In Eleven Years, More Than 250 People Have Died While Being Restrained By Texas Police
Many have expressed concern and outrage over the way police treat citizens, especially African-Americans and other minorities. The Black Lives Matter movement began in response to the deaths of African-Americans in police custody, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the arrest of Sandra Bland, who was later found dead in a Waller County jail, an apparent suicide.
The Austin American-Statesman has been investigating a different kind of fatal police encounter that has often been overlooked. Eric Dexheimer, a reporter with the Statesman says a surprising number of deaths in police custody were not the result of gunshots. The newspaper investigated deaths that occurred while an individual was under police restraint. He says more than 250 people died in Texas under these circumstances between 2005 and 2016.
Dexheimer says that people who are restrained by police are often under the influence of drugs, and that drugs are often identified as the cause of in-custody death. But in other cases, being restrained led to death or injury.
“Some of the big {trends} we saw though were the actual restraint itself, restraint technique, or the act of the restraint coupled with some exertion,” Dexheimer says. “We saw tasers were implicated in eight of these, I think, and then another four were indirectly implicated. Which is kind of surprising because {a} taser is considered a non-lethal weapon. Or they like to say a less lethal weapon. But it’s not often that you see a medical examiner say a taser is implicated in some of these deaths.”
Read more: http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/in-eleven-years-more-than-250-people-have-died-while-being-restrained-by-texas-police/
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