My old friend
Demetria Kalodimos, an anchor/investigative reporter at
WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tenn.,
reported that police in her town sometimes use injections of drugs to control unruly prisoners. (The cops call in an EMT to inject the drug.) The same protocol is reportedly used nationwide.
The story says:
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.
And still, according to the story, even civil rights lawyers seem to know next to nothing about what's happening:
The state's largest mental health advocacy group, Nashville's mental health judge, the Nashville Rescue Mission, the American Civil Liberties Union all said they had no knowledge of the use of the drug by police. "I've talked to my colleagues around the country, and none of the people from the south to the north to the east to the west have ever heard about this kind of program, this kind of use where they basically force an injection upon an individual knowing nothing about his or her medical condition," said ACLU Director Hedy Weinberg.
There is no question this story is true. The cops...
