Policing - Ketamine

The Real News Network reports that Colorado police departments are using the anesthetic ketamine upon arrestees.

This is sinister.

Ketamine is being administered in Colorado based on a "diagnosis" by obviously unqualified cops that a person is suffering from a condition called "excited delirium". Apparently the cops are directing paramedics to administer the drug. Excited delirium is an 18th century term referring to people in a sanitorium. Ketamine is used in surgical anesthesia and frequently requires lung intubation. Ketamine interacts with a long list of other drugs. Paramedics are very unlikely to know what other drugs an arrestee is taking. Physicians are on record being firmly against this practice, and yet it continues.

It is administered to suspects who are already under restraint. This is inexplicable.

Are the police simply trying to further test the boundaries of abusing citizens? Or do they wish to sedate a person to the point that their memory of the event, and thus their ability to testify, is automatically subject to question?

Even worse is that it now severely taints the reputation of paramedics, a group we all want and need to trust.

These practices by police in one state tend to spread to other states.

This needs to stop in Colorado, and should never be allowed to spread to Illinois.

https://youtu.be/-jljQM1pV08

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