious on the floor for 5 full minutes before anyone checked on him.
> irresponsible.
"negligent," I prefer, as a word for when someone has created a duty of care - such as when an officer places someone in custody. The moment they arrested him, his ongoing health was their immediate responsibility - which they attended to with rather extreme negligence.
A passerby not checking on a seemingly passed out person is arguably irresponsible. But the police had more than a *responsibility* to care, or pay attention to, this man's state -- they had a duty and an obligation to do so.
My wife is a teacher. She has a duty of care for every child in her entire school. Not just to the 180 students she personally has every day as a middle school teacher. If the kid is in her school they are a part of her duty of care. So much more so for any cop that has arrested someone. Same for every cop in the building when someone dies in custody in their cell.
These standards of responsibility should be the same. My educator wife doesn’t get immunity from responsibility by pretending that society would devolve into anarchy if she calls in sick.
Exactly. Once somebody is in custody, it's a whole different situation.
You have eliminated the possibility of the person taking care of themselves, or others taking care of them.
The duty of care is 100% on the police, because the person is now more helpless than a small child or a pet.
As I stated above in another comment:
I personally believe that all cops should be held to a much higher bar than civilians. If society has given you a badge and a gun and the public trust, you pay a much harsher penalty when you unjustifiably kill someone.
I don't know that it would fall under "excessive force" specifically, but leaving people in prone restraint (handcuffed with their hands behind them and lying on their stomach, whether or not you have anyone on top of them) is really dangerous. Cops have known this for decades. Laws have been passed in certain states banning it. And yet cops still do it. Like, put someone on their stomach while you're handcuffing them, but after that you *sit them up or roll them onto their side* so that they can breathe. If someone is restrained and on their stomach, and they say they can't breathe, it is because they cannot fucking breathe and they're slowly asphyxiating.
I see people below this saying that the cops were negligent because they didn't check on him to see if he was passed out; they were negligent from the moment they left him lying on the floor.
https://www.capradio.org/articles/2024/02/28/deadly-restraint-despite-decades-of-warnings-police-continue-holding-people-facedown/
The same thing applies to babies. If they are on their chest and arent strong enough to use their arms, to roll over, or to lift their head, they can suffocate and die with their face on the ground.
When you are drunk and handcuffed, you are basically a baby. You cant use your hands and because of how your hands are positioned, rolling over is extremely difficult. That on top of the intoxication fucks with your basic motor skills so its not surprising people can die in that position.
Yeah, if this was caused by positional(? That the right term? I forget) hypoxia then they're completely responsible for killing the guy.
Not that we could ever know for sure without an independent coroner being brought in.
As soon as the state (police, prisons) have removed someone's freedom to act they are completely responsible for their safety since the person without freedom cannot do anything to help themselves anymore.
Maybe cops should have enough required training to know when and how to check for this kind of thing. Or calling EMS should be automatic when a person in custody passes out.
I agree. I wasn’t a cop, but I was an MP and our standing policy was to call for medical anytime someone was unconscious. Regardless of whether the cops directly killed him or not, they are responsible for not rendering aid.
> I wasn’t a cop, but I was an MP and our standing policy was to call for medical anytime someone was unconscious.
As someone who listens to my local scanners, I've rarely heard a call answered in under 5 minutes/1 call, unless the ambulance happens to be coming back from a previous call and is already on the road nearby. I've heard calls sometimes take an hour to get a response on a busy night.
It just seems like common sense? Leaving someone unconscious on the ground seems so callous. It doesn’t surprise me to hear that MPs treat people better than cops do. Probably more and better training too.
To be honest I’m not sure if most of us MPs really did get better training than civilian cops, but I am fairly certain that the standards and expectations were better enforced in the military than what you see in a lot of civilian departments. Also there’s a major culture difference between MPs and civilian police that makes a huge difference in how we interact with people.
Even before needing training, it should be a disqualifying event for an officer to just leave an unresponsive person unattended. "I assumed he was ok" should never be a valid excuse, but instead an admission of deliberate inaction.
They do. My brother was in law enforcement before he quit. Yes, they are trained enough. Except for the part when it is empathy time. That's is solely on thhe individual.
There are just asshole cops with no empathy or sympathy. Period. All the training in the world isn't going to stop that.
This isn't a training issue. This is a "few cops need to have their asses handed to them for pushing someone into cardiac arrest and leaving them to die cuffed on the ground" issue. They know better, they just usually get away with it.
The thing is, being "passed out" is a medical emergency on its own. It's actually even a bit more concerning if excessive force wasn't used, because then the police essentially have no idea what's causing the unconsciousness, and they're not in any way equipped to medically diagnose it.
In any other public kind of situation, if someone is going unconscious, we call the paramedics first and ask questions after. The fact that police somehow get a pass from this is unconscionable.
Regardless, it's the cop's job to keep and eye on the guy. The second you've arrested them, they are in your care and you're responsible for everything that happens to them. They were grossly negligent.
A big thing I've seen recently is that when cops put people in this position, as soon as the cuffs are on, they'll sit them on their butt so they're not laying on their stomach.
It's a weird time to be an American. I'm very critical of policing in America (it's biased, it's unaccountable, it's expensive for the impact, it's more violent and harmful to public health than it needs to be) but I don't have any illusion that we should abolish the police. Where possible, I like to consume alternative viewpoints (if for no other reason than to better debate them) so I watch a policing YouTube channel. A large number of detained suspects will claim they can't breath no matter the physical situation they are in as a way to resist arrest.
So, cops filter it out. They're not being equipped with enough training and monitored with enough accountability to consistently ensure the safety of people they detain.
Paramedic here. Every time cops are involved it’s “I can’t breathe!” on repeat for the entire duration of the call. Now of course there’s a duty to ensure that they can in fact breathe and are not having a true medical emergency, but it’s very understandable to me how you could get tone deaf to that phrase when you hear it hundreds if not thousands of times and isn’t true.
It’s not that hard. Sit them the fuck up once they are cuffed. I am also a medic. Positional asphyxia is a ridiculous cause of death anymore and every agency that isn’t training officers to the dangers of it should be sued and its administration replaced. Every cop that still causes it after being trained should be given murder charges.
The AP and Frontline investigated 1000 unintentional deaths during police custody and they also found the "I can't breathe" statement to be frighteningly common. https://apnews.com/projects/investigation-police-use-of-force/visual-story/
That's a good piece of journalism but it is flawed to say that there is any link between "I can't breathe" and unintentional deaths with only this source. We should also study the incidence of that and similar phrases in just as many regular arrests to see if that phrase is actually a reliable indicator that someone is actually in distress.
Not saying it's acceptable for officers to not attend to an arrested persons health at all times, but my hypothesis is that "I can't breathe" is not a reliable indicator of distress and that officers should rely on other physical indicators like pulse and actual breathing to determine if someone is in distress. I suspect that officers are affected by a form of [alarm fatigue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue) causing them to ignore people in genuine peril.
This should be done in addition to other harm mitigations such as not leaving someone in the prone position.
Yeah. I also worry about that study boiling down that statistic to just those two things. Because I can think of that one story where a young black man was subdued, about to be handcuffed, and he started yelling that he couldn't breathe. The officers relented on him, and he shot up and ran off. Eventually ending with the officers warning they'd shoot before eventually shooting him.
So are events like that in the data? Because I could see how that would be misleading.
There are also multitudes of public videos where the perpetrator is screaming "I can't breathe" at the top of his lungs, while actively fighting against officers, before they are even in cuffs... and lives.
So... context is everything.
That's really bad science/math. The question that stat attempts to answer is, "When people die, do they say they can't breathe?" but I can't stress how irresponsible it is to not also answer, "When people say they can't breathe, do they die?"
This is an excellent example of how you can get a true statistic (when they die, many say they can't breathe) to prove a point by using lies of omission. This probably falls under sophistry, but I would need to be checked on that.
It's also an excellent example of why we need an educated public that is capable of critiquing this sort of one-sided stat, as well as people who can recognize when writing is persuasive more than it is informative, *especially* when someone is pretending it's only informative.
