Jackson’s 2021 death illustrates an often-hidden way fatal U.S. police encounters end: not with the firing of an officer’s gun but with the silent use of a medical syringe.
The 43-year-old was surrounded by police who arrested him after responding to a trespassing call in a Wisconsin parking lot. Officers had shocked him with a Taser and pinned him as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. Now he sat on the ground with hands cuffed behind his back and took in oxygen through a mask.“It’s just going to calm you down,” an officer assured Jackson. Within minutes, Jackson’s heart stopped. He never regained consciousness and died two weeks later.
The use of sedatives in half these incidents has never been reported, as scrutiny typically focuses on the actions of police, not medics. Elijah McClain’s 2019 death in Aurora, Colorado, was a rare exception: Two paramedics were convicted of giving McClain an overdose of ketamine, the same drug given to Jackson.
Time and time again, the AP found, agitated people who were held by police facedown, often handcuffed and with officers pushing on their backs, struggled to breathe and tried to get free. Citing combativeness, paramedics administered sedatives, further slowing their breathing. Cardiac and respiratory arrest often occurred within minutes.
Emergency medical workers,"if they aren’t careful, can simply become an extension of the police’s handcuffs, of their weapons, of their nightsticks,” said Claire Zagorski, a former paramedic and an addiction researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “They’re running around on the streets administering these heavy-duty medications that could be lethal,” said Honey Gutzalenko, a nurse whose husband died after he was injected with midazolam in 2021 while restrained by police near San Francisco. “It’s just not right.”Jackson was standing on a truck outside a radio station on the border of the small Wisconsin cities of Eau Claire and Altoona. An employee called 911 before dawn on Oct.
Police identified him through his tattoos, learning he was on probation for meth possession. They noticed the truck had minor damage and decided to arrest him. The Eau Claire Fire Department’s excited delirium protocol advises, “Rapid sedation is the key to de-escalation!!!!!” The medic measured 400 milligrams after estimating the 6-foot-tall Jackson weighed 175 pounds, enough to immobilize someone within minutes. He injected the medicine into Jackson’s buttocks.
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