111 people have died in police custody, the cause?

"Excited delirium" brought on by coke use and being hit by a Taser.

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Is excited delirium killing coked-up, stun-gunned Miamians? - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times

Xavia Jones was the fifth person to die after being hit with a police stun gun in Miami-Dade, according to a December 2008 study by Amnesty International, ranking it seventh of all counties in the United States. Fifty-two people died in Florida after being hit by the 50,000-volt department-issued Tasers, second only to California's 55.

But the electricity didn't kill Xavia, according to Miami-Dade County associate medical examiner Erik Mont. The official cause: "excited delirium syndrome, associated with cocaine use."

The symptoms were all there, wrote Mont: "agitation, excitability, paranoia, aggression, great strength, numbness to pain, and sudden death."

In fact, in all five county cases of death following tasing, the medical examiner's office named excited delirium as the cause of death. According to the 2008 Amnesty International study, 111 of the nation's 334 post-Taser deaths were blamed on excited delirium.

The bizarre syndrome, first diagnosed in Miami, transforms its typically sane victim into a slobbering, raging, supernaturally strong menace hell-bent on self-destruction. It could be ripped straight from the pages of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Scottish scribe Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 archetypal tale of split personality. In the novella, the gentle Dr. Jekyll drinks a potion to become the murderous, hideous Mr. Hyde. In this real-life affliction, the spark is cocaine.

Excited delirium appears to be inflicting Miamians at an especially alarming rate. Since 1989, the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office has declared 38 people dead of the syndrome. In the past decade alone, that number is 28, compared to five during that time in Broward County.

The Miami victims were predominantly male. Twenty were white or Hispanic; 18 were black. They included a hairdresser, a truck driver, and an attorney. Thirty-six of them had cocaine in their system. The other two were diagnosed schizophrenics.

The article is a long and interesting read on where the theory comes from, but to make it short a police medical examiner theorized that 32 black prostitutes had died due to "excited delirium" brought on by cocaine use when in fact they were all serial murdered. The Taser company has jumped on the idea and financed several glorified lobbyists as scientists and medical practitioners in order to push the idea.

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Founder of UM's groundbreaking Excited Delirium Education, Research and Information Center, Mash probably hasn't helped matters by providing paid expert testimony to Arizona-based Taser, International. The $2 billion company, which distributes stun guns to 40 countries, has successfully fended off dozens of wrongful death and product liability lawsuits.

Taser, which insists its guns are nonlethal, has become an enthusiastic lobbyist for excited delirium. Its reps distribute books about the subject at conferences for medical examiners and police chiefs, send information to medical examiners processing in-custody deaths, and even recently circulated a ready-made statement for police departments to use when somebody dies after being tased: "We regret the unfortunate loss of life. There are many cases where excited delirium caused by various mental disorders or medical conditions, that may or may not include drug use, can lead to a fatal conclusion."

The company has gone so far as to successfully sue medical examiner's offices, such as the one in Akron, Ohio, for listing Taser as a cause of death.

As stun guns have proven virtually unassailable in court, governments across the nation have adopted them en masse. In 2005, a Miami-Dade County grand jury recommended Taser use even in non-life-threatening situations. The finding cited excited delirium repeatedly, endorsing the use of Tasers "as a nonlethal method to incapacitate individuals" believed to be in the throes of the mania.

You could say the company appreciates Mash's work. "She's doing really cutting-edge research all on her own," says Taser spokesperson Steven Tuttle, "and it's very fascinating stuff."

In a 2009 deposition for a civil case against Taser, Mash admitted to earning $16,000 from Taser for excited delirium testimony the year before. In the court interview, she claimed to have forgotten how much the company paid her in previous years, and she recently refused to tell New Times how much Taser has paid her since. "I haven't done my taxes," says Mash, co-owner of an $868,000 North Bay Village house with ex-husband, former Miami-Dade Democratic Party chair, and mayor of the village, Joe Geller. The neurologist adds that Taser has never funded her research.

And an unfortunate man afflicted with "excited delirium."

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On October 19, 2005, Mugshot Donald won the battle for good. That's the day West Palm Beach cops found him writhing and incoherent along 45th Street, wrestled him to the ground, hogtied him, and then struggled in vain to revive him when he suddenly went limp.

A Cops TV crew captured some of his grunted final words: "The cops are killing me... Mother, I love you. Father, I love you. Jesus, I love you."

The Palm Beach medical examiner's ascribed cause of death: "sudden respiratory arrest following physical struggling restraint due to cocaine-induced excited delirium."

What's really happening in the unaired footage depends upon whom you ask. To Dr. Mash, Donald's paranoia and imperviousness to pain — he withstood chokeholds and hard knees to the back and neck from four large male police officers — would appear to be classic excited delirium. But to Linda Lewis, who forced herself to watch the video only once, those same methods used on an unarmed, handcuffed man mean something altogether different. "Excited delirium didn't kill my son," she says. "The police killed my son."

Lewis filed an excessive force suit against the City of West Palm Beach and the five officers on the scene. Dr. Michael Baden, former New York City chief medical examiner, testified that Donald had in fact died of "asphyxia caused by neck compression."

A federal judge ruled the police were protected from the lawsuit by "qualified immunity," and an Atlanta appeals court upheld the decision. This past February, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the suit without explanation.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

serial murdered

Seriously, are you trying to create threads that turn into pointless shitfests? Cut it out.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Uh, that's exactly what happened. All of those women died from asphyxiation after sex with their pants down. The police eventually even had a suspect.

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YouTube Video

unaired Cops footage of Donald Lewis's death

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

"Excited delirium" brought on by coke use and being hit by a Taser.



The article is a long and interesting read on where the theory comes from, but to make it short a police medical examiner theorized that 32 black prostitutes had died due to "excited delirium" brought on by cocaine use when in fact they were all serial murdered. The Taser company has jumped on the idea and financed several glorified lobbyists as scientists and medical practitioners in order to push the idea.



And an unfortunate man afflicted with "excited delirium."

Wrong.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Wrong.

Wrong.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Wrong.

Originally Posted by W

Wrong.

Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Mo0

Wrong.

Way to kill the joke, Fats Domino Pizza.

FELIPE NO

111 jokes have died in Mo0 custody, why Mo0 why

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Mo0

Well fuck. Now sloths aren't funny, either.

Way to ruin everything.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

How ya doing, buddy?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?