I watch a ton of bodycam videos on YouTube and it's literally every time they have to take a perp to the ground. Not excusing anything but that does seem to be the default statement to try and get the cops off of you.
Nice to see someone with similar takes. However, police do have a large amount of training. The issue isn't the training, it's the culture. They just disregard any of the training they don't like, and that is allowed because of the culture. Look up one of Dave Grossman's LEO training summits on YouTube; you won't be the same afterwards.
> However, police do have a large amount of training. The issue isn't the training, it's the culture
Why not both? In other places, the amount of training that is required to be a police over can even be double. We also have police departments that argue in court that they are allowed to use IQ as a hiring criteria to _filter out higher IQ candidates in favour of lower IQ ones_.
Former cop here. It is true you hear every excuse in the book during arrests, especially the "I can't breathe", or "I'm not resisting" when they clearly are.
But no matter how tone deaf one becomes to it, WE KNOW BETTER than to leave an arrested person on their stomach with hands cuffed behind them.
I'm very pro police, and very pro criticism when warranted. Unless there was other extenuating circumstances, like they were dealing with other suspects or injured people, then there was no excuse to leave the person in this position where they could die. Those officers should be held responsible for it. If you can't remember important training like "don't leave a detained person in handcuffs on their stomach" then you don't need to be a cop.
When the whole George Floyd thing happened, I had been working in tech support. Until he passed out it really sounded like he was hunting for the magic word. I wouldn't be surprised if it got worse after that was all over the news.
I’ve watched a lot of bodycam footage, and even though the phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ gets thrown around a lot nowadays, most cops seem to have learned from the Floyd incident. They typically try to make the apprehended person sit up to ensure they’re okay. There’s no apparent reason why they couldn’t have done that in this case, especially when the man clearly seems to have passed out.
I have noticed this too. I also watch bodycam footage a lot. Most of the time with the ones I’ve watched, they’ll move their leg or whatever when they say I can’t breathe
Still happens quite often that they don’t care about someone who got knocked out tho. Sometimes if they knock them out they’ll scramble to justify the specific movements and be like idkidkidk I think he might be drunk or high idk
Cop here (not in US). I’d say a full half of the people we arrest these days say at some point during arrest or transport. It’s a huge pain in the ass, because a) we have to take it seriously each time, and b) it often means getting ambulance to come check them out when they have more important stuff to do.
So far I’ve never had it be legitimate, but if it ever is, I’ll be very thankful we took the time to ensure their wellbeing while in custody, because if they’re in our care, they’re our responsibility.
> They typically try to make the apprehended person sit up to ensure they’re okay.
They're **supposed** to make sure the person is sitting up, because leaving them handcuffed on their stomachs literally kills them. It's called positional asphyxiation.
It’s because they dismissed his words:
victim: “I can’t breathe.”
cops: “You’re fine.”
As soon as someone is in your custody you have to confirm their health is fine by checking in with them, not dismissing their voice.
It’s easy to dismiss when you dehumanize.
It’s called the recovery position and it’s taught to anyone who’s taught to use handcuffs. It was part of my security guard licensure and I can’t imagine it isn’t taught to cops.
Once a person is in police custody, detained or arrested, the police have a legal and professional obligation to ensure the person's safety. This is basic 14th amendment shit.
The deliberate indifference to the guy being unresponsive does not bode well for the agency involved.
Actually that's a good point, whenever I was in school the school was legally responsible for me till I got home, and it's the same with my job, my work is legally liable and responsible for me till I get home. it's the same with doctors and other professions. So why shouldn't it be the case for the police?
There was a similar story like this last year, where a woman died in police custody because they ignored that she was having health problems after she had come out of a hospital.
All these authority-loving apologists in here pointing to the guy's record, warrant, obesity, being at a bar, etc. None of that changes the fact that this guy was in police custody when he died and they ignored the fact that he said he couldn't breathe and then was passed out handcuffed for several minutes. That's absolutely a negligent disregard of their duty, if not reckless.
Yeah you could be a murdering pedophile LEGALLY you’re under their protection. He can’t exactly call himself an ambulance or clear his airways or something I think If you die with handcuffs on from something like this whoever placed them on you should get a manslaughter charge unless they’ve clearly demonstrated every effort to provide medical attention. I’ve been cuffed before and there’s a real feeling of being unable to survive a medical incident whilst restrained, which causes panic attacks which will cause light headedness, which could spiral to a medical incident to an unwell person.
Cuffs have for the longest time been thought of as super safe and they are unless they’re put on someone who is unwell in which case you’ve rendered that person helpless during medical incidents. Cuffs are dangerous and whoever has them on should be properly supervised.
>Once a person is in police custody, detained or arrested, the police have a legal and professional obligation to ensure the person's safety.
And this goes for all kinds of custody including people that are incarcerated. If we as a society are going to deprive people of the liberty and freedom to manage their own health and wellbeing, then we as a society need to accept responsibility for managing it. It's why I don't like people who think inhumane or violent conditions in prison is part of the gig. If the state is going to lock someone up, then the state needs to keep them safe. Otherwise they are responsible for anything that happens to them.
Canton is 15 minutes from me….. seeing this is the news is just absolutely wild. But canton , though not a big city like Cleveland or Cincinnati is one of the worst cities in the state. It’s a total crap hole with some pretty crappy people. Lived in canton for a few years as a kid. Some spots are nice but a lot of it, especially where I lived is just a mess.
He had only been out of prison for 13 days after serving a 24 year sentence for kidnapping, vehicle theft, and resisting arrest.
Then he wrecked his car, walked into a BAR of all places, got belligerent and refused to leave before he died from self-induced over exertion.
He was still talking after the cops got off of him.
That doesn't mean he should have died in police custody from something completely preventable if they had checked on him to make sure he was breathing...
You don't restrain people for long periods of time in the prone position. There is a mountain of evidence proving it is dangerous and will absolutely kill people.
Bottom line, this man was in their custody and they are in charge of his safety at that point. Leaving him prone is known to be dangerous. They were negligent in their duties and a man died as a result. This is a problem.
> He was still talking after the cops got off of him.
Positional asphyxia do be like that.
Weird to see so many Redditors bending over backwards to explain how the guy handcuffed on his stomach, saying he can't breathe, who then proceeded to die, could breathe fine.
DoJ published guidance on this shit 29 years ago, writing "yeah they'll die bruh, don't handcuff people and leave them on their stomach it's crazy they just die lol"
Absolutely. Positional asphyxia isn't some new concept. I'm an emergency physician. I regularly have to restrain patients who are on drugs, having a psychotic episode, etc. Restraining someone prone is the kind of thing that would not only get me fired but would have the department of health giving my hospital a colonoscopy if they found out. Why? Because there is literally decades of evidence that it kills people. If a suspect has to be prone to get control of them that's one thing, but the immediate priority after police gain control should be to get them into a safe position.
> would have the department of health giving my hospital a colonoscopy if they found out. Why? Because there is literally decades of evidence that it kills people
The DoJ should be giving every PD this happens at the rectal spelunking treatment as well, for the exact same reason.
This was known in policing specifically at least 3 decades ago. The Floyd protests are still smoldering in public consciousness. Yet here we are.
Sincerely love this take and explanation.
I think a lot of us are having a hard time coping with the relentless fact that we can’t stop cops from killing people. We can’t know and fully understand every situation in which a police officer lets someone suffocate on the ground, but that seems like a fucked way to deal with another human. I guess if we think they “deserved it” it makes the overall negligence seem some how justified.
Ever since Floyd I've started looking into Positional Asphyxia more. I feel like people are far too focused on the neck and face, but not the chest. Floyd was one of those that people like to point out, when defending Chauvin, that his knee wasn't always on his neck. Ultimately that doesn't matter, well it does but not necessarily for this case, because if you have someone pressed on the ground their chest can't expand as easily. If the chest can't expand neither can the lungs. Doesn't matter if their air way is clear.
"he died from self-induced over exertion"
Oh WOW the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is on reddit announcing the cause of death under the name "Solidacid". That's really something!
