Transcripts For KQED Frontline 20240703

Tased if you keep it up. The project is about uncovering hidden deaths. Narrator in collaboration with the Associated Press, an investigation into police restraint. People know about the deaths in police interactions, but no one really knows the extent of it. In many cases, its sort of unclear what role the police force played in the death. Were realworld practitioners, so were dealing with a realworld problem. Given this reality that officers are often the ones responding to Mental Health crises. How are they trained to do that . Thats one of the problems. Theres an inconsistency there. Narrator and the impact on families. Were devastated. We want answers. He should not havdied. You find so many families left with unanswered questions. Its important to identify what went wrong and who was responsible. Narrator now on frontline, documenting police use of force. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More at macfound. Org. The heisingsimons foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. At hsfoundation. Org. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. And the charina endowment fund. dog barking its a nice day. It is. And its still chilly this morning. Yeah. But i like it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, its nice. Feels good. I like this weather. chiming faint chiming narrator Associated Press reporters mitch weiss and kristin hall have come to bristol, tennessee, to talk to Karen Goodwin about the death of her son, Austin Hunter turner. Hunter knew everyone. Mmhmm. He was always into something. Always. He decided one morning to show the neighbor over he how he was like superman and jumped off her porch. Wow. Which is two stories, basically. Did he get hurt . No he didnt get hurt. laughs chuckles look at that. laughter he was always trying to make you laugh. I made sure to raise them in church. I told them when they were little id give them to god, so that no matter what, god had them. Narrator Hunter Turner became a High School Athlete and loved motorcycles. He had a history of minor seizures, and had been using drugs. But he never had problems with Law Enforcement until one night in august 2017, when he was 23. Its 11 15, 11 20 at night. My sons girlfriend, michelle, she called me and she said, oh, god, karen, somethings wrong. And i said, whats wrong michelle . Hunter started going in circles with his arm pointed out. And then he fell, and now hes making. Moaning noises, and hes not moving. And i said, honey, call 911. distorted dialing out on recording 911, where is your emergency . on recording my boyfriend just started twitching and fell on the floor. I think hes having a seizure. Okay. And you said your boyfriend is having a seizure. Is he still seizing . He just started twitching and fell on the floor. Hes foaming at the mouth. Dont hold him down. Just let him, let him work the seizure out. If he stops shaking, i want you to turn him back to his left side and make sure that if hes got anything like saliva or anything in his mouth, that it runs out, okay . If hes shaking, turn him to his left side . Thats the rescue position. Thatll keep his airway open and clear, okay . Dont put him on his stomach. Narrator Karen Goodwin got to the apartment as the paramedics were arriving. Hunters down on all fours, and then he sits up on his knees, and he stands up. And his body is just stiff. And its. Its weird to watch because it wasnt that he. And i knew he wasnt in control. Narrator paramedics were unable to control turner and suspected he was on drugs. They called the Bristol Police for help. Hes in here . Yes. Narrator this body camera footage, which was obtained exclusively by the a. P. , shows the situation escalating quickly. Stop. groaning you got his arm . I got his arm. groaning im telling you right now, youre gonna get tased if you keep it up. I couldnt understand what they were doing or how they were doing it, because you couldnt see very much. There was anywhere between eight to ten people, it looked like. And im trying to understand, is he calming down, is he coming to . Is he. Whats going on . grunts stop it now or youre going to get tased. Oh all right, tase him. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Watch your arm. Youlget me, too. Youll get us, too. Ow taser crackling hunter, listen. If i back off, are you going to calm down . Because youre not going to win this battle. Do you understand . Put him facedown. Belly down. Yall need a spit sock . Yeah. There it is. Heres the spit sock. Through all this, i was totally helpless. I couldnt help my kid. This is my son. Im willing to lay my life down for him, but these people are helping him. So i didnt want to get in the way of the help that maybe he could get. officers indistinct chatter narrator the officers and medics ended up subduing turner. They handcuffed him, strapped him face down on a gurney, and put a mesh fabric known as a spit sock over his head meant to prevent biting or spitting. His mother planned to meet them at the hospital. Are you all done in there . No, maam, no. Okay. If you dont mind. Is it youre all gonna be a while . Yes, maam. They just took him off, were going on to the hospital. Yeah, well make sure. So the house is secure . Yeah. Well be here. Michelle, lets go baby. Narrator but when she arrived at the hospital, she was told her son had stopped breathing. They were doing compressions, swapping off the two nurses. And they worked about 15 minutes, and i asked the doctor, how long can you do this . swallowing and he said, we can do it for an hour or so. Because weve got oxygen going. Okay. 30 minutes goes by. And i look, because im standing right at