"Excited Delirium" Training Encourages Law Enforcement Violence.

As George Floyd lay dying in the street with Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck, another officer expressed concern about "excited delirium or whatever." Chauvin responded, "that's why we have him on his stomach." When paramedics injected Elijah McClain with an amount of ketamine that was grossly disproportionate to his size, they had just been told by law enforcement that he was suffering from excited delirium. After shooting and killing Danny Ray Thomas, an obviously unarmed Black man, a Harris County Sheriff's deputy claimed he thought Mr. Thomas was suffering from excited delirium. Law enforcement officers all over the country are trained about excited delirium's so-called symptoms, including extreme violence and aggression; superhuman strength; imperviousness to pain; unresponsiveness to police; and hallucinations, paranoia, or fear. But excited delirium is a pseudoscience. It's not recognized by any national medical organization, has roots in medical racism, and has been pushed by a small group of "experts," many with ties to law enforcement. That's why, in 2024, Colorado and Minnesota banned it from police training. Training law enforcement about excited delirium is wrong because it is not a real medical diagnosis, but it is also wrong because its so-called symptoms turn people's rational fears of being injured or killed by law enforcement into a disease, reinforces the overwhelming fear of death officers are acculturated to feel, and echoes racist tropes about Black people and ableist tropes about people with disabilities. Law enforcement training about excited delirium therefore falls at the intersection of police brutality, medical racism, and disability rights, throwing fuel on the fire of law enforcement problems in the United States. This Article explores that intersectionality. Part II outlines excited delirium's origins in medical racism, biased modern pushers, and growing notoriety to explain how a pseudoscience has come to be taught to law enforcement across the country. Part III explicates law enforcement training about excited delirium and then contextualizes that training in overall law enforcement culture, training, and policies. Part IV articulates the harms created by excited delirium training, including pathologizing resistance to oppression; the potential for increasing uses of force and victim blaming; reinforcing racism and increasing violence against Black people; and reinforcing ableism and increasing violence against people with disabilities. Finally, Part V recommends discontinuing officer training about excited delirium and evaluates possible mechanisms for implementing that recommendation, concluding that policy solutions--particularly legislative advocacy--are the most promising avenue for intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]