Survey: ER doctors suspect excessive police force

[DogPoundPup]

Source: USA Today

Nearly 98% of emergency room physicians report that they believe some patients were victims of suspected excessive force by police, a national survey concludes. Yet most of the suspected incidents went unreported because no laws require physicians to alert authorities.

The survey of 315 physicians, contained in the Emergency Medicine Journal's January issue and based on 2002 data, is believed to be the first doctors' account of suspected police brutality, says H. Range Hutson, the lead author and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard.

The responses were based on interactions with patients who were brought in by police or who said officers caused their injuries. Ninety-five percent of the doctors reported injuries caused by fists and feet. Hutson says the survey and analysis of findings were in the works for years.

National police groups challenged the survey, saying it would be hard for physicians to know if injuries resulted from excessive force if they were not present during the encounters.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-06-police-force_N.htm

[shraby]

1. Physicians are required to report signs of abuse

of children, why doesn't it extend to adults also? Adults who are under the coercion of other adults are just as vulnerable, i.e. wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends, and arrested persons.

[goforit]

4. I believe they are required to of all kinds and report it to social services.

[The Doctor.]

2. Right... what do PHYSICIANS know about excessive physical force anyway?

I mean, it's not like they're some kind of rocket scientists. :crazy:

[pattmarty]

10. C'mon, they're fucking doctors for Christ sake. If someone says they......

........were beat up by cops, they sure as hell can tell if the injuries were caused by "beating on".

[The Doctor.]

11. Hear that 'Whoooooshing' sound?

That was the point. :hi:

[pattmarty]

18. Ya know, I have to quit my horticultural experiments when I respond on DU.

I have to constantly remind myself it's not the same as "watching" TV. It takes just a wee bit more intellectual discipline than staring at the tube.

[The Doctor.]

19. Dude... yer TV is actually talking back to you!

OoooOOOOoooooEEeeEEEEEEEEEOOOOooooooOOOOOOOOOO!

Seriously... I'm about to delve into a little botany myself here. At long last.

I hope John Stewart gets my humor.

[sakabatou]

3. They SHOULD make reporting police absuse or any abuse for adults mandatory

[Baby Snooks]

5. And they still wouldn't...

Do you think people who "know the reality" are going to put themselves in danger? They file a complaint, the internal affairs division of the law enforcement agency "clears" the officer, the FBI/Justice Department refuses the complaint on that basis, and the physician then starts getting stopped every time they leave their house or the hospital. Hoping the physician says or does something the officer can use as a basis to arrest them. And of course possibly "accidentally" kill them while "subduing" them. Now ask yourself, would you risk that?

Maybe if we had a president who ORDERED the Justice Department to finally address the problem the problem would be addressed. Now ask yourself, do you really believe Barack Obama is going to do that? I don't. I've watched president after president claim they believe in civil rights. And then watched them ignore their own Justice Department which ignores the ongoing violation of civil rights in this country by law enforcement.

We live in a police state. And that suits most people just fine. If nothing else, it protects those who seek to preserve the oligarchy.

Keep in mind we have a Speaker of the House who believes homeless people who dare to "ruin the view" from her home in San Francisco should be arrested. Apparently the people who live in San Francisco agree with her. Which doesn't say much about the people who live in San Franciso.

[undergroundpanther]

22. Justice will not come

Until we MAKE it so. The only"karma" in this world is the karma WE cause,and enforce in the name of our human and civil rights!!

Fuck the rich and the politicians,fuck the state cop bullies,fuck the authoritarian shitheads and the sociopaths everywhere ,fuck them all.

[High Plains]

6. Anybody think maybe we have a police problem in this country?

This shit goes on every day.

On New Year's Day, BART cops in Oakland shot and kill an unarmed man.

In Bellaire, Texas, white cops in a lily-white town shot the son of a baseball player in his own yard. He was the wrong color.

Cops in Shreveport tase a Hollywood actor after a bar fight. Wrong color again.

That's just the publicized stories this week.

Perhaps it is time for John Conyers to hold hearings on this shit.

[CubicleGuy]

7. Most of America looked the other way...

... (and continues to do so) even though Bush committed war crimes in Iraq, and everybody knows it.

Why should we treat our cops any differently? After all, the bad guys deserve whatever happens to them, right?

And shall we put money down on whether or not the incoming administration is going to look the other way over what Bush has done?

Of course they'll look the other way. We can't have new Presidents handing over old Presidents for war crimes trials. That would be gauche.

[High Plains]

8. I guess most of DU looks the other way, too.

So I'll bump it up again.

[kenfrequed]

9. I bumped it.

This is a national shame.

Personally I think we need to completely reasses what role law enforcement should play in society and whether we have too much of it.

[Baby Snooks]

12. DWB

The not-so-funny joke in Texas is that every time an African-American is pulled over and shot and killed by a "bubba in blue" it is "justifiable homicide" aka "self-defense" because the African-American was DWB. Driving While Black.

John Conyers is aware of the problem in Texas. John Conyers has been aware of the problem in Texas. John Conyers won't go there.

Shreveport is in Louisiana. That more or less explains Shreveport. For those who don't know about Louisiana, suffice it to say that if they were offered a $1 million home to come back, the majority of the displaced African-Americans would not go back to New Orleans.

That more or less explains Louisiana. That they prefer Texas over Louisiana really more or less explains Louisiana.

Then you have Alabama and Alaska and Arizona and Arkansas and, well, it's pretty much the way it is in all 50 states.

Part of the problem in dealing with it is the increasing number of minority law enforcement officers who "shoot to kill" their own. Kind of hard to prove a civil rights violation in those cases.