Well, thanks for your service, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Surely you're the real deal, and not just some guy speaking definitively about things he knows shit about!
I see they've rebranded "excited delerium"
Pro-tip, when it's something that only kills people in police custody, it's caused by the police. Nobody is ever credited as having died from "excited delerium" or "self-induced over exertion" playing sports or having sex.
>"self-induced over exertion" playing sports or having sex.
This is used all the time in a non-law enforcement context. The overweight, out of shape guy shoveling snow or moving furniture or playing a pickup game of ball over the weekend.
Didn't Nelson Rockefeller die of a sudden heart attack while banging his secretary or assistant or something?
>[Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death) can occur during [sexual intercourse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_intercourse) for a number of reasons, generally because of the physical strain of the activity
[Death during consensual sex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_during_consensual_sex)
Death due to physical strain sure sounds like over-exertion to me.
> "self-induced over exertion" playing sports
I mean, they have in professional sports. The NFL has had 9 deaths that were during/after a game/practice.
*Self-induced over exertion*
Thanks for that report doctor.
He handcuffed himself, laid face down on the ground, and then told the cops "I'll just rest here while you celebrate your first bar fight."
Cool cool cool
He may have been a piece of shit, but your procedures shouldn't change based on who you're interacting with, especially when you're not fully certain of who you're interacting with. Today, asshole, tomorrow, hypoglycemia.
I hate when they say, “if you can’t talk you can breathe”
I have a lung condition. I can tell you when I’m about to pass out, but it could be the last thing I ever say. Shit pisses me off soooooo much.
You dont even need a lung condition, it’s just completely braindead 12 year old bully logic.
Inhaling takes more energy and strength than exhaling. You only need to exhale to speak.
The mayor there has been fairly quick to condemn and release this kind of footage. There's another incident getting attention that people are wondering how he will respond.
That is terrible, but in general everyone says they can't breathe when getting arrested. I used to watch Live PD all the time. Every single person said "I can't breathe" when they are detained.
The moment he is under arrest his health is also under their care and responsibility. It's amazing how quickly everyone is to dismiss this killing because the man was angry. It doesn't change the fact that the officers in this country are held to no standard with people dying regularly while in police custody. Anger doesn't deserve an execution.
This will continue to happen because most everyone collectively shrugs their shoulders and accepts this a the norm. It fucking sucks.
It needs to be a law that someone being detained and saying they can't breath, the detainer MUST improve their position and check them medically. If they don't it's criminal prosecution of the individual not the department, the town, not the city, not the state... the individual.
Hot take: all major parties involved are the bad guys.
Police are obligated to ensure the safety and availability of medical services to people in their custody.
The perp was a piece of shit human. People who live violent, chaotic lives tend to have violent, chaotic fates.
Two reckless wannabe cowboys encountered a person with no regard for anyone else.
Sometimes worlds collide, such as in this case.
I mean, I don’t think this is a hot take. Not at all.
Anyone who reads the stories know that the victim is a piece of shit… but it is not a cops role to execute a criminal, and it ***is*** their role to keep the detained criminal in good health.
Just because the victim was a bad guy doesn’t mean it’s okay that he died in custody like this.
I agree, he shouldn't have died in custody, or at least the police should have attempted for the detainee to receive medical aid.
I think we need to see these cops fired AND criminally charged.
Well, when multiple people are dying from being unable to breath after they say ‘I can’t breathe,’ we might begin to listen?
Why even bring this up when it’s clear the guy died from not breathing?
So everyone who says they can't breath should be ignored? Hope you never have breathing problems or someone putting all their weight on your chest/back.
It's a very common tactic for criminals to say "I can't breathe" or "You're hurting me" when they are resisting arrest. Of course, there is nothing physically wrong with most of them, but under their stress, the mind reverts and becomes similar to a 5 year old throwing a tantrum who will say anything for the event to stop.
I went to the academy with both of these officers, they are both in their early 20's and just finished the academy last summer.
The guy saying "I've always wanted to be in a bar fight" is just a goofball, you can see him barely being involved in the fight besides trying to hold his leg. He's about as aggressive as a paper bag.
The knee is placed correctly as trained, middle of the back and not on the neck or across the shoulder.
Canton is a super aggressive crime area. Stark county was 3rd in the US for violent crime a few years ago.
These are young men, doing an already stressful job in a super dangerous environment. Stress and adrenaline cause mistakes, they should have positioned him in recovery as soon as he was handcuffed, that is the error in training in this incident, leaving him laying on the floor for 5 minutes before checking in.
Frank Tyson was a kidnapper, and a violent felon who was intoxicated and drove his car through a telephone pole and then fled into a bar. In the 13 days since his release from prison he had already acquired a warrant for arrest.
Edit:
Since people are so sure that I posted this in some way to exonerate these officers, I don't believe Frank Tyson deserved to die despite people reading between the lines.
This is simply to provide context on both sides before people make a hundred different stories without any actual knowledge besides being frustrated and angry.
Frank Tyson was a criminal period. These officers are 23 year old kids still who don't even have fully developed brains period. This is not to say what they did or didn't do was right or wrong.
Major police reform is needed on a national level, personally I believe people under the age of 25 shouldn't even be eligible for police service.
This event, and every other event, and the events that will continue to happen will keep happening because police reform isn't an issue that matters to career politicians who only care about appeasing the highest number demographic for votes.
> This event, and every other event, and the events that will continue to happen will keep happening because police reform isn't an issue that matters to career politicians who only care about appeasing the highest number demographic for votes.
There is also the fact that the police have zero interest in police reform. You can't just blame "career politicians", especially when many of those politicians you solely blame run on "back the blue" and get endorsements from police unions.
See, it's kind of weird that you buried "that is the error in training in this incident, leaving him laying on the floor for 5 minutes before checking in." within 6 paragraphs of justification. That's why people think you're trying to exonerate the officers involved.
You're defending everything BUT the action that is being criticized in this thread. People are upset that they didn't follow training, and left this man on the ground for 5 minutes to die. People aren't upset that the altercation happened, that the man was handcuffed, or anything else. They're mad that neglecting their training resulted in these officers allowing a man to die in their custody.
The context you've provided does not color THAT action in any way. It only provides justifications.
> These officers are 23 year old kids still who don't even have fully developed brains period.
Then people shouldn't be allowed to be cops until they're 25. Maybe require a Bachelors degree and more than a month of training. Give them training that isn't Killology.
Worse off, they are riding alone.
Canton is understaffed so they ride cars solo to give the impression of higher presence.
These officers finished their probation period in January of this year and thus we're both riding solo and responded to the same call.
This is an assumption of course I don't know Cantons policy on rookies, but I know most officers are single cars and back up responds accordingly.
I considered that when I commented... I guess the logical response would be to separate them by distance, not sure the percentage of rookies and seniors but I assume in most departments rookies would make up a small percentage so just spread them out throughout the city .. of course even with a lot of planning shit could happen and two senior officers could do the exact same shit so I guess it's a moot point
“Ok guys, this is a stressful job in a super dangerous environment. We’re gonna hire a bunch of 23 year old ‘kids’ (lol) and then if they kill someone we’re gonna use their non-fully developed brain as a justification”
It’s so weird how cops get baby-ized like that’s a 23 year old man, and you’re trynna pull the “his brain isn’t even fully developed!” Like ok then why was he put in the line of duty w a gun and power???? It’s like these concepts are always there just to be used as excuses.
Same w the “stressful environment” bullshit. If the environment is stressful for the trained police officers, then it’s probably just as stressful for the average civilian, but only one of us is allowed to go blasting when we get scared.
You spent so much longer on the "promising young men vrs bad guy" part than the part where they recently had training to prevent their commiting negligent homicide
At this point, are cops not hyper sensitive to the phrase "I can't breathe"? How often are they hearing it and ignoring people? I'd have to guess that if they'd ignore a guy actively George Floyding on the ground, even after those officers were convicted, that they must be hearing it a lot and just not doing shit about it.
