Very disturbing...one of our frequent psych patients (d/c'd) was picked up by the police. For what, I don't know. But I've never known the guy to assaultive. Agitated at times, yes. Assaultive, no.
Police apparently had him and he got agitated. He was Taser'd a few times and died when he got to our hospital.
This is the fourth time *this year* that police in our area have ended up killing a psych patient. Mostly from Tasering, once from being 'restrained' according to the news.
I just think police need some training on dealing with mentally ill people. This is a crying shame. Mentally ill and agitated is not the same as criminal!
did he have a cardiac hx? how is a police officer supposed to know this ?
I am sorry that this person died; but officers have a right to defend themselves.
You cannot be serious. Four deaths this year alone, and that's OK? Sounds like these officers need some serious remedial training on dealing with mentally unstable people. Four deaths from Tasers is excessive, to say the least.
Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.
One thing that I have observed in my years in the ER is that psych patients typically respond differently to nurses than they do the police. Especially when they have paranoid delusions that the police, CIA, FBI are out to get them. I have also observed many of these same patients exhibit what seems to be super-human strength.
I too would like to see a link to an atricle that specifically refers to the individual incident.
Why are you assuming there is a cardiac hx and that the police were just defending themselves? He was already in custody. Not that that excludes the possibility that they were defending themselves, but you'd think a station full of cops could subdue someone before tasering. We do it all the time at work. Doesn't 4 deaths of psych patients by cops since August (that we KNOW of) seem a little excessive to you?
2 years ago I did a 2 night shift 'ride alongs' with local police. Even then, I saw a few things that seemed excessively forceful.
And my whole point here was that cops SHOULD have training on dealing with psych patients. It certainly involves a good chunk of their job.
Why are you assuming that the cops killed him?
You seem to be more aware of this person medical hx, why don't you tell us more?
What psych meds was this person on?
What are the side-effects of some of his meds?
Are you 100 percent sure this pt and the others who have passed away, were taking their meds at the time they were in contact w/the police in your area.
There are so many unanswered questions here...
This case has everything going for it except the facts.
You have good cops and you have bad cops. You have good nurses and you have bad nurses.
Sometimes you don't have enough cops at one time in the station to subdue a suspect. Just like sometimes units do not have enough staff to subdue someone at a hospital. So, what are your options? to tase or not to tase?
Was the individual in this case trying to reach for the officers gun?
My point here is that we do not know what went on in the station or anywhere else. We were not there.
My brother became a cop a little over 2 years ago. Their training did include dealing with psych patients. He knows more about them than I do at this point. One of the specific things they are aware of is that psych patients will often react differently to cops than they will to healthcare providers though like babynurselsa pointed out. They may be kittens to nurses but deadly to officers.
Well done! Those were exactly the points I was going to address! Excellent!
Lurksalot is biased, sure she/he wants to see his/her spouse at the end of the day. I imagine, though, that so did the patient's family want to see him, too.
And jut to humor him/her, here's an article from yesterday:
By the way, this article only mentions 3 deaths. The fourth to which I referred was at a juvenile detention center in another county.
Quite a thread here. I just wanted to add a few observations. Of the three deaths mentioned in the article, one person was not listed as tased and another one was tased several days before he died in a restraint chair. This article was not even listed until page 4 of the thread.
I think tasers are a valuable tool for police as long as they are not misused just as handcuffs, handguns, batons, and pepper spray are valuable tools when not misused. However, for those who absolutely don't like tasers consider the alternative. If an officer is facing someone acting irratically armed with a knife, he'd just have to shoot him. Shooting is a little messier and has a higher likelyhood of being fatal. Oh well.
Here's an article about a homeless man who died in a scuffle with police. Perhaps police should not scuffle with suspects anymore. There are alternatives to scuffling.
There are problems when police have to deal with mentally ill suspects. "One of the deficiencies with mentally ill people is that they don't make good judgment calls. If a corrections officer gives them orders, they're not going to respond like another inmate would. They may take those orders as a threat, and then a fight may take place and quickly turn violent."
Just a note here, failure to cooperate with an order does not mean a prisoner is mentally ill. He may be on drugs, alcohol, or have no respect for authority.
Maybe the psych nurses can help me with a question. How long does it take to make an accurate diagnosis on a new patient? Would a cop on the street have enough time to make an accurate determination even if he had the necessary training?
I do think we should demand a psych workup on everyone who is taken to jail. It won't hurt the sane ones and could help those who need it.
I think some people who have family in law enforcement are too quick to get defensive and arrogant and jump on a high horse when it is suggested there may be flaws in the way the legal system operates.
Well, sorry. There are flaws in just about every field including nursing AND law enforcement, and I don't blame the OP for wanting to bring light to this issue. Progess is not made by people who sit by and takes whatever comes, and we should put our arrogance and pride away and strive to make things better. I am thankful for cops, but I believe law enforcement is an area that should require IQ tests to become a cop. Cops should have a minimum IQ of 120 (and that standard could not be met by having two of them in the car).
