Off Beat: Tennessee Police Use Controversial Drug to Subdue Prisoners

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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WTF?

Via WSMV.com.

[snip]

While the [Nashville, TH] Metro police had banned the use of Tasers for a
time, they still used a controversial method to subdue unruly people,
according to an I-Team report.

The city's policy to use the method, which calls for the injection of a
drug into a person, came as a "total surprise" to people most would expect
to know all about it.

For almost two years, Metro police have had the option of calling for a
needle loaded with a strong sedative to control the most unruly people they
encounter on the street.

One of the doctors who came up with the protocol said it's the safest
option out there and that it is used all over the country.

But many people said that the injection was news to them, and a top medical
ethicist said it's a troubling precedent.

The drug is called Midazolam, which is better known as Versed. People who
have had a colonoscopy have probably had a shot of the drug for the
procedure.

"The drug has an amnesia effect, and we use that therapeutically because
one of the nice ways to take care of the discomfort is to make people
forget that they've had it," said biomedical ethics and law enforcement
expert Dr. Steven Miles.

But the shots have also been used on the streets on people police said were
out of control.

[snip]

More:
http://www.wsmv.com/news/16844880/detail.html

Hat-tip, Schneier:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/midazolam_as_a.html

And as Schneier points out:

"The biggest side effect is amnesia, which makes it harder for any
defendant to defend himself in court."

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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