his shoulder, holding his hand. And this whole side of his chest looked like jello when they pushed on it. Itas just giving that free and easy. And i told them, thats enough. voice breaking my baby needs to rest now. Stop. Narrator the autopsy report said turner died from multiple drug toxicity marijuana and suboxone, a medication prescribed to treat opioid dependency. It also cited dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition that affects the hearts ability to pump enough oxygenrich blood. We got the autopsy back. We actually took it to our family doctor. Yeah. I just wanted her to look at it. And i said, just, you know, is there anything in here thats weird . And of course,he looks at it. It doesnt look like theres anything wrong. It does say an accidental overdose from a therapeutic to lethal dose of suboxone, which he was prescribed, and marijuana. So then she and i are sitting here thinking, okay, hes had this. Episode, the seizure. Maybe his heart just gave out, and thats why they never could get him back. Narrator Hunter Turner was one of the hundreds of people who die every year after encounters with Law Enforcement. Most of those deaths are from shootings. But others, like turners, occur after police use restraint methods that are not supposed to be deadly. Why dont we go ahead and get going here . Weve got a lot toet through. Narrator for the past three years, a team of reporters from the Associated Press, in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism and frontline have been compiling and investigating deaths following Police Encounters that involved tactics known as lesslethal force. The murder of george floyd really raised questions for a lot of people about the extent of police use of force. Were looking at deaths that dont involve someone being shot and killed. Deaths after interactions that involve at least a certain level of force thats beyond handcuff. Lesslethal force can be a range of things, and it doesnt always have to be excessive use of these things, like a taser, a baton. It can be physical force, punching, taking someone down. It can be when theyre down, theyre in prone position with a knee on their back. Forced sedation is an interesting one, the goal is to subdue someone, so that they will stop doing whatever theyre doing and perhaps get help in the hospital. Not all of these people who die are sympathetic characters. And police show a level of restraint in the sense of, they try and physically subdue them rather than shoot them. Narrator for years, the federal government has struggled to count these fatalities, and the data it has collected is incomplete. The responsibility of the federal government is to track these cases, to understand the full scope of whats happening across the country. Their Data Collection efforts are hindered by Police Departments that arent always sending them the data that they need. You have places, not just individual departments, but in some cases whole states where you just cant get very much information at all. Narrator despite these limitations, the reporters were able to build an unprecedented database. beeping through nearly 7,000 Public Record requests, the reporters collected hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, including autopsy and Police Incident reports and footage from cellphones and bodyworn cameras. We went to medical examiners, coroners offices, Police Departments, state agencies that investigate these deaths. Even when they turn over records, sometimes the records arent all the records. It may be just the incident report, which is the basics. Sometimes youll get investigators reports and itll have a little more detail. Each layer has more and more clues. We took him to the ground. He was combative. He was agitated. He didnt listen to us. He had superhuman strength. These were all red flags for us. Then what well do is we try to get the videos to see if the videos actually correspond to whats in the police reports. Narrator based on the data they were able to gather from 2012 through 2021, they found 1,036 deaths that involved police using some kind of lesslethal force a fraction of the Overall Police contacts with the population, but still, an average of about two per week nationwide. These are still rare, but it happens more often than the public knows about. Narrator in about half of theases, medical officials cited Law Enforcement as causing or contributing to the deaths. In many others, Significant Police force went unmentioned, and drugs, preexisting health conditions, and other causes were blamed instead. These incidents involving less lethal force are often more complicated than a Police Shooting would be. They often involve multiple factors that could lead to death. In many cases, its sort of unclear what role the police force played in the death. Not all of these are a george floydlevel type of case or death. Narrator in about onethird of the cases examined, police were intervening to stop people who were injuring others or posed a threat. Police are stopping them from killing somebody else. Theyve broken into someones home, you know, theyre menacing people. They seem to be having either a mental episode or they seem to be extremely high on a stimulant drug like methamphetamine or cocaine. You have to consider what sort of a Situation Police are coming into . Is this person trying to hurt other people . Were they going at the police themselves . Thats one of the key takeaways, is that there is a lot of nuance in these. Narrator in the case of Austin Hunter turner, the body cam videos raised questions for reporter kristin hall. on laptop you got his arm . on laptop i got his arm. The very first thing that i saw