Posted on 12/24/2004 9:09:10 AM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center will stop using police officers to subdue agitated psychiatric patients, responding to threats from federal regulators to pull the hospital's funding. Last week, the hospital received its second warning in six months about Los Angeles County police using Taser stun guns to stop aggressive mental patients. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the county-owned hospital was putting patients in "immediate jeopardy" by not first trying less extreme methods.
Hospital officials told the Medicare agency on Wednesday that they would begin replacing police with mental health workers to calm patients.They also said that until the new workers are hired, officers will be banned from carrying the weapons when summoned, unless a patient has committed a crime.
Similar changes will also be made at other county public hospitals, said Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, director of the county Department of Health Services.
--snip--
A federal report said one patient was shot with Taser darts four times in February after hitting and biting officers. He finally was placed in restraints. In June 2003, a patient who grabbed a worker's neck was shot four or five times.
The stun guns fire two darts connected to thin electrical wires, that extend to 21 feet. They deliver up to 50,000 volts of electricity to immobilize the person hit.
Dozens of criminal suspects hit with Taser guns have died in police custody, but the manufacturer says medical examiners have attributed the deaths to other causes, such as drug overdoses.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Much better to beat the living crap out of them instead I guess.
Looks like the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is infested with politically correct liberal vermin.
I have had a little experience with hostile patients, enough to know that all og them are not crazy. some are just plain mean and want to hurt someone.
Or shoot them in the head.....
I can just see the long lines of mental health workers ready to volunteer for 'talk nice with the lunatic gang-bangers and drug addicts' duty in an LA emergency room.
"Looks like the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is infested with politically correct liberal vermin."
they sound like the MPLS city council - 'why didn't those mean officers shoot the machete wielding man with a tazer'?
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