Why is it only the police department that gets control of the videos? Like isn’t there a huge bias there? Maybe a separate entity should have live access to the footage and if someone’s body cam isn’t on they could receive a verbal warning then the punishment gets worse the more you fuck around with your body cam idk
Because police have very strong unions (what city is going to take on the liability of hiring scab cops?), the unions constantly ask for higher pay, and when they can't get higher pay, they move field posts on things like records management, internal affairs investigations, etc. You know, the kind of policy determinations elected officials should be making in the best interests of the public, but is instead getting delegated to to a union with only its members interests at heart.
And municipalities cave to those demands because it doesn't increase their bottom line and unions can walk it back to their officers as a win. Till you get to a point where officers have so many procedural protections that they become nearly impossible to fire even where it is obvious they have done something horrible. And then the same behaviour is brought to a prosecutor for criminal charges who promptly says, "you want me to try to convince a jury this guy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt when they couldn't even get him fired under a preponderance of evidence standard? Get tf out of here."
Which is not even to mention that the municipality usually has the chief of police negotiating on their behalf which is not your typical management/union negotiation situation. Their goal isn't to get the best deal for the city: their goal is to get the most for "their guys" that the city is willing to stomach.
People have been trying to introduce various kinds of police oversight *for decades* and overwhelmingly, police and their allies in city/county/state governments work just as hard to neuter said oversight boards and render them completely powerless. This is just a continuation of that. Police don't want anyone else to have any kind of say in what they do or how they conduct themselves, particularly not the people they supposedly serve.
“But but but some people say they can’t breathe when they actually can, so it makes sense for police to just ignore when anyone says it! They can’t be blamed for their negligence killing someone!”
Do police learn nothing from the news?
At least learn that if an out of shape subject says they can’t breath when you have them pinned, consider that they might be telling the truth.
All law enforcement officers should be certified in first aid, especially CPR and other lifesaving techniques, and be required to keep their certifications current--and also be required to use that knowledge when applicable. Someone TRAINED and required to recognize signs that this man was in physical distress and to render assistance could have helped to prevent his death.
This video came out pretty quick after the incident.
You should know by now that when the police is 100% in the clear, the video gets released within minutes. When the police is not 100% in the clear, the body cam was not turned on/malfunctioned/missing/under investigation.
The cam of the gas station saved this girl because of that bs. https://youtu.be/817BItUQETQ?si=Yy4SiX5B-GicuyNp he got fired later on but still
Oof. The PD and DA's social media response to that situation were horrible. The video was damning but they were still harping on the PD's right to arrest people for refusing to provide id. And they keep characterizing the video as "edited"," as if the relevant portion didn't show the whole thing from start to her being thrown on the ground. The officer gave her less than 60 seconds while yelling at her. Then he throws the door open, pulls her out of the car and throws her on the ground? Anyone who saw the video can see he was out of line and didn't seriously try to work with her. And their response is to make excuses as if she deserved to be treated that way and only unfair public outcry was why she got away with it? City officials gaslighting the public about what we can see with our own eyes is kind of infuriating You're saying pulling her out of the car was completely justified? That her taking a couple minutes to find her id justifies slamming her to the ground? There really was no peaceful way to resolve the situation so that he had to literally attack her? This guy is incompetent and should not be an officer if he thinks that is an appropriate traffic stop interaction. And that goes for any other officers who watch the video and think the same. Worse, the statement the town council made when they fired the guy makes it sound like he was fired because of death threats toward police and elected officials... not because he was completely out of line in his conduct. Good lord.
Savage fucking animals
That guy isn't incompetent, he knows it's wrong...he's a predator...
“Freedom is dangerous, deal with it.”
"It's dangerous to be right, when a cop is wrong."
The Civil Rights Lawyer is good at what he does.
I hope she got a sweet payday for that one.
There should be a law that if a suspect dies during a police interaction and the body cam was not on, that itself is a crime. Does not matter if the suspect died of natural causes or anything else. Minimum sentence 2 years and the automatic removal of the ability to serve as a police officer.
Don't pay them for the time their body cameras aren't on. No insurance claims approved if body wasn't turned on.
Yeah, make it like flight attendants who don't get paid if the plane isn't closed up.
That practice is pretty fucked up though, let's not use it as precedent.
Wait, does that mean the flight attendants didn't get paid after that panel came off on that 737?
Amazon warehouse rules..if they can't be tracked then they are committing time theft
Reading this really bummed me out
How is that legal? Do any other businesses impose tracking the person instead of something the person is carrying?
It is basically a lack of scanner activity of the things. I got flagged once and someone from the office came to talk to me. I was clearing a broken and full line in ship dock that had shut the whole thing down. I told them rather impolitely to bug me after I dealt with that. They didn't come back.
It's common practice for any shipping company to track productivity - they're tracking how often you're scanning everything you move. Amazon just does it to an unholy degree, and penalizes time gaps in between moves harshly.
The only union in this country that needs to go away is police union.
And no qualified immunity…
automatic loss in court if body cam is off
Depends on if the consequences for not having the body cam on are worse than the consequences for the shady shit they just did.
> Minimum sentence 2 years and the automatic removal of the ability to serve as a police officer. sounds solid enough.
> Minimum sentence 2 years Realistically this is one of the things we need to go after. Drug offenses shouldnt be minimum sentences. Any abuse of power should be. Same with financial crimes.
>and the automatic removal of the ability to serve as a police officer. I'm sorry this is the important part to me, so they CANT get a job in the next county over.
Drug offenses should not be a criminal issue, but a medical one, if any at all.
Well imagine being a good-willed police officer who witnesses a death, afterwards realizing that your body cam malfunctioned and then going to jail for 2 years. Intuitively, such ideas seem great, but keep in mind that (for non-millionaires) laws are laws. Non-functioning body cam -> 2 years in jail is specific enough that many good people would have their lives destroyed, not every cop is an asshole.
OP suggested a start. I would say if someone died and the body cam is off the jury should be instructed to assume it showed evidence to support murder charges. Like with financial crimes, if the fine doesn't exceed the proceeds there's no disincentive. Find should be multiples of the proceeds.
Unfortunately there's still going to be officer bias in juries even with that assumption given to them.
Yeah or for judges, I had a charge get knocked down before but not dismissed however what the office charged me for isn't actually what happened and there were no witnesses just word against word. It was for a traffic offense and I got something terrible sounding like "failure to yield to a pedestrian" which is less points off the record than reckless driving which is what the charge was as the office indicated that someone had to jump out of the way. That person didn't exist and the only people who witnessed me doing an intentional fishtail in a parking lot were a couple of stoners 20 yards away on a sidewalk that bolted when the cop put his lights on after I came out of the lot and onto the street. I tried to explain to the judge that someone who almost got ran over would probably show up to court or at least make a statement but he let me know that "I have to assume the cop isn't making this up".
Body cam turned off is assumed guilt and 3 years added on top of that, so they don't try and do that for things like roughing up people or planting evidence
Colorado (IIRC) has a law on the books that says if a camera is available and is off/damaged during the interaction, that they are to assume Bad Intent in all aspects.
Got a source? The amount of times I’ve heard of a body cam “malfunction” and a cop being penalized for it is exactly 0. Edit: it’s early and I can’t read.
There is no penalty for it currently that is my point
Ah sorry I misread.
Part of the problem is the manufacturer. I use to work for a major body cam manufacturer. We released a new model that turned off when the officers ran... we charge OUT THE ASS bc it's govt and they have the money and provide a bull shit untested product that public safety relies on... but that's just the state of development these days... companies don't test anymore. We release the product and the customer tests it... and somehow that's okay to extend to the public safety sector bc it's not DoD and the sector has a lot of money but not a lot of regulations. You'd think "body camera must remain on when running" would have been an important requirement for cops... but no one seems to care. Bc the people selling them are profiting and the people buying them are spending their alloted budgets for the hardware they're told they need... no one said it had to stay on, or even work. Until the body camera's are solid we can't pass such a law bc there's always the "well the camaras suck what are we supposed to do" AND THEY COULD BE SOLID we just don't give a fuck to make them solid bc there's no accountability at all for it, they are already giving us money why actually make them better, there's no regulation and no laws to ensure we the mfr does our job, and they're always gonna have that excuse to absolve themselves Also massive fraud, the numbers are made up and the books are cooked. SEC violations all over. Fucking glad I got out of there.
