Cops Are Telling Paramedics To Inject Arrestees With Ketamine.

Andy_Ross

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Andy_Ross
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Minneapolis police officers have repeatedly requested over the past three years that Hennepin County medical responders sedate people using the powerful tranquilizer ketamine, at times over the protests of those being drugged, and in some cases when no apparent crime was committed, a city report shows.

On multiple occasions, in the presence of police, Hennepin Healthcare EMS workers injected suspects of crimes and others who already appeared to be restrained, according to the report, and the ketamine caused heart or breathing failure, requiring them to be medically revived. Several people given ketamine had to be intubated.

The paramedics are fully complicit in this horror show. They're overriding their own knowledge and medical training with catastrophic results. This atrocious behavior was exposed by a report from the Office for Police Conduct Review. The report showed ketamine injections increased from three in 2012 to 62 in 2017.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...e-worse-ems-crews-are-actually-doing-it.shtml
 
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Any EMT that takes orders from a cop needs to be investigated. They may have had a standing order of some kind but they wouldn't have had a license to prescribe. So if the patient met the criteria, that's a different story.

Cop would need to tell ask the doctor that oversees the EMTs to order it.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
'Just following orders'
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Who? Who gave, who followed?

Cops don't have licenses to prescribe drugs in any state. There may be some circumstances where nurses in jails are also cops, but they have to follow standing orders, they don't get to make up their own.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
'Just following orders'
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On first view of this thread title I didn't see the word "ketamine" - thought it would be naloxone. That might make some sort of sense if medics responded to an unresponsive, unconscious person. But ketamine?? Besides being an anesthetic, it's also used recreationally as a hallucinogen/dissociative drug.

I'm wondering if someone wasn't disguising recreational ketamine use.

ETA: If someone actually needed sedation for their own safety - and obviously, if they were conscious - a little bit of IM Valium probably wouldn't hurt them. If people stop breathing, you're doing something wrong.

On the other hand, ketamine cured House's leg for a whole season!
 
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Minoosh said:
On first view of this thread title I didn't see the word "ketamine" - thought it would be naloxone. That might make some sort of sense if medics responded to an unresponsive, unconscious person. But ketamine?? Besides being an anesthetic, it's also used recreationally as a hallucinogen/dissociative drug.

I'm wondering if someone wasn't disguising recreational ketamine use.

ETA: If someone actually needed sedation for their own safety - and obviously, if they were conscious - a little bit of IM Valium probably wouldn't hurt them. If people stop breathing, you're doing something wrong.

On the other hand, ketamine cured House's leg for a whole season!
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I dunno, I'm leaning towards the cops wanting to question the suspect under the influence of an euphoric and hallucinogenic drug in order to get information and still have a 'plausible' avenue of deniability ("What? No, we didn't ask anything, he's hallucinating the whole thing!")

But that's just my own massive distrust of the cops.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Any EMT that takes orders from a cop needs to be investigated. They may have had a standing order of some kind but they wouldn't have had a license to prescribe. So if the patient met the criteria, that's a different story.

Cop would need to tell ask the doctor that oversees the EMTs to order it.
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Exactly. It's the EMT's asses on the line if they mis-apply medications especially when there's no explicit doctor's orders or other medically necessary standing order to administer. The cops know they'll never be prosecuted for pulling these kinds of shenanigans but at least the medical field still has ethical and legal standards that are followed.
 
Minoosh said:
On first view of this thread title I didn't see the word "ketamine" - thought it would be naloxone. That might make some sort of sense if medics responded to an unresponsive, unconscious person. But ketamine?? Besides being an anesthetic, it's also used recreationally as a hallucinogen/dissociative drug.

I'm wondering if someone wasn't disguising recreational ketamine use.

ETA: If someone actually needed sedation for their own safety - and obviously, if they were conscious - a little bit of IM Valium probably wouldn't hurt them. If people stop breathing, you're doing something wrong.

On the other hand, ketamine cured House's leg for a whole season!
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Diazepam (valium) is probably a more dangerous choice. Diazepam has more suppressive effects on breathing than ketamine. What is surprising is that people needed intubation, in emergency use the reason for choosing ketamine is that it is least likely to cause respiratory or cardiac failure. It may reflect other drugs that the person had taken.