was, just how immediate the officers took steps to escalate the situation. Stop it now or youre going to get tased. This started off as a medical emergency because he was having a seizure. When the officers arrived, they described using various kinds of force that you would typically see when somebody is being placed under arrest. So they used a taser. on laptop youll get us, too. on laptop ow taser crackling austin groans on laptop stop it now. Then they shackled him with his legs and his arms, and then they put a hobble restraint in between his leg restraints and his arm restraints. on laptop dont put him on his stomach. Just try to lay him to his left side. When hunters girlfriend called 911, the dispatcher told her that he needed to be on his side, not on his stomach. Put him facedown. Belly down. Push, go. Push. There we go. Putting somebody face down in restraints in a medical situation is usually not recommended. The Bristol Fire Department provided to us guidelines that specifically point out that patients should be face up when they are secured, for transportation on a stretcher. Then they put him into the ambulae i dont know what hes taking but hes fully dilated. Narrator after a few minutes in the ambulance, paramedics realized turner was not breathing. Is he breathing . Narrator they turned him over and tried to resuscitate him for about ten minutes. What the hell happened here . I dont know. Did we cut his damn airway off . No. Yall aint recording, are you . clicking narrator no one from the Bristol Police or Fire Department would comment and the forensic pathologist on the case has since died. E Tennessee Bureau of investigation looked into the death, but under state law, their cords are confidential. The Sullivan County District Attorney told us that after reading the investigative report and reviewing the body camera footage, he agreed with the conclusion that turners death was drugrelated and that none of the Police Officers techniques had contributed. But experts who reviewed the case for the a. P. And frontline disagreed with the autopsy finding that the death was accidental and due to drug toxicity including dr. Roger mitchell, former chief medical examiner of washington, d. C. The cause and manner of death that was established by the original medical examiner suggested that the drugs that were in his system, as well as his underlying Heart Disease, was but i challengeath. A notion that he died from a Drug Overdose and a Heart Disease when hes strapped face down, with a spit hood on his face and being pushed into the soft padding of a, of a stretcher. How would you have ruled it . Based on what i saw, i would i would rule his case a homicide. I would suggest that his death was contributed to by another and when you have any individual that is in altercation with another and you believe that, that is contributory, then that case should be designated as a homicide. When an autopsy is done, a pathologist will decide on whats called the manner of death, which is homicide, accident, natural, suicide, or undetermined. Homicide dont mean that the officers did anything wrong by itself, it just means that the medil examiner is concluding that, but for the actions of the officers, thats what caused this death. The manner of death does n imply guilt. You see, the way that those determinations are so important to whether a case really has much accountability or not. When you dont label it a homicide, you are then less likely to receive justice in a system that typically will investigate it if its a homicide. One of the findings of our project is that a majority of our cases, the medical examiner ruled they were accidental, undetermined, or natural. Narrator of the 957 cases for which the a. P. Had documents indicating the manner of death, 28 were classified as homicide. There are some medical examiners that believe when Law Enforcement is engaged in an altercation, that intent must be established in order to call it a homicide. I dont hold that school of thought. If those actions led to the death, then i will call those cases homicides and then allow for the legal system to determine whether or not there was an intent or not, um, that legally needs to hold them liable. Narrator one of the Main Findings from the database is that the death toll fell disproportionately on black people. Nonhispanic black people made up a third of the 1,036 deaths examined, despite representing only 12 of the u. S. Population. One case that drew protests and concerns was the death of Jameek Lowery in paterson, new jersey a city with a history of tension between Law Enforcement and its black residents. He was really outgoing and a goofball. Every morning he had a routine he called my mom. Straight from calling her, he calls me. What were some of, maybe, the challenges in his life . He was bipolar. So he, um, he went off his meds. As far as how he lived with it, he had some good days and he had some rocky days. Narrator on january 5, 2019, lowery called 911. He told the operator he had taken ecstasy and was paranoid. Paramedics took him to the hospital, where he was examined, but removed by security for causing a commotion. He then went to the Paterson Police headquarters, where he started filming himself, broadcasting the video live to facebook. Yo, theyre trying to kill me. Aint nobody there. Theyre trying to kill me. Can i get some water . Please . Narrator the officers remained at a distance. Please dont kill me, officers. Please dont kill me ma, i love you, ma. Narrator after several minutes, the live stream ended. Its not entirely clear what happened next. The Police Called for an ambulance to take lowery to the hospital. But by the time he arrived, he