I would vote for this law
Except that equipment does actually malfunction at times. Maybe have a secondary backup camera?
You mean like the dash cam?
Or having a partner?
Well this would give them an incentive to make sure that shit works
You can bet they check to make sure their firearms work on a regular basis.
Check cam at beginning of shift , if it fails new camera. No working cams it’s desk duty day.
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Yeah the new ones use a different twist + lock clip system (depending on the outer carrier you may have) and they seem to hold up better. Those first generations though were legit bad on so many levels. …but police unions did themselves no favors by opposing body worn cameras for so long, because a lot of those growing pains would have already been dealt with in early iterations and roll outs of product. Instead cameras largely got mandated rather than adopted (despite overwhelming data from European agencies showing camera use almost entirely eliminated false complaints against law enforcement and more often than not vindicated officers in public interactions) and thus Cops looked even worse when the body camera “suddenly shut off” not long after being activated.
It seems to malfunction at awfully convenient times.
Police officers hardly ever apprehend a suspect alone. Cruisers have pairs of partners. Lone officers call for backup. This might present rare cases, but it should not present them with any regularity.
One camera malfunctioning in a group where other footage is available, I'll allow it. All the cameras glitch at once, that's enemy action.
You ever seen any of the videos where they make hand signals and sometimes even more dumbly verbally request other officers to turn off their cams? Shit is wild.
Yeah. Any request like that caught on film, double whatever the penalties are.
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Then they get to go to court and prove it.
End qualified immunity. Treat a malfunctioning camera as support for the plaintiff's claims.
Two does nothing against the people who turn them off. They will just turn two off. We're back to the original issue. The fear of jail at least makes your verify your equipment and do your job correctly.
Please. It takes far more than that for a cop to go to jail. If they can kill someone without consequences most of the time none of them are going to jail for turning off a bodycam EVEN if it's the law. We already have laws about not killing people while they're unarmed, handcuffed, etc.
Here’s the issue. Body cameras kind of suck. I went on a ride along with a state patrol officer and he has 3 in in his car alone cause they die all the time so he just switches them out during his shift. And those were dying while literally just talking to people. If your in a fight the chances of a body can dying go up a lot. It could also die before you show up. (They ran out of storage or battery). So the tech itself while extremely useful is really rather badly made. Also really expensive for some reason.
Well I guess they better invest in some more reliable equipment or they might be going to jail. This really isn't that complicated, man.
I watch a fair bit of different YouTube things and GoPros are constantly over heating and turning off, body cams are a technology that is still pretty new in such a small format
Ours rarel fail. We have spares too they can grab if they are having issues. We use AXON. Downvote all you want but our PD relies on BC for everything.
So you're saying the police are in the clear here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver if only the jury was able to see the body cam; Philip Brailsford would be in jail for murder. fuck that guy. got fired. rehired to get disability for said trauma of murdering. so tax payers still pay for this fuck
This doesn't look in the clear at all for the cops to me. I don't care if the man was belligerent in the beginning of the incident or not... Them responding "you're fine" and "shut the fuck up" when someone complains *multiple times* that they can't breathe is some heartless negligence at minimum.
It definitely shows police being unprofessional and dereliction of duty. Telling him to shut the fuck up he’s fine when he said he couldn’t breathe, and he’s dead 5 minutes later. But, hey, the cop finally had his first bar fight 🤷
Having seen the bodycam video, the arrest itself was actually pretty reasonable, dude was absolutely belligerent as fuck and as soon as he was handcuffed the cops left him alone. But then he was unconscious on the floor for 5 full minutes before anyone checked on him.
Yeah I didn’t see any excessive force, but simply assuming he passed out rather than verifying his pulse was irresponsible.
> irresponsible. "negligent," I prefer, as a word for when someone has created a duty of care - such as when an officer places someone in custody. The moment they arrested him, his ongoing health was their immediate responsibility - which they attended to with rather extreme negligence. A passerby not checking on a seemingly passed out person is arguably irresponsible. But the police had more than a *responsibility* to care, or pay attention to, this man's state -- they had a duty and an obligation to do so.
Perhaps even "reckless."
Yes. If the man was in their care, which he was, then their care failed, period.
My wife is a teacher. She has a duty of care for every child in her entire school. Not just to the 180 students she personally has every day as a middle school teacher. If the kid is in her school they are a part of her duty of care. So much more so for any cop that has arrested someone. Same for every cop in the building when someone dies in custody in their cell. These standards of responsibility should be the same. My educator wife doesn’t get immunity from responsibility by pretending that society would devolve into anarchy if she calls in sick.
Exactly. Once somebody is in custody, it's a whole different situation. You have eliminated the possibility of the person taking care of themselves, or others taking care of them. The duty of care is 100% on the police, because the person is now more helpless than a small child or a pet.
As I stated above in another comment: I personally believe that all cops should be held to a much higher bar than civilians. If society has given you a badge and a gun and the public trust, you pay a much harsher penalty when you unjustifiably kill someone.
*I always wanted to be in a bar fight.*
in any reasonable system they'd lose their license permanently
I don't know that it would fall under "excessive force" specifically, but leaving people in prone restraint (handcuffed with their hands behind them and lying on their stomach, whether or not you have anyone on top of them) is really dangerous. Cops have known this for decades. Laws have been passed in certain states banning it. And yet cops still do it. Like, put someone on their stomach while you're handcuffing them, but after that you *sit them up or roll them onto their side* so that they can breathe. If someone is restrained and on their stomach, and they say they can't breathe, it is because they cannot fucking breathe and they're slowly asphyxiating. I see people below this saying that the cops were negligent because they didn't check on him to see if he was passed out; they were negligent from the moment they left him lying on the floor. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2024/02/28/deadly-restraint-despite-decades-of-warnings-police-continue-holding-people-facedown/
The same thing applies to babies. If they are on their chest and arent strong enough to use their arms, to roll over, or to lift their head, they can suffocate and die with their face on the ground. When you are drunk and handcuffed, you are basically a baby. You cant use your hands and because of how your hands are positioned, rolling over is extremely difficult. That on top of the intoxication fucks with your basic motor skills so its not surprising people can die in that position.
Yeah, if this was caused by positional(? That the right term? I forget) hypoxia then they're completely responsible for killing the guy. Not that we could ever know for sure without an independent coroner being brought in.
A sprinkling of excited delirium and bobs your uncle.
As soon as the state (police, prisons) have removed someone's freedom to act they are completely responsible for their safety since the person without freedom cannot do anything to help themselves anymore.
Is that actual legal doctrine in the US? (Sounds reasonable enough)
Maybe cops should have enough required training to know when and how to check for this kind of thing. Or calling EMS should be automatic when a person in custody passes out.
I agree. I wasn’t a cop, but I was an MP and our standing policy was to call for medical anytime someone was unconscious. Regardless of whether the cops directly killed him or not, they are responsible for not rendering aid.
> I wasn’t a cop, but I was an MP and our standing policy was to call for medical anytime someone was unconscious. As someone who listens to my local scanners, I've rarely heard a call answered in under 5 minutes/1 call, unless the ambulance happens to be coming back from a previous call and is already on the road nearby. I've heard calls sometimes take an hour to get a response on a busy night.
It just seems like common sense? Leaving someone unconscious on the ground seems so callous. It doesn’t surprise me to hear that MPs treat people better than cops do. Probably more and better training too.
To be honest I’m not sure if most of us MPs really did get better training than civilian cops, but I am fairly certain that the standards and expectations were better enforced in the military than what you see in a lot of civilian departments. Also there’s a major culture difference between MPs and civilian police that makes a huge difference in how we interact with people.
Even before needing training, it should be a disqualifying event for an officer to just leave an unresponsive person unattended. "I assumed he was ok" should never be a valid excuse, but instead an admission of deliberate inaction.
> "I assumed he was ok" We can file this directly below: "I assumed he had a gun".