In the UK ketamine was withdrawn from dental practice partly because it causes hallucinations / dreams of a sexual nature; it led to allegations about patients being sexually assaulted by dentists. Using ketamine in this situation might get cops/EMT into trouble.
 
Planigale said:
Diazepam (valium) is probably a more dangerous choice. Diazepam has more suppressive effects on breathing than ketamine. What is surprising is that people needed intubation, in emergency use the reason for choosing ketamine is that it is least likely to cause respiratory or cardiac failure. It may reflect other drugs that the person had taken.

In the UK ketamine was withdrawn from dental practice partly because it causes hallucinations / dreams of a sexual nature; it led to allegations about patients being sexually assaulted by dentists. Using ketamine in this situation might get cops/EMT into trouble.
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I don't think you can give valium IM, it has to be PO or IV.
 
deadrose said:
I've been given valium IM, when my mom killed herself. You really don't want to use it IM unless you enjoy the searing, burning feeling it causes.
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Interesting. Why didn't they just give you pills?

I've only ever given it IV or PO. So much for my limited experience.
 
Minoosh said:
On first view of this thread title I didn't see the word "ketamine" - thought it would be naloxone. That might make some sort of sense if medics responded to an unresponsive, unconscious person. But ketamine?? Besides being an anesthetic, it's also used recreationally as a hallucinogen/dissociative drug.

I'm wondering if someone wasn't disguising recreational ketamine use.

ETA: If someone actually needed sedation for their own safety - and obviously, if they were conscious - a little bit of IM Valium probably wouldn't hurt them. If people stop breathing, you're doing something wrong.

On the other hand, ketamine cured House's leg for a whole season!
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I assumed the cops wanted it as a "truth serum"?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Looks like it was bad publicity for the company:

Minnesota: Hennepin Healthcare Suspends Trial Of Paramedics Administering Ketamine
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Hennepin Healthcare also asked for a review of how its paramedics are using ketamine on patients.
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Ketamine is a legally regulated drug that can be abused, right? Surely if anyone would know how their paramedics are using Ketamine it would be them since any usage would presumably have to be recorded and documented to prevent paramedics from either selling it to others, abusing it themselves or using it incorrectly.

Either they are just feigning ignorance or the level of documentation seems woefully inadequate.
 
deadrose said:


Vid is NSFW!
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It's funny, but it's not actually correct.

Story time:

In high school, during one of those D.A.R.E. anti-drug classes my little brother was in, the teacher asked the kids if any of them had taken hallucinogenic drugs. My brother gleefully said yes. The teacher asked, with some trepidation, how he got them. He even more gleefully said that our mom gave them to him.

Sensing a trap, the teacher wisely didn't push it further, but did inquire with my mother later on, who was able to fill her in on the details. You see, he was telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

Quite a few years before, when he was maybe 6, my little brother was walking with a stick, managed to trip, and poked himself right in the eye. A splinter got stuck in his eye, and he was taken to the hospital to get it out.

The hospital where my mom worked.

As an anesthesiologist.

And was on duty that day.

Normally, doctors don't like to work on family members, and that was the case here as well. But the eye surgeon was insistent: the splinter was in a good position for removal, but if they transported my brother or waited for another anesthesiologist to come and take over, the splinter might move, making the operation considerably more difficult and risky. So, my mom had to anesthetize my little brother.

With ketamine.

Because it's actually a very effective anesthetic for this sort of situation.

And that's how my mom gave my little brother hallucinogenic drugs.
 
Arcade22 said:
Ketamine is a legally regulated drug that can be abused, right? Surely if anyone would know how their paramedics are using Ketamine it would be them since any usage would presumably have to be recorded and documented to prevent paramedics from either selling it to others, abusing it themselves or using it incorrectly.

Either they are just feigning ignorance or the level of documentation seems woefully inadequate.
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Working in the healthcare industry, specifically dealing with hospital pharmacies, "woefully inadequate" is rampant. I'm going to go with "both" in this case however, with lack of documentation allowing Hennepin Healthcare to play on plausible deniability.

In the US, ketamine is a Schedule III drug, which has considerably more lax storage, tracking, and reporting requirements than Schedule II medications such as opioids or amphetamines. Not at all surprising that they'd not document it adequately.
 
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