Colorado’s law enforcement officers will no longer recognize “excited delirium” after a state regulatory board voted to strike the controversial diagnosis on Friday from all training documents starting in January.
The move, which was passed at the state Peace Officers Standards and Training board meeting unanimously and without debate, comes as two Aurora paramedics face felony charges for giving Elijah McClain, an unarmed, innocent Black man, an overdose of ketamine, in part, because they believed he was suffering from the condition.
shouldnt the EMT be the responsible party to say ‘no officer, this person does not have that problem’?
i wouldnt trust a cop with…well… almost anything of mine personally. its outright terrifying they can make this medical decision.
Technically EMS doesn’t diagnose. We assess and treat symptoms to keep the patient stable until we can get them to a medical facility. Of course there are things that are blindingly easy to diagnose and generally most doctors won’t tell you “you can’t diagnose that open femur fracture, that’s my job”. But officially the line has always been that we don’t diagnose so when we are recording and reporting things we will typically say something like “the patient is showing symptoms of XYZ” rather than “the patient has XYZ”.
When it comes to dealing with police officially they are the only people that can involuntarily commit someone (at least in my area). And officially EMS has to respect that decision however that doesn’t always happen. There used to be a cop in my area that used to try to do that to anyone who “was problematic” and that officer got really used to hearing no from EMS. Other times EMS works with police is when there is a danger on the scene. For example if you’re called out for a gunshot wound and it is suspected that the gunman is still there then you don’t go in. You stage a block or two away and let the blue canaries clear the place first.
EMTs don’t want to stand up to police because police officers like to threaten them if they don’t follow what the cops say to do.
EMTs have no basis to stand up to cops on matters of security.
A cop deciding someone needs ketamine isn’t security.
Go wash the boot polish off your face.
Lol what? Nothing in my statement aligns with your reply
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Lol. Sounds like you don’t work in emergency services. EMTs lead on medical, fire on emergency conditions / the event, and police on security.
As a former firefighter and EMT, the very first rule you apply to any interaction/call/scene is “scene secure scene safe”. The idea is to not walk into a dangerous scene and become an additional victim. (Consider walking into a traffic accident, or walking into a live electrical line).
It also applies to violent or dangerous situations. In each case we look to the expert to get us to the scene. For the traffic accident we look for firefighters or other units to block traffic. For electrical, we look for the utility folks.
For potentially violent spaces we look to police. They have the “security” authority.
So this gets ugly when cops flex authority, and in this moment we have no authority. Obviously we have professional candor, as we see these people on calls all week, but if they go hard we can’t overrule them.
In other words… you’re looking to the people most likely to cause the violence.
Unfortunately yes but there’s no one else with that authority on security especially
Well… that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it?
Who would you recommend?
You mean you get a choice?
If you do, I’d suggest not trusting a violent institution that was perfectly fascist in nature long before Mussolini coined the term.
Of course… I know you don’t. That’s the whole point of police, isn’t it? They are forced upon us no matter what we think.
Does the policy extend to when they want you to do something medically? You have no say when a cop tells you to inject an air bubble in someone’s carotid? I don’t believe it.
The cop wouldn’t decide something like that no.
They would decide “this person is dangerous” type of stuff