"Restraining Bag" - What Can Happen When Law Enforcement Gets a Tool

The ACLU this morning is sharing a video of a black man asserting his rights, standing with his hands up, who is suddenly tased. He falls and hits his head. Likely, though not provably at this time, he was tased for talking back to the police (in their eyes. In my eyes "I know my rights" is a fundamentally American statement that must be respected). Here's the tweet, which you can follow to the upsetting video.

MUST WATCH: Tased by #police for no reason, but he knew his rights. #allonvideo #blacklivesmatter #PoliceReform https://t.co/X2035owDxN

— ACLU National (@ACLU) September 9, 2016

TASER (that's a brand name. CEW = Conducted Electrical Weapon is the type) are great tools for cops, allowing them to engage with dangerous situations without resorting to lethal force. They undoubtedly have saved the lives of many disabled people, for example, who might have been armed and threatening, but who the police managed to  hit with a CEW rather than shoot.

Too often, though, a new tool like this becomes used instead of replacing lethal force (let's call it the top of the force continuum, though likely my cop friends will correct my lingo!), it's used down the continuum. Where once an officer might have used a nightstick or physical restraint, they now use an ECW. This is likely sometimes a good thing too! Physical scuffles are dangerous for everyone. But the Cult of Compliance keeps pushing to use the tool more and more often, so that anyone just standing there but not being properly obedient gets tased. And then we have a problem.

I'm writing this because I've been thinking about the "restraining bag," as discussed in this fairly hyperbolic piece, about the NYPD's practice of putting people in certain forms of crisis into big duffel bags.

Earlier this year the New York Police Department (NYPD), an organization of some 34,000 uniformed officers and an annual budget surpassing $5 billion, introduced a new crime fighting device, the ‘restraining bag,’ or as it is sometimes affectionately called, ‘the burrito.’ It is essentially a full-body sized duffel bag that officers can stuff a perpetrator into and cart him off to jail like a piece of luggage.

Image: The torsos of two officers holding a blue and white striped back saying NYPD ESU.
Presumably, there's the body of a person inside, being "restrained"

The New York Times has followed up on the story.

In response to questions about the bags, the Police Department said it had used the restraints for 25 years. The department said only “highly trained members” of the Emergency Service Unit were authorized to use them. The person being restrained is assessed while being held and afterward, and is taken by an ambulance to a hospital for medical and psychological evaluation.
From Jan. 1 through April 20 of this year, the bag was used 122 times, the police said, or about once a day. During that same period, the department said, it received more than 44,000 emergency calls about emotionally disturbed people.

That's probably good. I'm glad to know about these bags so we can keep an eye on their use. I am sure there are plenty of difficult situations in which this bag is the right tool to wrap up a person and safely transport them to help. I'm also sure that, absent clear rules and consequences for breaking those rules, they will be mis-used.

I asked Lou Hayes, a a former SWAT supervisor, and current CIT detective in Chicagoland, who also trains police in use of force, about whether he thought the bag was useful. He told me:

Does it have it's purpose? Sure. Extremely limited use though. As with any piece of equipment, it has the possibility of being misused and overused in the wrong circumstances. Every problem looks like a nail to he with a hammer.

I still argue that team arrest/custody tactics are of way more use than any of the fancy equipment out there. (Keep in mind that I use "arrest/custody" loosely, which covers the non-criminal protective custody of violent or otherwise involuntary folks.)

What is the so-called best practices, with broad application and highly adaptable? Team handcuffing, with multi-string of cuffs, hobble restraint (think: a cross between a tie-down strap & a dog leash) around legs/ankles, then secured to a paramedic backboard with the multitude of straps (like seatbelt webbing) and the head blocks w/ forehead strap.

Is it too early to be discussing field-administered sedatives by paramedics?

A team of cops & paramedics that I trained in the above tactics saved a young man's life last week who was wigging out on flakka or bath salts or some other fierce street drug cocktail. The man was "packaged up" for hasty transport to ER where he was in a physical position to be easily treated by ER staff. The trick was the hasty and decisive escalation by the cops to put the naked young man (~20) into the best position to be medically treated for a metabolic emergency where his body temp was so high he was essentially cooking himself from the inside.

Would a restraint bag have helped? Maybe. But to what extent will there be a prolonged fight to get him into it? Then what sort of position is the person in to be treated at ER?

