Medical and Civil Rights Experts Question Nashville Police Use of Amnesia Drug during Arrests
The state of Tennessee has seen its share of questionable police tactics, from illegal immigrant roundups billed as terrorist prevention measures (no terrorists were found) to planting drug evidence (the officer was caught on camera) to police brutality and Taser controversies.
The issue of Tasers in particular has been a sore spot for law enforcement agencies in many of Tennessee's larger cities; police departments in the greater Nashville area have banned the use of Tasers, at least temporarily, to conduct further review of police use and the effectiveness of the devices.
However, Nashville police continue to use a method of subduing individuals that is perhaps more disturbing than that of electrically shocking non-compliant arrestees: a drug that induces amnesia. You read that right: Nashville police sometimes inject arrested individuals with a sedative that causes them to black out.
The drug in question is midazolam, marketed widely in the US and Canada as Versed, a strong sedative that is given to produce sleepiness or drowsiness in medical patients. However, its effects go beyond those of a typical sedative: Versed is also used to produce loss of consciousness of individuals before and after surgery and while in intensive care. The drug is commonly used, for example, in colonoscopy procedures.
When individuals are in an extremely agitated state, Versed can be used to ease anxieties and make them easier to deal with, which makes sense from a law enforcement standpoint. In extreme cases, a frenzied individual can be almost impossible for officers to subdue adequately, and the sedative effects go a long way in making the arrest safer for both the arrestee and the arresting officers.
However, the presence of the amnesiac's effects is disturbing. The liability issues involved in arrests are significant, as officers have been exposed executing improper arrest techniques and even brutalizing non-compliant or uncooperative individuals.
If the individual is made unconscious with no memory of the arrest after administration of the drug, a principal eyewitness is removed from the situation. Of course, this is not to suggest that, given the opportunity, police officers will commit indiscretions; it's just to point out that accountability and oversight is an important protection for prisoners and arrestees, without which even an honest mistake in arrest procedure could turn into a nightmare for all involved.
Not surprisingly, the Nashville police department has been as silent as possible on the subject of their use of Versed. One individual who was injected with the drug after a crazed incident on a Nashville bridge surprised and disturbed his lawyer when he related a story of his arrest, injection, loss of consciousness, and then signing of a waiver form while still groggy upon awakening.
Medical experts are disturbed by the revelation because of the lack of studies done on the use of Versed outside the medical field for what is essentially a police action. Without research, no valid protocol exists for its proper use—merely saying someone is "agitated" does not mean that a drug inducing loss of consciousness should be administered and how it should be administered. (Not surprisingly, this is an effective challenge to the use of Tasers as well: there is no protocol regarding the type of person that can be effectively and safely shocked with electrical currents during a panicked state).
Even more disturbed are civil rights advocates, who see the drug's use as an example of police departments trying to skirt the issue of liability. How can individuals defend themselves in a court of law if they were unconscious during even a portion of their arrest?