was unconscious. We rushed up to the hospital. He was there and he was on life support, and, um, theyre not sure whats going on. They told us they had no idea. They found him unresponsive. He was bruised really, like, really, really, really bad. I knew he was gone. Narrator lowery died two days later. This is our city narrator . Igniting protests and accusations of police brutality. I want justice i need the truth. Were broken were devastated, we want answers. Narrator the police and county prosecutor maintain that lowery became combative and had to be restrained on the way to the hospital, but that the officers use of force was not a factor in his death. Lowerys death was ruled an accident by the medical examiner, who said he died of cardiac arrest while under the influence of a psychoactive drug known as bath salts. But lowerys family filed a federal lawsuit against the hospital, the city, and three paterson Police Officers. And they hired dr. Michael baden to perform a second autopsy. Baden also reviewed police and medical records, including some which were not available publicly. After he was put in the ambulance, they had a struggle. And in the course of the struggle, they were trying to restrain him. And at the hospital, they diagnosed that he had severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen, which occurs when there is interference with breathing. The bruises were consistent with a struggle and being punched while he was in the back of the ambulance. softly right. And that whole process took just a few minutes. Narrator baden said that lowery suffered traumatic Blunt Force Injuries anwere not enough to stopugs ihis heart. Em he rejected that the death was accidental, and attribed it to cardiac arrest and kidney failure from the police restraints. The final diagnosis was wrong. He died from the way he was restrained in the ambulance. I want people to know what happened to him. I dont want them to just look at my brother and think that, oh, he was just a junkie who had a mental breakdown. Like, cause thats the picture that they painted to the world of who my brother was, and he wasnt that. Narrator neither the police nor the Prosecutors Office would comment. But in court papers, attorneys for the city said officers acted with reasonable anproportionate force while placing lowery in custody. In 2023, the Paterson Police were put under state control amid ongoing complaints about use of force and a lack of trust within the community. sirens blaring as with Jameek Lowery and Hunter Turner, over and over in the database, reporters found cases of police having to respond to people in medical and Mental Health crises, situations Law Enforcement is often not trained to handle. Police themselves are in many ways front line, you know, social workers and drug counselors, and, you know, they have these, these many different roles because of the fraying of, of the social safety net. I think the infrastructure, if you will, outside of Law Enforcement, theres been a dramatic failure, and it seems to me that its gotten worse and worse over the years. Narrator jack ryan is a lawyer and retired police ctain, and one of the many Law Enforcement experts the a. P. And frontline spoke to. So given this reality that officers are often the ones responding to Mental Health crises, how are they trained to do that . Thats one of the problems theres an inconsistency there. So for example, when i do training, i train, hey, look, this may not be something that you should be dealing with at all. Thats number one number two, lets get e. M. S. On the scene. Do we have Mental Health resources that will come out to the scene . Do we have plenty of backup in case the thing does turn violent . So there are steps that we can take, and a big part of the training is recognizing that certain things are dangerous. Prone restraint, for example. Narrator prone restraint, the Common Police tactic of restraining someone facedown. It is one the most prevalent kinds of lesslethal force found in the database 740 instances. Theres times, tactically, where officers have to get people immobilized in order to accomplish handcuffing. That is a trained tactic to do th. But you dont want to do that for any kind of prolonged period. You want to do it, get them handcuffed as quickly as possible, and get them off their stomach. When done properly, in most cases, its not a dangerous situation. Narrator but prone restraint can sometimes lead to cardiac arrest or positional asphyxia when a persos position interferes with breathing, especially if pressure is applied on the back. People impaired byedical conditions or drugs are especially at risk. I cant breathe there are cases in which we have someone saying, i cant breathe. And that can be said in a very haunting way. Theyre crying out for their mom as theyre dying. shrieking i cant breathe mama narrator the reporters found 27 cases where police continued to use prone restraint after handcuffing people, and despite complaints of impaired breathing. When a subject tells an officer that i cant breathe, and theyre on the ground, in prone restraint, what should how should officers respond to that . The officers should treat that as they cant breathe. Um, you know, one of the things, one of the biggest myths out there is that if a persons talking, theyre breathing. A lot of times, we see things like officers saying they were still actively resisting. What officers perceive as act of resistance, that thrashing about, may be unconsciously fighting for air. The bottom line is, as Law Enforcement, we can immediately get them off their stomach as soon as theyre handcuffed, put them on their side, which should enhance breathing we call that