So the picture is terrifying. The use is limited. I fear that every time there's a non-compliant individual, especially someone who is disabled (which means the cops will be influenced by anti-disability stigma, and likely afraid), the impulse will become, "bag them."

Let's make sure that doesn't happen.

Disability and Policing: Knives and the Myth of the 21 Foot Rule

Reminder for Chicagoans: Tonight at 5 at Truman College - testify about police killings of people with disabilities. Stephon Watts; Laquan McDonald; so many more. Facebook event page here.

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NOTE: Post below has been edited for tone and clarity (9:30 7/12)

Police killed a man armed with a knife in Sacramento on Monday. It's the kind of daily killing of a person with a disability that I've been tracking for years now. On average, there's one or two nationwide every day. Sometimes, probably mostly, the officers perform admirably but still have to use lethal force. Sometimes the officers perform poorly but legally and use lethal force. Sometimes the officers perform poorly and illegally - though they may not be held accountable - and use lethal force. I do not know the details of this case, yet.

Here's the story. I want to just focus on our language around knives.

William Portanova, a Sacramento defense attorney and former state and federal prosecutor, said officers confronted with deadly force such as a knife are "immediately authorized" to use deadly force.

Someone with a knife even 20 feet away can quickly close that gap, he said, while less-lethal alternatives like a nightstick or Taser only work at such close range.

"Both require being closer than might be safe and neither one of them is guaranteed to stop the threat," said Portanova, who has previously represented officers involved in shootings. "The choices that an officer has to make in this situation are made in fraction of a second and examined, potentially, for years."

[Edited] This statement that the presence of a knife within 20 feet automatically justifies the use of lethal force emerges from the "21-foot rule." It turns out that according to many experts in use of force, it's not a rule at all.

Developed in the 80s, the 21-foot rule proposes that a person with a knife  can travel 21 feet and stab an officer before they can draw their gun and fire.

[edited] Although certainly true in specific cases, it's not a rule. What it is,  according to numerous police experts, is it's a myth, a myth, and a myth. Sometimes you need more than 21 feet to be safe. Sometimes, you need no distance at all to be safe. It's all situational. Moreover, I've been seeing the 21-foot "rule" applied to other weapons too: a camera, handcuffs, a radio, a flashlight, pen-knives, a screwdriver, and so forth.

Quotes from the above articles (all from law enforcement writers):

From PoliceMag:

Actually, there are no forensically proven facts that I am aware of that specifically verify or conclusively establish that a suspect armed with an edged weapon will more likely than not be able to seriously injure or kill an officer armed with a sidearm on all occasions and circumstances. The truth is that the 21-Foot Rule should not be considered to be an absolute rule at all because there are too many variables involved at this point to call it a "rule." Let's discuss them.

From Cop in the Hood: (CW: Ableist language)

Here's the thing: most people police face with knifes are not well trained in "edged-weapon combat." They are A) crazy or B) cutting up their loved one. Sometimes both. But police rarely if ever face a trained evil ninja out to assassinate a police officer caught unaware (honestly, there are far easier ways to assassinate a police officer, if you so choose). So basically you have this whole police paranoia based on a situation thatnever happens.

I checked Officer Down and, since 2000, could find just four officers on patrol killed by an assailant with a bladed weapon: one domestic, one EP (aka: EDP or mental case), and two fatal fights after a foot pursuit. As you might guess, not one of these assailants was an a trained stealth ninja.

From PoliceOne:

The 21-Foot Rule was formulated by timing subjects beginning their headlong run from a dead stop on a flat surface offering good traction and officers standing stationary on the same plane, sidearm holstered and snapped in. The FSRC has extensively measured action and reaction times under these same conditions. Among other things, the Center has documented the time it takes officers to make 20 different actions that are common in deadly force encounters. Here are some of the relevant findings that the FSRC applied in reevaluating the 21-Foot Rule:

Note - this last piece emphasizes that sometimes you need MORE than 21-feet. It's a very pro-cop site helping cops learn how to justify the use of lethal force. But even it debunks this myth.

The presence of a knife, on its own, cannot justify the use of lethal force. It's one of the most common ways in which people with disabilities are killed, rather than stunned, disarmed, talked down, given space and time to calm down, or otherwise engaged in a non-lethal way.

The 21-foot rule is a myth that gets disabled people killed.