Training as a Substitute for Ignorance

 State Rep. Judy Amabile said [excited delerium] is "bullsh-t." She's asking the Attorney General to drop a law enforcement training requirement surrounding it.

Chris Vanderveen, 9News (7/12/2023)

It seems like everyone is a law enforcement expert, no experience or training required.

Media, activists and now local governmental officials have leapt onto an interesting bandwagon in an effort to unfairly discredit law enforcement officers. In this case, it is to suggest that the term "excited delirium" often used to describe individuals encountered (not exclusively) by first responders in fact is a broad and imprecise diagnosis used to excuse police brutality targeting minority males. Don't believe me?

Excited delirium (ExDS), also known as agitated delirium (AgDS) or hyperactive delirium syndrome with severe agitation, is a controversial diagnosis sometimes characterized as a potentially fatal state of extreme agitation and delirium. It is typically diagnosed postmortem in young adult males, disproportionally (sic) black men, who were physically restrained at the time of death, most often by law enforcement personnel. (Wiki)

Got it?

Apparently, beginning in 2020, international medical groups began to question the vitality of EXDS as a diagnosis for cause of death when someone who is apparently healthy, strong as an ox one minute, successfully fighting off a dozen cops in the process, suddenly dies. The exact mechanism of death was imperfectly described, leading some individuals to consider that medical examiners might be papering over something sinister. Consequently, many organizations have chosen to drop EXDS from its vocabulary. Totally up to them, of course.

That doesn't exactly solve the real world problem, which astute readers need not be reminded of: No matter what you call it, what does the reasonable, rational officer/deputy/trooper do when they encounter someone who is, to put it politely, losing their shit in a manner resistant to appeals to reason? If the need arises to fight with this person, are they in some imminent danger of dying suddenly? If so, what are the cops supposed to do about it?

Before it became a thing, authoritative research recognized a phenomenon not just regarding in-custody deaths, but in people found, well, dead.

Approximately two thirds of EXD victims die at the scene or during transport by paramedics or police.²⁶ Victims who do not immediately come to police attention are often found dead in the bathroom surrounded by wet towels and/or clothing and empty ice trays, apparently succumbing during failed attempts to rapidly cool down. Excited Delirium, WestJEM, NIH National Library of Medicine (Feb 2011).

The article associates EXDS with cocaine use, and talks a lot of fancy heart ailment jargon. Suffice to say that the authors had no real axe to grind (their research related to positional asphyxia is interesting in what it doesn't conclude) and wanted to provide information to those who might have to care for these individuals in the back of an ambulance, or in an ER. It wasn't bullshit, it was the real, messy world encountered every single day by police officers, firefighters and emergency department employees dealing with violent, dangerous and potentially fatally ill people.

So, okay. Let's, for a moment, decide that our heroes at POST insist law enforcement stop teaching police recruits about EXDS. What is the purpose of such a request? What does the present training cause police officers to do if they encounter a suspected case that Colorado lawmakers would like to see changed?

Current training suggests that the officers do whatever they can to relieve the victim's respiratory distress and call for emergency medical care.

Officers do not make a diagnosis at the point of contact, any more than an arrest on probable cause is a verdict. It is simply a way to create a decision model that is relatively easy to follow, and begins the process of bringing to bear the right resources.

Some years ago I was driving around town - marked car, blue uniform, doing sergeant stuff, which meant I was near a coffee shop. A car was in the nearby intersection, people milling around it. Okay, even in my distracted supervisor state I knew this was not normal. I activated the overhead lights (on the first try) let dispatch know I had some kind of traffic incident in an intersection (correctly identifying it without a map) and walked up to talk to the driver.

It was an older woman - about my age now - who was obviously...well, out of it. She didn't know who she was, where she was, when she was. She could have been:

Drunk,

Overdosing on medication,

Diabetic,

A Stroke victim,

The list goes on and on. I had been taught - in classes mandated by the State - that disorientation, slurred speech and inappropriate driving decisions in the absence of an odor of alcohol were a medical emergency. I need not know, and didn't particularly care, exactly what was going on. I was there to do two things. Render the scene safe, and call for professional medical responders. The woman needed trained paramedics, and she needed to be evaluated for a trip to the hospital.

As it turned out, the medics gave her a little tablet to munch on and... She was diabetic. It woke her right up. After that, everything was simple.

I tell this story not because I'm a hero. It's because I had proper instruction, which allowed me to make an informed decision. The woman got the proper treatment, I got my coffee.

If an officer, properly trained, believes the person with whom they are dealing is undergoing excited delirium and they call for medical assistance - does it matter if it turns out to be something else? If the correct protocol after a fight with an EXDS victim is to turn them onto their side, facilitate proper respiration and call for the paramedics... Isn't that what you'd want them to do?