a rescue position. Narrator in about half of the incidents where prone restraint was used, the reporters found that officers didnt promptly turn over the person once they were handcuffed or under control, despite decades of warnings within Law Enforcement about the dangers. Although there is no national law or rulebook on using prone, in 1995, the department of justice warned that pinning someone facedown could restrict breathing. It later advised Police Departments to develop policies to prevent positional asphyxia. There were warnings that have gone out years ago, and there are some Training Centers that have been teaching it for a long time, that when you put somebody in prone, you have to be careful to avoid positional asphyxia. Narrator the a. P. Looked at how officers are trained in prone restraint around the country. I wanted to undstand what sort of training officers had. Did they understand that if you hold someone in that position, they might have trouble breathing . Training for Police Officers in the United States is inconsistent. Its different in every state. Its different in every community. Ive looked at the agencies across the country. Theres, theyre called post, its peace officer standards and training. And they all oversee what officers get training in. Narrator the a. P. Reached out to agencies in every state. 27 responded. Ten of them sa they dont require positional asphyxia training. 17 did. But even with training, the a. P. Found cases in which officers repeated errors that experts have been trying to eliminate. As was the case in sylvester, georgia, of Terrell Allen clark, a 47yearold longhaul truck driver with a history of heavy cocaine use. In october 2016, a woman called 911 and said that a paranoid man was banging on her door. Sergeant Adam Celinski was the first officer on the scene. Pulled up and the guy came from around the house. Called him over to, to the car, Start Talking to him. Come on right over here come right over here. Yeah, tell him to call the police. Come right over here. Whats going on . I need some help, sir. You got anything on you . No, sir. Put your hands right here, put your hands right here. Whats going on . High. Huh . High. Tripping. Narrator celinski, who is now a lieutenant with the county sheriffs office, was one of the few Police Officers willing to discuss the events leading up to the death of someone he tried to restrain. I went to try to put him in cuffs, and he went to fighting. Hands on the car dont. Dont dont move, do you hear me . Yes, sir, im scared, man. I understand, but you need to stay calm, okay . Yes, sir. All right . Were going to put cuffs on you. Okay. I didnt do nothing to nobody, sir. I know, but you got to stop, you got to calm down. handcuffs click all right . Help me stop help, help, please stop, stop calm down, man we fought, hed calm down, wed talk. Wed get in cuffs. He tried, hed explain a little bit more what was going on. Hed start fighting again. Calm down, calm down. What did you take . Powder, sir, powder. What did you take . Powder. Powder . Yes, sir. Narrator from her house across the seet, alphallia farrie saw what was happening, and recognized al clark. I just saw two officers and a young man on the ground. They had him down and handcuffed. They werent being rough with him, but he was squirming a little bit, you know . And i asked him to stop moving around so they wouldnt hurt him. We aint going to let them kill you. Calm down. Were not trying to hurt him. They aint trying to hurt you, al. Just be still, al. Stay still, man. Narrator by now, clark appeared to be physically in distress. I cant breathe. Yes, you can, calm down, calm down. Be stil al. And he calmed down, and, uh, and i told the officers to make sure he was breathing. His hearts still beating. Hes still okay. Hes still breathing, aint he . Yeah, its just really shallow. Okay. 91, be advised, subjects unconscious, got shallow breathing. So what went through your mind when he stopped moving and. Were you aware right away that, that he had stopped breathing . It took, it took a second, because i didnt, i didnt know if he was just, he was finally just relaxing, because, because he was starting to, you know, not be as combative and, and talking as much. He was starting to slow down. He aint responding now. 91, they need to come 1018. He is not responding, not responding. in interview i dont remember exactly how long it was. We checked his pulse, checked his breathing, and he wasnt, so we immediately took the handcuffs off and started doing cpr on him. Flip him over, ill do a sternum rub on him. Hell wake up. Take these cuffs off. Hes not responding at all. siren blaring in distance 91, patient may not be breathing at this time. Narrator clark was pronounced dead at the hospital. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, caused by cocaine and Heart Disease, not due to police force a finding the experts consulted by the a. P. And frontline agreed with. Narrator but jack ryan said that even though the use of restraint may not have caused clarks death, officer celinskiidnt turn him over quickly enough after handcuffing him. Officers make mistakes of professional judgment. They dont always rise to the level of criminality. This officer in this particular case is really trying to do the right stuff. You can hear it. You dont hear aofficer screaming, swearing, yelling. You hear an officer trying to calm the person down, trying to deescalate the person. Unfortunately, the method of restraint wasnt consistent with best practices. That officer does not seem to be welltrained or have familiarity with prone restraint. Narrator although the risk of positional asphyxia was officially part of