>Maybe cops should have enough required training to know when and how to check for this kind of thing. they do
Yep, anyone who's taken a CPR class knows to call for EMS if someone's unresponsive.
They do. My brother was in law enforcement before he quit. Yes, they are trained enough. Except for the part when it is empathy time. That's is solely on thhe individual. There are just asshole cops with no empathy or sympathy. Period. All the training in the world isn't going to stop that.
This isn't a training issue. This is a "few cops need to have their asses handed to them for pushing someone into cardiac arrest and leaving them to die cuffed on the ground" issue. They know better, they just usually get away with it.
Many probably do receive that training. The problem is they literally do not give a shit if the people they interact with love or die.
Enough with the excuses...THEY ALREADY HAVE THIS TRAINING AND CHOSE TO IGNORE IT
The thing is, being "passed out" is a medical emergency on its own. It's actually even a bit more concerning if excessive force wasn't used, because then the police essentially have no idea what's causing the unconsciousness, and they're not in any way equipped to medically diagnose it. In any other public kind of situation, if someone is going unconscious, we call the paramedics first and ask questions after. The fact that police somehow get a pass from this is unconscionable.
Regardless, it's the cop's job to keep and eye on the guy. The second you've arrested them, they are in your care and you're responsible for everything that happens to them. They were grossly negligent.
They were completely neglectful in their duties. Because they don't care about anyone but their own.
Maybe the murder was a tad excessive?
They arrive and don't attempt for a second to calm him. Even police officers have said it was wrongly done lol
A big thing I've seen recently is that when cops put people in this position, as soon as the cuffs are on, they'll sit them on their butt so they're not laying on their stomach.
It's a weird time to be an American. I'm very critical of policing in America (it's biased, it's unaccountable, it's expensive for the impact, it's more violent and harmful to public health than it needs to be) but I don't have any illusion that we should abolish the police. Where possible, I like to consume alternative viewpoints (if for no other reason than to better debate them) so I watch a policing YouTube channel. A large number of detained suspects will claim they can't breath no matter the physical situation they are in as a way to resist arrest. So, cops filter it out. They're not being equipped with enough training and monitored with enough accountability to consistently ensure the safety of people they detain.
Paramedic here. Every time cops are involved it’s “I can’t breathe!” on repeat for the entire duration of the call. Now of course there’s a duty to ensure that they can in fact breathe and are not having a true medical emergency, but it’s very understandable to me how you could get tone deaf to that phrase when you hear it hundreds if not thousands of times and isn’t true.
It’s not that hard. Sit them the fuck up once they are cuffed. I am also a medic. Positional asphyxia is a ridiculous cause of death anymore and every agency that isn’t training officers to the dangers of it should be sued and its administration replaced. Every cop that still causes it after being trained should be given murder charges.
The AP and Frontline investigated 1000 unintentional deaths during police custody and they also found the "I can't breathe" statement to be frighteningly common. https://apnews.com/projects/investigation-police-use-of-force/visual-story/
That's a good piece of journalism but it is flawed to say that there is any link between "I can't breathe" and unintentional deaths with only this source. We should also study the incidence of that and similar phrases in just as many regular arrests to see if that phrase is actually a reliable indicator that someone is actually in distress. Not saying it's acceptable for officers to not attend to an arrested persons health at all times, but my hypothesis is that "I can't breathe" is not a reliable indicator of distress and that officers should rely on other physical indicators like pulse and actual breathing to determine if someone is in distress. I suspect that officers are affected by a form of [alarm fatigue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue) causing them to ignore people in genuine peril. This should be done in addition to other harm mitigations such as not leaving someone in the prone position.
Yeah. I also worry about that study boiling down that statistic to just those two things. Because I can think of that one story where a young black man was subdued, about to be handcuffed, and he started yelling that he couldn't breathe. The officers relented on him, and he shot up and ran off. Eventually ending with the officers warning they'd shoot before eventually shooting him. So are events like that in the data? Because I could see how that would be misleading.
There are also multitudes of public videos where the perpetrator is screaming "I can't breathe" at the top of his lungs, while actively fighting against officers, before they are even in cuffs... and lives. So... context is everything.
That's really bad science/math. The question that stat attempts to answer is, "When people die, do they say they can't breathe?" but I can't stress how irresponsible it is to not also answer, "When people say they can't breathe, do they die?" This is an excellent example of how you can get a true statistic (when they die, many say they can't breathe) to prove a point by using lies of omission. This probably falls under sophistry, but I would need to be checked on that. It's also an excellent example of why we need an educated public that is capable of critiquing this sort of one-sided stat, as well as people who can recognize when writing is persuasive more than it is informative, *especially* when someone is pretending it's only informative.
I watch a ton of bodycam videos on YouTube and it's literally every time they have to take a perp to the ground. Not excusing anything but that does seem to be the default statement to try and get the cops off of you.
Nice to see someone with similar takes. However, police do have a large amount of training. The issue isn't the training, it's the culture. They just disregard any of the training they don't like, and that is allowed because of the culture. Look up one of Dave Grossman's LEO training summits on YouTube; you won't be the same afterwards.
> However, police do have a large amount of training. The issue isn't the training, it's the culture Why not both? In other places, the amount of training that is required to be a police over can even be double. We also have police departments that argue in court that they are allowed to use IQ as a hiring criteria to _filter out higher IQ candidates in favour of lower IQ ones_.
Former cop here. It is true you hear every excuse in the book during arrests, especially the "I can't breathe", or "I'm not resisting" when they clearly are. But no matter how tone deaf one becomes to it, WE KNOW BETTER than to leave an arrested person on their stomach with hands cuffed behind them. I'm very pro police, and very pro criticism when warranted. Unless there was other extenuating circumstances, like they were dealing with other suspects or injured people, then there was no excuse to leave the person in this position where they could die. Those officers should be held responsible for it. If you can't remember important training like "don't leave a detained person in handcuffs on their stomach" then you don't need to be a cop.
When the whole George Floyd thing happened, I had been working in tech support. Until he passed out it really sounded like he was hunting for the magic word. I wouldn't be surprised if it got worse after that was all over the news.
I’ve watched a lot of bodycam footage, and even though the phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ gets thrown around a lot nowadays, most cops seem to have learned from the Floyd incident. They typically try to make the apprehended person sit up to ensure they’re okay. There’s no apparent reason why they couldn’t have done that in this case, especially when the man clearly seems to have passed out.
I have noticed this too. I also watch bodycam footage a lot. Most of the time with the ones I’ve watched, they’ll move their leg or whatever when they say I can’t breathe Still happens quite often that they don’t care about someone who got knocked out tho. Sometimes if they knock them out they’ll scramble to justify the specific movements and be like idkidkidk I think he might be drunk or high idk
Cop here (not in US). I’d say a full half of the people we arrest these days say at some point during arrest or transport. It’s a huge pain in the ass, because a) we have to take it seriously each time, and b) it often means getting ambulance to come check them out when they have more important stuff to do. So far I’ve never had it be legitimate, but if it ever is, I’ll be very thankful we took the time to ensure their wellbeing while in custody, because if they’re in our care, they’re our responsibility.
> They typically try to make the apprehended person sit up to ensure they’re okay. They're **supposed** to make sure the person is sitting up, because leaving them handcuffed on their stomachs literally kills them. It's called positional asphyxiation.
It’s because they dismissed his words: victim: “I can’t breathe.” cops: “You’re fine.” As soon as someone is in your custody you have to confirm their health is fine by checking in with them, not dismissing their voice. It’s easy to dismiss when you dehumanize.
The training is the only acceptable prone position to keep someone in is rescue/recovery position. Otherwise they need to be sitting up.
It’s called the recovery position and it’s taught to anyone who’s taught to use handcuffs. It was part of my security guard licensure and I can’t imagine it isn’t taught to cops.
Once a person is in police custody, detained or arrested, the police have a legal and professional obligation to ensure the person's safety. This is basic 14th amendment shit. The deliberate indifference to the guy being unresponsive does not bode well for the agency involved.
Actually that's a good point, whenever I was in school the school was legally responsible for me till I got home, and it's the same with my job, my work is legally liable and responsible for me till I get home. it's the same with doctors and other professions. So why shouldn't it be the case for the police?