The thought, of course, is that officers are killing people (in something of the manner of George Floyd) and then are being exonerated because, you know, excited delirium. Okay, but isn't that a separate issue? The ultimate offense that led to the officers' successful prosecution in Minneapolis is that they all knew what they were supposed to do. They'd been properly trained. At least one of them expressed it during the event. They just didn't do it.

One need not imagine what might have occurred if that training had been withheld, rather than neglected.

Very few police officers are cavalier about their responsibility to look after the welfare of even those with whom they've had a violent encounter. Nearly every first responder knows that, once the scene is safe, treating the injuries of victims - including the person in custody - is paramount.

I think it's a wonderful idea to prevent officers from receiving training that might save a life, don't you? Now, that's some bullshit right there.

Isle of Man Man

 Second doesn't mean anything in cycling.

Mark Cavendish 

Perspective.

Pop quiz - what is your favorite sport, and who is its all-time biggest star?

Hold that thought. We'll get back to it.

Bicycle racer and sprinter Mark Cavendish crashed out of his (supposedly) final Tour de France on Stage 8 in a most ignominious, entirely big race way. That is, on a flat road with the peloton cruising along at nearly thirty miles per hour, someone did something stupid way ahead of him. When the Slinky© snapped unexpectedly he had nowhere to go. Over the bars, onto the pavement, into the ambulance. In professional bike racing, it happens that fast.

We sat stunned. The day before, Mark came within a bike's length of the latest reckless driver on Stage 7, a pure sprinter's stage. A younger Cav would have left the lesser (and erratic) eventual winner in his wake. It wasn't to be then, and won't be now.

Over the course of the quarter century Dr. Greer and I have watched the Tour, we have seen perhaps four generations of dominant sprinters. There was Mario Cippolini in the early 90s. Eric Zabel won the Green sprinter's jersey on into the 2000s. Robbie McEwan's blinding speed and fearlessness led the peloton in the 20-teens and then came Mark Cavendish. Each, in their own way, was a force to be reckoned with, a fierce presence among the hard, brave men who sprint their bikes.

Cav was the antithesis of the bold strutters. He wears his heart on his sleeve - cries shamelessly in interviews, drops the occasional F-bomb and, is uncharacteristically candid ("How do you know a bike racer is lying?" asks commentator Bob Roll rhetorically. "His lips are moving.") when asked about tactics or objectives. He is an old school racer in a modern game dominated by skinny climbers.

A fractured clavicle, which damaged a previous surgical repair to the same bone (an old screw is loose, which seems appropriate for a sprinter). His Tour de France career is over.

He remains tied with Eddie Merckx, a racer from a bygone era so talented that he won not just the yellow jersey (five times) signifying Tour de France victory, but in 1969 he won every jersey awarded at the time - overall, climber and combativity. His nickname is "The Cannibal." He is the greatest bicycle racer of all time, perhaps the most dominant individual professional athlete ever.

Mark Cavendish is tied with Eddie at 34 Tour de France stage wins.

But. wait! His Team - Astana - offered him a contract extension to ride in the 2024 Tour. 

The Manx Missile. See you next year, mark.

Status Quo Johhny

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

William Penn

We are all hypocrites.

I include myself in the mix. Among my favorite books is a tome titled, Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice, Kevin A. Ring, editor, (2004). I don't enjoy every reading merely because the late Antonin Scalia wrote pity, often profound opinions. As often as not, I disagreed with the outcome of the case. Sometimes - okay, maybe more than sometimes - I rejected the reasoning of the majority because I thought the result was stupid. I am no better (and possibly somewhat worse) than everyone else.

So the cacophony of voices objecting to the June decisions of the 2022 Supreme Court term are, well, normal in most respects. Aghast, shocked, angry beyond words. Except...

There is the (usual?) proclamation that the Supreme Court is (wait for it) illegitimate. "MAGA-captured," explains Senator Schumer. "The Supreme Court Has Dismantled Our Rights," writes Rebecca Solnit of The Guardian. In Aljazeera, Belen Fernandez decries the decisions in an essay entitled "SCOTUS is ramping up oppression in the 'land of the free.'" The Fernandez piece is especially illustrative of how many of the arguments are crafted:

In another recent education-related stunt, the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which he had magnanimously put forth after having assisted in creating the student debt crisis in the first place. The ruling affects well over 40 million people in the US.

Ms. Fernandez goes on to offer an argument (Plaintiff Missouri's math is faulty) that was not in evidence before the Court and may not be true. It also ignores the obvious, which brings us to the point of this post.

Chief Justice John "Johnny Rocket" Roberts is the epitome of status quo. A review of the rulings of this term gives (me) the impression that, rather than a collection of radical MAGA adherents, the six-members commonly associated with "The Right" are less interested in changing the legal landscape than they are to refer those decisions to the appropriate one of the political branches.