celinskis basic training curriculum, he said whatever he may have been taught didnt stick with him. And, he said, even if he had more training, it wouldnt have changed the outcome. I dont think that training for that particular incident would have made a difference. I dont ink, in this case, him laying on the ground was part of his reason for dying. I felt like i was fair and i did everything i could. Minimally physically intrusive. Just wished he would have calmed down long enough for us to get help to him. Narrator nevertheless, celinski said that he has since undergone more training and changed the way he uses prone. Now, if we have to put somebody on the ground with their chest down, with the handcuffs behind the back, were gonna do it on their side, not completely on their chest on the ground, because weve learned that, hey, thats going to that can make them difficult to breathe. For a subject against the wall in a fighting stance. Narrator despite the widespread agreement on the dangers of prone, the reporters found several statecertified police Training Centers continuing to teach that it doesnt lead to positional asphyxia. Goes to a prone control. Narrator david rose is among the most Senior Police instructors in california. Were in the real world were realworld practitioners. So were dealing with a realworld problem. Narrator he has trained generations of officers that prone restraint is safe. The mere fact that you put somebody in a prone position is, is not going to kill them, absent some other factors. And as the studies have shown, putting weight on a persons back in a prone position does not lead to them expiring. Okay . Unless its enough that it can actually literally squash them. And, if that was true, every football game, wed have bodies laying on the football field. Is there ever an instance where theyre having trouble breathing . There is a thing called agonal breathing. And we were told years ago, if theyre talking, theyre breathing. We now teach cops, you can sort of tell, you can tell, agonal breathing is pretty, pretty unique. It wouldnt be somebody saying. in clear voice i cant breathe. Would be. struggling i. Cant. Breathe you know . in normal voice and then you go, okay, lets get this guy into custody quick, and. To get him rolled on his side, okay . And, and get the medics in here to treat him. Narrator like many experts we consulted, Roger Mitchell disputed roses claims on the safety of prone and took particular issue with his football analogy. Individuals that are football players, these are athletes. They also have protective equipment on. So this notion that those are the similar circumstances to an individual that is being placed on their stomach and wrestled down and placed in these positions with Law Enforcement, to suggest that those are similar circumstances is, is a faulty analogy. Narrator determining the impact of any one form of lesslethal force is difficult because multiple techniques are often used in tandem. Officers will generally get a person on the ground in prone, so that they can handcuff them. But if theres resistance, then they end up using other types of force. Narrator in the escalating chain of events, the reporters found another controversial form of restraint being used. We saw this pattern where people who had been subjected to the use of force and restraint by Police Officers, were then given a shot of a powerful sedative like ketamine or versed by e. M. S. Professionals. Shortly thereafter, they suffered cardiac and respiratory arrest, and they died. Narrator the sedatives are administered by paramedics, sotimes encouraged by the police, and supporters say it helps quickly deal with behavioral emergencies and is safely given thousands of times a year. Narrator but as its use has grown, it has come under increasing scrutiny, including by some in the e. M. S. Community like eric jaeger, who has used it in the field himself and now trains other paramedics. I think ketamine, used properly, is a very safe and effective drug. I think that the way we rolled it out to the e. M. S. Community, without, uh, proper understanding of the risks involved and how to mitigate those risks, created the risk of harm. Narrator among those risks are how the sedatives can interact with drugs or alcohol already in someones system, and how they can further restrict breathing of someone already being restrained and in distress. There was a fair nuer of times where individuals were chemically sedated, where, with the understanding we now have, we would elect not to perform that chemical sedation. Narrator nearly one of every ten people in the database had been sedated before they died, although it was impossible for the a. P. To determine the role the medications played in the deaths. The injections were rarely cited in official reports or investigated. Only in a small number of cases was the sedation listed as a, as a cause or even a contributi factor to the deaths. And they werent necessarily looked at as a factor that could have resulted in the outme of the case. Narrator one such case was taylor ware, a 24yearold veteran who grew up near kansas city, missouri. This is taylor up top here. Look at that face hes making in that trouble picture. Ah, yeah. Hes. Yeah. chuckling this, this ones a good one. Um. Taylor, he had a very infectious smile. Um, kind of smiling, just, it, it would touch your heart. It would warm your heart. When did he tell you that he was thinking about going into the marines . Six months after he graduated. I think he wanted to follow in my footsteps and my fathers footsteps. Narrator while in the marines, taylor ware was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was honorably