Perhaps... but maybe that's no different from nurses and their families. I do sometimes get offended at the suggestion that my brother lacks training or intelligence. That happens when people say "police officers should get this training" when they don't know what kind of training police officers do get or when they say "the police should have done this..." when they don't know the specifics of the situation. Substitute nurse for police officer and you might get a little defensive too. I don't think it's arrogant or defensive to ask that people not generalize about all cops the way they do. I have no problem with people saying "Maybe SOME police forces need to provide more training" or "maybe this police force could have done something differently like....". I do think that some people tend to reflexively blame cops before getting the whole story because of their life experiences. If I reflexively give them the benefit of the doubt because of my life experiences, is that so wrong?
I too am a nurse in Pensacola Florida where this event occurred on June 15th. I don't know how to link you to the local newspapers website but look up the Pensacola News Journal on the web and go to their site and read the stories from the June 15th and 16th about the incident. The inmate didn't die immediately from the 2 Taserings but continued to struggle and when jailers(sp?) finally subdued him he was taken to a local hospital and he died there. An autopsy is ongoing. The pt had originally tried to choke a man to death with a belt at a local bus stop and was arrested on 31 May after failing to appear in court. He apparently was placed in a restraint chair after some erratic behavior. He was released after
calming down but then attacked a jail officer and was unable to be restrained by 5 officers. He was then Tasered and taken to the hospital. He was 5 feet 2 and weighed 150 lbs but if you've ever had to wrestle with a psychotic pt you know size doesn't matter. The other pt who died after being jailed in the same facility was a person with a history of paranoid schizophrenia who was Tasered twice three days before his death. The medical examiner listed cause of death as heart disease and paranoid schizophrenia with Haldol(given by jail nurses) and confinement to a restraint chair(with monitoring by the jail nurses) as contributing factors. The findings of a local judge cleared jail officers of criminal wrongdoing but recommended the construction of a jail cell designed specifically for mentally ill inmates.
Neither of these men were killed by policemen on the street using a Taser indiscriminitely. There are a number of factors involved in each case including poor medical and nursing care. While I don't think anyone involved woke up that day thinking "I'd like to contribute to a needless death today" I firmly believe that our judicial and medical systems as currently configured gave them no options. I don't know of a jail system in the nation that is currently built with a separate facility for mentally ill inmates and when I read the numerous posts here about the poor staffing ratios c psych hospitals where pts can be medicated and isolated as needed I can't imagine what a mental wing in a jail would be like as these would all be violent offenders. Would you work there? Not me. I too have seen all the TV shows about out of control police officers but if I didn't believe that those shown didn't comprise but a miniscule fraction of those who serve and protect I wouldn't get out of bed for fear for my life. I couldn't make those split second life or death decisions cause I'd always err on the side of safety for me. After dealing c belligerent, abusive, confrontational pts and families as an ICU nurse in a supposedly controlled environment, I can't fathom what goes on in the real world. Both of these tragedies were preventable but not as our health and judicial systems are currently configured. And until we reform both, things like this will undoubtedly happen again.
I asked a few pages back for RNs to identify the specific tactics they use to safely deal with a mental patient and subdue the type of situation the police face. I'm still waiting. I'm beginning to think that everyone who is so sure the police are "killing" mental health patients (due to not knowing the "right" way to deal with these patients) should be on-call for those police officers and show up to the calls they are facing so they can show them exactly how it should be done. Of course you'll want to leave your Ativan behind as police are not allowed to use chemical restraints.
And re: the IQ comment about police officers. Perhaps the same should apply to registered nurses. Expressive superiority is the one thing I really can't stand about so many members of my profession.
They may be kittens to nurses but deadly to officers.
So true. As one corrections psych nurse told me: they tend to like nurses more than cops because we give drugs.
Why do we expect cops to do the job of healthcare providers? Think about it ... the police aren't called unless there's a problem. In many cases, the cops wouldn't be called in the first place if the healthcare system hadn't failed these patients to begin with.
As the OP states, this was a "frequent" psych patient who was probably in and out of hospitals. Obviously the healthcare system failed him at some point.
The cops are left to deal with the aftermath of that failure, and then we criticize them for not doing what we do. It's insane.
We need to consider the failures in our own system just as much as theirs. Just because the healthcare system passes the buck, doesn't mean that the cops are ultimately responsible for that failure.
Would a cop on the street have enough time to make an accurate determination even if he had the necessary training?
Probably not. Cops are short staffed also. They usually have a million calls they have to answer. Do we really expect them to do psych evaluations when other crimes are happening all over town?
The cops are there to serve and protect ... and they have to protect everyone, including themselves.
PANurseRN1
1,288 Posts
You cannot be serious. Four deaths this year alone, and that's OK? Sounds like these officers need some serious remedial training on dealing with mentally unstable people. Four deaths from Tasers is excessive, to say the least.