Of course maybe minority law enforcement officers are given a "quota" in order to become a "bubba in blue?"

Of course when white law enforcement officers "shoot to kill" their own there is absolutely no question that the victim was guilty of something. Why else would the officer have shot them?

Welcome to America.

[High Plains]

17. Minority cops are the same color as all the other cops: Blue.

[undergroundpanther]

23. The cops are a thug force

and they protect each other,do illegal and abusive shit all the time,get away with it,and hide under the good guy badge and call on the blue wall. I HATE and will never trust the cops.

[Seldona]

13. There is a law that needs to be enacted.

Docs should report ANY abuse or crime related activity. Like it is not a danger to be handed over to these types? Please.

[Locrian]

14. that number is STUNNING

98% ??!! For fucks sake man that is huge.

[DailyGrind51]

15. Chicago has paid $19 million in settlements to suspects interrogated by one cop,

retired on pension in Florida because the statute of limitations had run out.

"JON BURGE

Burge, a south-side native, may have learned to torture in Vietnam, where he served in 1968 and ’69. Veterans of his company have reported that they participated in the electrical torture of Vietcong suspects, shocking them using hand-cranked field telephones. A similar device was used to shock suspects at Area Two. Both places, the torturers often targeted the genitals. (For more detail, see the Reader’s “Tools of Torture,” February 4, 2005.) Burge became a police officer in March 1970. Promoted to detective at age 24 in 1972, he was assigned to Area Two, his old neighborhood and an area experiencing rapid racial change: whites were fleeing as African-Americans moved in. The first publicly known complaint of electric shock interrogation at Area Two dates from 1973. In the years that followed Burge was promoted and served in other locations, then returned to Area Two in 1981 as commanding officer of the Violent Crimes unit.

Burge’s slow undoing can be traced to the 1982 arrest of Andrew Wilson for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Wilson’s account of electric shock, some of it aimed at his genitals, didn’t provoke a response from the Cook County state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley (“Deaf to the Screams,” August 1, 2003), but in 1987 the Illinois Supreme Court, suspicious of Wilson’s many injuries, granted him a new trial. He was convicted a second time without the use of his confession and sentenced to natural life. (See “House of Screams,” January 26, 1990, and “The Shocking Truth,” January 10, 1997.)

In 1989, during Wilson’s federal civil rights suit against Burge and the city, anonymous letters addressed to Wilson’s attorneys at the People’s Law Office said that he wasn’t the first person to be shocked at Area Two. Eventually the PLO compiled a list of 105 African-American men who told not only of being shocked but of suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers and other forms of torture and abuse inflicted by Burge and detectives under him at Areas Two and Three. Instruments they described included a handcranked electrical device, a cattle prod, and a violet ray machine (also known as a shock wand), a medical instrument now sold as a sex toy. (See “Tools of Torture” and “The Mysterious Third Device,” February 4, 2005.)

Dismissed from the police force in 1993 but never charged with any crime, Burge lives in Florida, collecting a police pension.

An archive of John Conroy's reporting on the police torture scandal is available at chicagoreader.com/policetorture."

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/burgereport/01/

[siligut]

16. Suspicion is tricky, need proof!

Having worked in the ER of a conservative state, I will tell you, the cops are treated like guests. The nurses swoon and the doctors are deferential. This was 30 yrs ago, but this was the consensus amongst us liberals. I have known some very good and honest doctors, but whom do you put yourself on the line for?

Being on the wrong side of a police department can cause a good deal of grief. Without proof, the MD is alone, all that work and just end up with a bad taste in ones mouth at the very least. No condoning the “look the other way” attitude, but looking at reality. I want the world to change too.

[undergroundpanther]

20. Police

and even ER's will treat you like shit if you are a psych call.Even if you are calm and not threatening they are heavy handed bullying and cuff you.They treat you like a criminal.I know I went through it before.The case manager that mistakenly called on me apologized to me he didn't think I was going to go through all the shit I went through that day.

First the fucking cops by cuffing my arms behind my back hurt me like hell. I told them I have damaged nerves in my back,they didn't give a shit,they forced my arms into the cuffs.I could not bend them that far back on my own.I could not sit in the cop car because my knee couldn't bend that far. I was recovering from a fall, I still had a support on my knee.So I laid in the back seat in severe pain,rolling forward to let blood into my aching arms and hands,rolling backward to try to ease up the torment of my back pain. When I got to the ER I was hurting so bad tears were oozing out,I could not stand up on my own,they stood there as I asked for help to get out like 5 times.When they helped me up,they jerked and I almost passed out from pain.In the ER because I had a PSYCH history they ASSUME you are an addict and they will not help you with pain even tho in my chart it says how fucked up my back is,and help for pain is indicated as ok and I have NO addiction history..And it says what injuries I have had recently (the fall).

They were ASSHOLES.And what gets me is the fucking STIGMA so many people carry about those with psychiatric injuries or illnesses,that we cannot think are not honest as anyone else is just makes the fucking denial someone was abused by cops or the ER or whatever so easy for burned out or indifferent staff.It's so wrong. But what gets me is so many people who have never been a psych call fail to empathize and paint psych survivors as incompetent or unable to tell the truth or what occurred,Our needs and voices are so often automatically negated because of the psych labels on the charts.I hate it.

Considering how ignorant cops are allowed to be about psych issues ,and how psych emergencies are denied basic rights so often,even when non threatining and no laws were broken, psych calls are not dealt with like human beings, by cops, ER's and staff at general hospitals it's just disgusting.

[High Plains]

21. And rioting tonight in Oakland over the issue.

[my2sense]

24. k & r