discharged and moved to kentucky with plans to attend college. Narrator in 2019, he was arrested after exhibiting manic behavior in public, and his mother and a friend came to drive him home for Mental Health treatment. Narrator at a rest stop in dale, indiana, his mother called 911 for help. on phone 911. Whats the location of your emergency . on phone um, we are at a rest stop. I believe its in dale, indiana. My son is bipolar, and i was trying to get him home to kansas city, and he is having an episode. And he, you know, will not get back in the c. Hes getting very agitated, and i, i need, uh, mental help, i need someone to come. Okay. Uh, so that he can get help at a mental hospital. We will get an officer out thata way. And will you please make sure to tell them he needs mental help . Okay. chatting quietly yeah, im all right. Narrator Pauline Engel, his mothers friend, captured parts of the incident on her cellphone. At what point did you start to record . I think im going to record him so he can see how hes acting, so hell know why were concerned and, you know, know what he does when he gets like this. And thats when i started recording for taylor to, so we could show him, cause i think he blacked out. Like, its like he didnt really realize what he was doing. voice quavering when the first officer arrived, i said, you need to wait for backup. And he got his dog out of the car. And i said, no, you need more officers. My sons not in his right mind. He has no idea where hes at. pauline sniffling he doesnt know what hes doing. Narrator the cellphone video shows how the incident unfolded. The first officer to arrive was an unpaid reserve marshal from the nearby town of dale. Taylor ware goes to shake his hand, and they sit down in the grass. The first thing that happened is the dog tried to attack taylor. dog barking and that set him off. Why is the dog going crazy . Is he doing something . dog barking he eventually gets up, and he starts walking away. robin and pauline chatting and the officer and his dog follow taylor. This is the bad part. The officer says that taylor ware pushed him and started running away. And thats why he released his dog. Oh, god, stop. Narrator engels footage doesnt show the confrontation. Stop, stop narrator . But a few frames capture the officers dog taking ware down. Oh, my god. Stop, taylor on phone mmm. Oh no. Taylor, dont dont. Stop, please. Let go of my dog let go, please let go of my dog get on the bleeping ground oh, my god. Turn around hes fighting. Turn arnd let go of my bleeping dog oh, my god. Taylor, stop, please. on phone quit fighting my dog hes not fighting him. on phone let go voiceover hes not fighting his dog. Narrator a second officer on the scene, who said that ware had spat at him and tried to grab his taser, shocked him three times. What if they tase him. taser buzzes oh, god. gasps taser buzzing ellie. Ellie, good. Good, ellie. Stop. on phone dont touch my dog. We need backup. Call 911, we need backup. Engel 91. We need backup. All right. Narrator another officer arrived and helped handcuff ware. A paramedic gave him a shot of ketamine. Ketamine wheres the ketamine . Whats that . Bring the ketamine. Hes fighting. I dont know. Im guessing its a sedative. heavy breathing oh, theyre gonna give him a shot. Okay. heavy breathing narrator this is Police Body Camera footage after they gave him the sedative. He was then put on a stretcher. Is he breathing . voiceover shortly thereafter, they noticed that, you know, he was not breathing and they rushed him to a hospital. Narrator Pauline Engel continued to film when the first responding officer approached her and taylors mother. I wish maybe we should have just waited and let him sit there. No. Because i think more people. Well, the thing is, hes walking towards traffic. Yeah. And then he started messing with that car. And he came up to me and went like that to my chest. Yeah. Yeah, i saw. And thats an assault. And so i gave him a lawful order to stop, he ran. Classic textbook dog deployment. Yeah. Narrator ware had fallen into a coma. He died three days later at the hospital. The Indiana State Police said they investigated the case, so we filed a request for their full investigation file. And they told us that all of those records were confidential. A letter from the local prosecutor in indiana said he was not gonna file any criminal charges against the officers involved. Narrator the a. P. Reached out to t Police Departments the officers, and ems, and they declined to be interviewed. Narrator three Police Practices experts reviewed the case for the a. P. And frontline. They said the first officer should have waited for backup, and that using the dog was unnecessary and excessive. Canines are looked at as a significant use of force. Its generally one level below deadly force. So, its, its limited to serious offenses. Bringing the dog out, in my mind, in a Mental Health case was not the right action because its only gonna make it more agitated, more aggravated. Its gonna escalate the event. Based on even the report of this minor touching, insignificant for purposes of the degree of force youre gonna apply to the apprehension. Wasnt proportional. Not proportional. The prosecutor who reviewed this case declined to charge the officers. And then in his letter announcing that, he said they did absolutely nothing wrong, they handled this incident with great restraint and great professionalism. Im curious your thoughts on that. You know, i would, i would disagree that it was properly handled. Um, i would agree that its probably not a prosecution case. Um, the officer shook his hand. The officer tried to establish a rapport, you see that. Did the officer