California Bans ‘Excited Delirium’ As A Cause Of Death
Excited delirium is a very unique medical condition. It almost always kills its victims. The victims of this apparent sudden cause of death are almost always in the presence of police officers when they die. And the victims are almost always of a certain... type.
A 2021 data analysis found that at least 56% of deaths in police custody between 2010 and 2020 attributed to excited delirium involved Black and Latinx victims.
That's from The Guardian's report on the passage of legislation banning this term from being listed as a cause of death in California.
If all of this - minorities, police presence, death - seems coincidental, it's actually not. Axon (formerly Taser) was a huge proponent of this particularly law enforcement-involved cause of death. It was CYA as medical opinion. Cops with a lack of training (or empathy)[or both] were basically electrocuting people to death using the company's stun guns. To keep from being listed in a ton of wrongful death suits, Axon/Taser pressured cops to utilize this term to explain the deaths of people in custody, many of them still with Taser prongs attached.
The theory is that sufferers of this condition (that only seems to crop up when people are being assaulted by law enforcement officers) are both excited" and delirious." In some cases, that means their heart rates are increased. In other cases, they may say incoherent things like I can't breathe." In almost every case, the only cure is subduing the person to death, thus ridding them of their excited delirium by eliminating its root cause: being alive while being arrested.
The controversy has always existed. But it has been ignored by cops and cop apologists, even as it has maintained a steady roar" noise level for years. Some oversight groups have finally gotten around to suggesting it might be time to ditch training that does nothing more than train cops to deliver exonerative medical mumbo jumbo during arrest report composition or press conferences.
And it is indeed nothing more than that: pseudo-medical bullshit that does nothing but place the blame for someone's death on something other than the people that caused it.
California has gone one better than simply recommending junking excited delirium" training.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Sunday prohibiting the term from being recognized as valid diagnosis or cause of death. The bill comes as a national emergency physicians' group is also considering disavowing the term.
The legislation was prompted by the 2020 death of Angelo Quinto, wholost consciousnesswhile two Antioch officers knelt on his neck and back, with the death certificatecitingexcited delirium syndrome". Quinto was suffering a mental health crisis in his mother's home.
At this point, there's only one holdout in the medical community: the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). Here's how it's going with the rest of the medical community:
TheAmerican Medical Association,American Psychiatric Association,American Academy of Emergency Medicine,National Association of Medical Examiners, andAmerican College of Medical Toxicologyhave all disavowed the term.
ACEP will likely join this list soon. It's due to vote on disavowal of its 2009 position paper on excited delirium sometime this month. Given that it's the only major medical association that's still taking this bullshit at face value, it's unlikely to extend that streak now that it's more than painfully apparent the so-called condition is just a convenient way for police officers to separate themselves from the deaths they cause.
The problem is that this law likely won't change anything. Cops and coroners have plenty of other options when it comes to blaming people for their own deaths at the hands of law enforcement. The most important thing is never how quickly a cause of death can be determined. It's how fast law enforcement officials can get a toxicology report into the hands of journalists. The sooner you can make it appear literally anything other than the beatings/chokings/tasings/hog-tyings caused the death in custody, the sooner you can go back to inflicting violence without fear of serious repercussion.