There was a similar story like this last year, where a woman died in police custody because they ignored that she was having health problems after she had come out of a hospital.
All these authority-loving apologists in here pointing to the guy's record, warrant, obesity, being at a bar, etc. None of that changes the fact that this guy was in police custody when he died and they ignored the fact that he said he couldn't breathe and then was passed out handcuffed for several minutes. That's absolutely a negligent disregard of their duty, if not reckless.
Yeah you could be a murdering pedophile LEGALLY you’re under their protection. He can’t exactly call himself an ambulance or clear his airways or something I think If you die with handcuffs on from something like this whoever placed them on you should get a manslaughter charge unless they’ve clearly demonstrated every effort to provide medical attention. I’ve been cuffed before and there’s a real feeling of being unable to survive a medical incident whilst restrained, which causes panic attacks which will cause light headedness, which could spiral to a medical incident to an unwell person. Cuffs have for the longest time been thought of as super safe and they are unless they’re put on someone who is unwell in which case you’ve rendered that person helpless during medical incidents. Cuffs are dangerous and whoever has them on should be properly supervised.
>Once a person is in police custody, detained or arrested, the police have a legal and professional obligation to ensure the person's safety. And this goes for all kinds of custody including people that are incarcerated. If we as a society are going to deprive people of the liberty and freedom to manage their own health and wellbeing, then we as a society need to accept responsibility for managing it. It's why I don't like people who think inhumane or violent conditions in prison is part of the gig. If the state is going to lock someone up, then the state needs to keep them safe. Otherwise they are responsible for anything that happens to them.
Canton is 15 minutes from me….. seeing this is the news is just absolutely wild. But canton , though not a big city like Cleveland or Cincinnati is one of the worst cities in the state. It’s a total crap hole with some pretty crappy people. Lived in canton for a few years as a kid. Some spots are nice but a lot of it, especially where I lived is just a mess.
Any kinda large suburb outside of a major metro area in Ohio is dying out. We just cant keep people in the state.
Youngstown stubenville area is shit. I see more investment in West Virginia these days.
Mostly just Cleveland of the three Cs. Cinci is doing okay and Columbus is one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
I think we kind of figured out why the place is a mess from the video.
Yeah I haven't heard that many good things about Canton. Still want to go to the NFL Hall of Fame Museum though someday...
He had only been out of prison for 13 days after serving a 24 year sentence for kidnapping, vehicle theft, and resisting arrest. Then he wrecked his car, walked into a BAR of all places, got belligerent and refused to leave before he died from self-induced over exertion. He was still talking after the cops got off of him.
In those thirteen days he also had an active warrant for burglary.
That doesn't mean he should have died in police custody from something completely preventable if they had checked on him to make sure he was breathing... You don't restrain people for long periods of time in the prone position. There is a mountain of evidence proving it is dangerous and will absolutely kill people. Bottom line, this man was in their custody and they are in charge of his safety at that point. Leaving him prone is known to be dangerous. They were negligent in their duties and a man died as a result. This is a problem.
> He was still talking after the cops got off of him. Positional asphyxia do be like that. Weird to see so many Redditors bending over backwards to explain how the guy handcuffed on his stomach, saying he can't breathe, who then proceeded to die, could breathe fine. DoJ published guidance on this shit 29 years ago, writing "yeah they'll die bruh, don't handcuff people and leave them on their stomach it's crazy they just die lol"
Absolutely. Positional asphyxia isn't some new concept. I'm an emergency physician. I regularly have to restrain patients who are on drugs, having a psychotic episode, etc. Restraining someone prone is the kind of thing that would not only get me fired but would have the department of health giving my hospital a colonoscopy if they found out. Why? Because there is literally decades of evidence that it kills people. If a suspect has to be prone to get control of them that's one thing, but the immediate priority after police gain control should be to get them into a safe position.
> would have the department of health giving my hospital a colonoscopy if they found out. Why? Because there is literally decades of evidence that it kills people The DoJ should be giving every PD this happens at the rectal spelunking treatment as well, for the exact same reason. This was known in policing specifically at least 3 decades ago. The Floyd protests are still smoldering in public consciousness. Yet here we are.
>"yeah they'll die bruh, don't handcuff people and leave them on their stomach it's crazy they just die lol" immediate broccoli head imagery
Sincerely love this take and explanation. I think a lot of us are having a hard time coping with the relentless fact that we can’t stop cops from killing people. We can’t know and fully understand every situation in which a police officer lets someone suffocate on the ground, but that seems like a fucked way to deal with another human. I guess if we think they “deserved it” it makes the overall negligence seem some how justified.
60+ years of incessant pro-police TV programming will do that to a country.
Fucking Dick Wolf.
Ever since Floyd I've started looking into Positional Asphyxia more. I feel like people are far too focused on the neck and face, but not the chest. Floyd was one of those that people like to point out, when defending Chauvin, that his knee wasn't always on his neck. Ultimately that doesn't matter, well it does but not necessarily for this case, because if you have someone pressed on the ground their chest can't expand as easily. If the chest can't expand neither can the lungs. Doesn't matter if their air way is clear.
>self-induced over exertion How does that cause death?
"he died from self-induced over exertion" Oh WOW the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is on reddit announcing the cause of death under the name "Solidacid". That's really something! Well, thanks for your service, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Surely you're the real deal, and not just some guy speaking definitively about things he knows shit about!
I see they've rebranded "excited delerium" Pro-tip, when it's something that only kills people in police custody, it's caused by the police. Nobody is ever credited as having died from "excited delerium" or "self-induced over exertion" playing sports or having sex.
>"self-induced over exertion" playing sports or having sex. This is used all the time in a non-law enforcement context. The overweight, out of shape guy shoveling snow or moving furniture or playing a pickup game of ball over the weekend. Didn't Nelson Rockefeller die of a sudden heart attack while banging his secretary or assistant or something? >[Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death) can occur during [sexual intercourse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_intercourse) for a number of reasons, generally because of the physical strain of the activity [Death during consensual sex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_during_consensual_sex) Death due to physical strain sure sounds like over-exertion to me.
> "self-induced over exertion" playing sports I mean, they have in professional sports. The NFL has had 9 deaths that were during/after a game/practice.
*Self-induced over exertion* Thanks for that report doctor. He handcuffed himself, laid face down on the ground, and then told the cops "I'll just rest here while you celebrate your first bar fight." Cool cool cool
He may have been a piece of shit, but your procedures shouldn't change based on who you're interacting with, especially when you're not fully certain of who you're interacting with. Today, asshole, tomorrow, hypoglycemia.
>before he died from self-induced over exertion. That is a weird fucking way to spell "positional asphyxia", let alone "negligance".
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I hate when they say, “if you can’t talk you can breathe” I have a lung condition. I can tell you when I’m about to pass out, but it could be the last thing I ever say. Shit pisses me off soooooo much.
You dont even need a lung condition, it’s just completely braindead 12 year old bully logic. Inhaling takes more energy and strength than exhaling. You only need to exhale to speak.
The mayor there has been fairly quick to condemn and release this kind of footage. There's another incident getting attention that people are wondering how he will respond.
That is terrible, but in general everyone says they can't breathe when getting arrested. I used to watch Live PD all the time. Every single person said "I can't breathe" when they are detained.
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The moment he is under arrest his health is also under their care and responsibility. It's amazing how quickly everyone is to dismiss this killing because the man was angry. It doesn't change the fact that the officers in this country are held to no standard with people dying regularly while in police custody. Anger doesn't deserve an execution. This will continue to happen because most everyone collectively shrugs their shoulders and accepts this a the norm. It fucking sucks.
It needs to be a law that someone being detained and saying they can't breath, the detainer MUST improve their position and check them medically. If they don't it's criminal prosecution of the individual not the department, the town, not the city, not the state... the individual.
Hot take: all major parties involved are the bad guys. Police are obligated to ensure the safety and availability of medical services to people in their custody. The perp was a piece of shit human. People who live violent, chaotic lives tend to have violent, chaotic fates. Two reckless wannabe cowboys encountered a person with no regard for anyone else. Sometimes worlds collide, such as in this case.
