Re: Off Beat: Tennessee Police Use Controversial Drug to Subdue Prisoners

["William Lefkovics" <william () emailonastick com>]

That's scary...

Maybe they inject the officers so they forget how they beat the unruly guys
to a pulp.


-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org] On
Behalf Of Paul Ferguson
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 12:13 PM
To: funsec () linuxbox org
Subject: [funsec] Off Beat: Tennessee Police Use Controversial Drug to
Subdue Prisoners

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

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

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017)

wj8DBQFIgOskq1pz9mNUZTMRArEaAKDZsEu17xdyhG3WKE3Z5dy4Nwl2+QCfRT2L
T3qXO5PJ9Mj48lrQbyBvU90=
=JB+W
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



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


_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.