make some mistakes . In my mind, yes. Uh, but were they, uh, rise to the level of criminality . No. What i see is definitely a lack of training, um, on the when its appropriate do certain things. Narrator the medical examiner didnt respond to requests for comment. His ruling said that ware died from excited delirium, a term used to describe a state of potentially lifethreatening agitation, but now widely discredited by the medical establishment. Weve now come to understand that excited delirium is a deeply flawed concept. In many cases, the definition of excited delirium was built on racial stereotypes, and probably more fundamentally, excited delirium was a concept that, in many of these cases, served to shift the focus from the actions of the First Responders restraint or chemical sedation by the police or by e. M. S. To the individual for using methamphetamine, for engaging in criminal activity, for, uh, in some cases, suffering from Mental Health emergencies. Narrator taylor ware is one of 142 case in the a. P. s database that list excited delirium as a factor in the cause of death. When did you start to see that it was flawed . Our recognition that excited delirium was flawed, uh, really only came, as we began toake a hard look at, um, cases like Elijah Mcclain and some of the other tragic deaths that weve seen where excited delirium was used. Narrator the night before wares encounter at the rest stop, an unarmed man named Elijah Mcclain was restrained by police in aurora, colorado. The officers called for paramedics, who injected mcclain with ketamine. He went into cardiac arrest and died a few days later. Elijah mcclains case was a steppingoff point where we began to take a harder look at other deaths. And what we discovered was troubling. We discovered there were many other cases where the combination of prone restraint and chemical sedation had resulted in death. Narrator colorado placed significant restrictions on the use of ketamine in the field, including banning Police Officers from directing paramedics to administer the sedative. Narrator one officer involved in mcclains death was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and thirddegree assault. Two others were acquitted. In a rare homicide prosecution of medical personnel, the two paramedics whod injected mcclain with ketamine were also und guilty. Dr. Roger mitchell was an Expert Witness in the trials. Every excited delirium case in this country should be looked at and establish what, what the true cause of death is. Narrator mitchell has been advocating for a new system to record deaths in police custody. There needs to be a checkbox on the u. S. Standard death certificate that ensures that these cases can be reviewed as not just singular events, but as systems of events that, that occur. Theres a smoking checkbox on the u. S. Standard death certificate. So any disease thats associated with smoking, we can see that on the death certificate. And so, if we want to stop and prevent individuals from dying in the hands of Law Enforcement or associated with the criminal legal system, then we need to create a category of Data Collection surrounding those so that we can generate the proper policies and proper ways of preventing these deaths. We all love you and miss you so much. kisses hand, sighs the project is about uncovering hidden deaths. These are the deaths that are the hardest to find. This cuts across every state, cuts across every socioeconomic boundary. We love you, bro. Those are the things that i think about as im reporting this story. Now he could ride like no mans business. Riding was the one thing we all had in common. motorcycle engine accelerat once you put your helmet on, youre in your own little world. So theres also some escapism involved in it. Its you, its the bike, its the road, thats it. Narrator six years after the death of Hunter Turner, karen and Brian Goodwin visited a roadside memorial made by his friends. Its amazing that kids his age thought enough they wanted him up here. And they tended to it quite a bit. These hidden deaths. These people all had loved ones. And when they die like this, theres no closure for the families. Hes always with us. I mean, you can feel his presence, you know . He was our baby. Go to pbs. Org frontline for a q a with members of the team that made this film. The responsibility of the federal government is to track these cases. You have to consider what sort of a Situation Police are coming into. These were all red flags for us. And for more coverage from our partners at the Associated Press, connect with frontline on facebook, instagram and x, formerly twitter, and stream anytime on the pbs app, youtube, or pbs. O frontline. It will not be long before there will be no firsthand survivors alive. During the holocaust. I saw the word auschwitz. The doors opened. Terror hit us immediately. How many people have seen a gas chamber in action . I rember looking at the flames and thinking, which is my mother . We are the last ones. You want to hear . Here it is. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in pubjournalism. Ing. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More at macfound. Org. The heisingsimons foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. At hsfoundation. Org. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo n hagler. And Additional Support from koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. And the charina endowment fund. Captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org for more on this and other frontline programs, visit our website at pbs. Org ontline. Frontlines documenting police use of force is available on amazon prime video. Youre watching pbs