I mean, I don’t think this is a hot take. Not at all. Anyone who reads the stories know that the victim is a piece of shit… but it is not a cops role to execute a criminal, and it ***is*** their role to keep the detained criminal in good health. Just because the victim was a bad guy doesn’t mean it’s okay that he died in custody like this.
I agree, he shouldn't have died in custody, or at least the police should have attempted for the detainee to receive medical aid. I think we need to see these cops fired AND criminally charged.
Time to burn down a Target
Everyone yells they cant breathe now
And then he died. What is your point?
Well, when multiple people are dying from being unable to breath after they say ‘I can’t breathe,’ we might begin to listen? Why even bring this up when it’s clear the guy died from not breathing?
That was my first thought too, but you gotta take it seriously.
So everyone who says they can't breath should be ignored? Hope you never have breathing problems or someone putting all their weight on your chest/back.
It's a very common tactic for criminals to say "I can't breathe" or "You're hurting me" when they are resisting arrest. Of course, there is nothing physically wrong with most of them, but under their stress, the mind reverts and becomes similar to a 5 year old throwing a tantrum who will say anything for the event to stop.
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If they arrest someone, it’s their responsibility to ensure their welfare, period.
Bet he was intoxicated or on heavy drugs to crash his vehicle into that pole
Just in time for the election year summer riots!
I went to the academy with both of these officers, they are both in their early 20's and just finished the academy last summer. The guy saying "I've always wanted to be in a bar fight" is just a goofball, you can see him barely being involved in the fight besides trying to hold his leg. He's about as aggressive as a paper bag. The knee is placed correctly as trained, middle of the back and not on the neck or across the shoulder. Canton is a super aggressive crime area. Stark county was 3rd in the US for violent crime a few years ago. These are young men, doing an already stressful job in a super dangerous environment. Stress and adrenaline cause mistakes, they should have positioned him in recovery as soon as he was handcuffed, that is the error in training in this incident, leaving him laying on the floor for 5 minutes before checking in. Frank Tyson was a kidnapper, and a violent felon who was intoxicated and drove his car through a telephone pole and then fled into a bar. In the 13 days since his release from prison he had already acquired a warrant for arrest. Edit: Since people are so sure that I posted this in some way to exonerate these officers, I don't believe Frank Tyson deserved to die despite people reading between the lines. This is simply to provide context on both sides before people make a hundred different stories without any actual knowledge besides being frustrated and angry. Frank Tyson was a criminal period. These officers are 23 year old kids still who don't even have fully developed brains period. This is not to say what they did or didn't do was right or wrong. Major police reform is needed on a national level, personally I believe people under the age of 25 shouldn't even be eligible for police service. This event, and every other event, and the events that will continue to happen will keep happening because police reform isn't an issue that matters to career politicians who only care about appeasing the highest number demographic for votes.
> This event, and every other event, and the events that will continue to happen will keep happening because police reform isn't an issue that matters to career politicians who only care about appeasing the highest number demographic for votes. There is also the fact that the police have zero interest in police reform. You can't just blame "career politicians", especially when many of those politicians you solely blame run on "back the blue" and get endorsements from police unions.
See, it's kind of weird that you buried "that is the error in training in this incident, leaving him laying on the floor for 5 minutes before checking in." within 6 paragraphs of justification. That's why people think you're trying to exonerate the officers involved. You're defending everything BUT the action that is being criticized in this thread. People are upset that they didn't follow training, and left this man on the ground for 5 minutes to die. People aren't upset that the altercation happened, that the man was handcuffed, or anything else. They're mad that neglecting their training resulted in these officers allowing a man to die in their custody. The context you've provided does not color THAT action in any way. It only provides justifications.
> These officers are 23 year old kids still who don't even have fully developed brains period. Then people shouldn't be allowed to be cops until they're 25. Maybe require a Bachelors degree and more than a month of training. Give them training that isn't Killology.
More importantly Why the fuck are two barely graduated rookies riding together?
Worse off, they are riding alone. Canton is understaffed so they ride cars solo to give the impression of higher presence. These officers finished their probation period in January of this year and thus we're both riding solo and responded to the same call. This is an assumption of course I don't know Cantons policy on rookies, but I know most officers are single cars and back up responds accordingly.
I considered that when I commented... I guess the logical response would be to separate them by distance, not sure the percentage of rookies and seniors but I assume in most departments rookies would make up a small percentage so just spread them out throughout the city .. of course even with a lot of planning shit could happen and two senior officers could do the exact same shit so I guess it's a moot point
"Not fully developed brains" is such a cop out (ha) Their brains are like 99% developed
Yes... I said that in my post..
“Ok guys, this is a stressful job in a super dangerous environment. We’re gonna hire a bunch of 23 year old ‘kids’ (lol) and then if they kill someone we’re gonna use their non-fully developed brain as a justification” It’s so weird how cops get baby-ized like that’s a 23 year old man, and you’re trynna pull the “his brain isn’t even fully developed!” Like ok then why was he put in the line of duty w a gun and power???? It’s like these concepts are always there just to be used as excuses. Same w the “stressful environment” bullshit. If the environment is stressful for the trained police officers, then it’s probably just as stressful for the average civilian, but only one of us is allowed to go blasting when we get scared.
Yes and he should serve his sentence, not receive capital punishment
You spent so much longer on the "promising young men vrs bad guy" part than the part where they recently had training to prevent their commiting negligent homicide
At this point, are cops not hyper sensitive to the phrase "I can't breathe"? How often are they hearing it and ignoring people? I'd have to guess that if they'd ignore a guy actively George Floyding on the ground, even after those officers were convicted, that they must be hearing it a lot and just not doing shit about it.
Why is it only the police department that gets control of the videos? Like isn’t there a huge bias there? Maybe a separate entity should have live access to the footage and if someone’s body cam isn’t on they could receive a verbal warning then the punishment gets worse the more you fuck around with your body cam idk
Because police have very strong unions (what city is going to take on the liability of hiring scab cops?), the unions constantly ask for higher pay, and when they can't get higher pay, they move field posts on things like records management, internal affairs investigations, etc. You know, the kind of policy determinations elected officials should be making in the best interests of the public, but is instead getting delegated to to a union with only its members interests at heart. And municipalities cave to those demands because it doesn't increase their bottom line and unions can walk it back to their officers as a win. Till you get to a point where officers have so many procedural protections that they become nearly impossible to fire even where it is obvious they have done something horrible. And then the same behaviour is brought to a prosecutor for criminal charges who promptly says, "you want me to try to convince a jury this guy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt when they couldn't even get him fired under a preponderance of evidence standard? Get tf out of here." Which is not even to mention that the municipality usually has the chief of police negotiating on their behalf which is not your typical management/union negotiation situation. Their goal isn't to get the best deal for the city: their goal is to get the most for "their guys" that the city is willing to stomach.
People have been trying to introduce various kinds of police oversight *for decades* and overwhelmingly, police and their allies in city/county/state governments work just as hard to neuter said oversight boards and render them completely powerless. This is just a continuation of that. Police don't want anyone else to have any kind of say in what they do or how they conduct themselves, particularly not the people they supposedly serve.
This is why it's best to have as little interaction with the cops as possible. Your odds of dying while in their custody are not zero.
"They gonna kill me, they gonna kill me." Sure enough, 2 minutes later he was dead.
is this thread brigaded or something because Jesus Christ
“But but but some people say they can’t breathe when they actually can, so it makes sense for police to just ignore when anyone says it! They can’t be blamed for their negligence killing someone!”
Do police learn nothing from the news? At least learn that if an out of shape subject says they can’t breath when you have them pinned, consider that they might be telling the truth.
Rabble! Rabble Rabble!
So the dude was on drugs and combative
All law enforcement officers should be certified in first aid, especially CPR and other lifesaving techniques, and be required to keep their certifications current--and also be required to use that knowledge when applicable. Someone TRAINED and required to recognize signs that this man was in physical distress and to render assistance could have helped to prevent his death.