Take, for example, the North Carolina redistricting case (Moore v. Harper). Petitioner suggested that the Constitution vested total and unreviewable authority in state legislatures to draw district lines for federal elections. It can't be good for the petitioner when the Court begins an analysis of judicial review by citing Marbury v. Madison from...1803. That's right. It's hard to get much more status quo than to hold that the Supreme Court has recognized judicial review as a thing for two hundred years.

Texas sued Joey B and his boys over the enforcement of immigration law, alleging that the Biden Administration had de facto opened our country's flood gates to people without regard to...well, anything. Fair enough. In a departure from nothing, the Court reminded Texas (and everyone else) of what they all learned in middle school (junior high for us Boomers) - the Executive Branch of the federal government enforces federal law, and they are granted a great deal of deference in doing it. Something about limited resources with alternative uses. In an opinion that may have disappointed some, but surprised no one the Court didn't see it Texas's way.

We've already talked about the Harvard and UNC case.

Finally, the Colorado Web Designer case. Let's start with a caveat - I would not make the same business decision that the web designer did. Anyone involved in a same-sex marriage who'd like to come on here and write something is not just invited, they are encouraged. The Supremes said that I'm free to make that decision.

They also said I am free to withhold my talents (modest as they are) if my own good-faith conscience argues against it. One can play the "what if" game all day, but what was before the court was a question of compelling (by force of law) speech by the web designer with which she did not agree.

That is not a departure for the Supreme Court. Back when I was a kiddo, one of the kids in my elementary school class was excused every morning while we did the pledge of allegiance. Why? His parents had a good-faith religious objection. While many Americans believed that to be an affront to those who came home from war with their coffin draped with that flag, West Virginia v. Barnette was decided in 1943, when WWII was far from decided. Status quo.

The list goes on and on. I'll leave you with this thought. Is it just me, or is suggesting that one or more of our institutions are illegitimate grounds to get "de-platformed?" Isn't it a threat to "Our Democracy™" when we question the outcome of a show of hands?

We are all hypocrites.

Back To Basics

 In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons   learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

John Roberts, Chief Justice, writing the opinion for the Court, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College  (2023)

One would think - based on the pundits, the professional opinion influencers and others - that this decision, and the resulting orders of the Court, are a departure by ideologues bent on depriving people of something because...well, they are ideologues. And, okay, that's a point of view.

The majority opinion was very Roberts-esque (commentary by partisan opinion writers notwithstanding) - state the facts, then the question, then the resolution. It is fair to write that ideological shading is possible in every case. The case presents as follows:

*The process used by Harvard and University of North Carolina employs race as a factor in making admissions decisions, which benefits some races to the disadvantage of others;

*Federal law and the Constitution forbid discrimination based on race;

*To overcome the strong presumption of invalidity, any such process must "serve a compelling governmental interest," and be "narrowly tailored" to address only that compelling interest (called Strict Scrutiny);

*None of the interests advanced in pleadings by either educational establishment are well defined, measurable or clear enough to state a compelling governmental interest. Nor are they narrowly tailored. See, Opinion of the Court, Roberts, CJ, Part A, beginning on page 22.

This is a classic structure taught to first year law students, one that CJ Roberts has predominantly used when he writes a published opinion. There is nothing Earth shattering, or pioneering, or especially departs from mainstream legal analysis. The details matter, of course. That's where differences - reasonable people disagreeing is how the CJ put it - are found.

The problem to some, reading Justice Thomas's concurrence and Justice Jackson's dissent (and then half a dozen or so mostly breathless commentaries in the media) is the outcome - that Harvard's and UNC's (and many others') admissions criteria are unlawful. Justice Thomas is pointed in both his own opinion and in his assessment of the faults of the dissents. Justice Jackson, who writes well and expresses her points clearly, comes at the case quite differently than Justice Thomas. It is a worthy exercise, to read both in full and try to understand what the justices are conveying. One need not be a lawyer to decide which one is more persuasive, and why.

Outside commentators (including the one you are reading) offer zero insights in a neutral manner. Most find their own predispositions either reinforced, or dashed by this opinion, depending on who they work for or what their media personae dictates. Suffice to say that most - if not all - can easily be avoided.

I'll finish with an observation. In April 1986, following the guidance of  a "Getting Into Law School" guide, I called the admissions office at Syracuse University. "Is my admissions package complete?" I asked. "Yes," the woman on the phone said. "You'll be offered admission. We reserve a few seats late in the process for those candidates we think have unique personal histories."

My personal history - married, early thirties, a Colorado police officer for seven years, children. Okay undergrad grades, above average LSAT.

I was, in the lexicon of 21st Century academia, a diversity admission. But, to quote Chief Justice Roberts, it was based on my experience as an individual. I believed then, as now, that that is an admirable criteria for a university to consider.