Are ‘spit hoods’ used by police safe?
Deaths in custody, including Daniel Prude, raise concerns
When Tim Peters started banging on a neighbor’s door and shouting about religion just before sunrise with a beer bottle in his hand, someone called the county sheriff.
Peters ended up in the medical unit at the Hernando County jail north of Tampa, Florida, in April 2022. Video from his cell showed the 49year-old handyman struggling with deputies. They pepper sprayed him, then covered his face with a mesh bag known as a spit hood. When it became soaked with saliva and blood, they added another. Minutes later, Peters was motionless.
Jail staff spent nearly three minutes pumping on Peters’ chest to revive him before they took the bags off his head. He died the next day. A medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was undetermined but noted the spit hoods in her report.
Spit hoods, also called masks, socks or nets, briefly became part of the national debate about police use of force in 2020, when Daniel Prude suffocated after police in Rochester, New York, forced a hood on him because he claimed to have COVID and spat in their direction.
Police used spit hoods on at least 31 people who died in their custody between 2013 and 2023, according to an investigation by The Marshall Project and WTSP, the CBS affiliate in Tampa.
In most of the deaths, medical examiners said they couldn’t determine how people died, or they cited other causes, like drug overdoses. The Marshall Project and WTSP found at least five cases where coroners mentioned spit hoods as a possible cause or contributing factor in fatalities.
“One death is too many,” said George Kirkham, a Florida State University criminology professor. “The families of these folks are devastated.”
Most departments that give patrol officers the masks don’t track how often they are used. There are no national reporting requirements on deaths involving spit hoods, and mentions of spit hoods in deaths involving police can remain hidden from public view for months or forever.
Sheriff’s officials in Florida did not initially tell the public that they placed two hoods on Peters. They revealed it only after WTSP reporters pressed for more details and eventually obtained an unredacted video of Peters in custody.
In a press conference last fall, Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis said Peters fought deputies, and that they put a second spit sock on Peters because the first one had become wet. Spokesperson Denise Moloney told The Marshall Project deputies left the hoods on when they started CPR because their immediate priority was to revive him.
“We did everything in our power to help him,” Moloney said. “We don’t believe the spit hood was the source of the issues he had.”
The officers were not charged with any wrongdoing.
Policy confusion
Many police departments include spit hoods in their use of force policies and consider them restraints. But other law enforcement leaders characterize spit socks as sanitary devices. The hoods keep people from spitting on officers, protecting them from health risks involving contact with saliva. In fact, health care workers also use the nets to keep patients from spitting on them.
Many departments have no policies on deploying the spit hoods – and among the ones who do, the rules vary wildly. Among departments with policies, most require officers to remove the sacks when a person is vomiting, bleeding from the mouth or suffering from other medical conditions, according to The Marshall Project’s review of policies from 100 departments in 25 states.
But only 10 of those departments restrict spit hoods to cases in which someone is actively spitting or biting others, or is about to do so. Only 11 require officers to warn people before putting them in a spit mask. And only 12 point out that people in a mental health crisis can experience high distress when in a spit net.
Most makers of spit hood devices say they sell them with clear instructions, noting that the manufacturers cannot be held liable for any injuries if the bags are used improperly.
Those guidelines generally say officers should never leave spit hoods on for more than several minutes at a time, and never leave the person unattended. They also warn against using the devices on people who are bleeding heavily from the mouth or vomiting, or who appear to be in a mental health crisis.
Edwin Budge, a Seattle-based lawyer who has successfully sued police in cases where people have been killed or injured in encounters that involved spit hoods, said he understands the need for some device to keep police safe from people who spit on them. The problem is that officers fail to recognize that spit hoods can be deadly.
“They have to be used really cautiously in the field,” Budge said. “Rule number one is that you shouldn’t ever impair anyone’s ability to breathe.”
Studying the studies
Some research studies have shown that even dense spit hoods are easier to breathe in than an N95 mask, and study subjects could breathe even in hoods sprayed with artificial saliva.
But critics say none of those studies mimicked the chaos and stress of being arrested or held in jail.
Until a University of California study last year, all the research that involved humans tested people’s ability to breathe used dry hoods. And even the artificial saliva the California researchers used was thinner than real human spit, some experts say.
Dr. Dan Woodard, a former emergency room physician who has studied spit hoods since 2018, said he believes that’s one reason the studies are faulty. People restrained in masks by police can also spit up vomit or blood, which have a thicker consistency than the liquid used in the study, Woodard said.
“Plus, these are people who are in a controlled environment,” Woodard said of the studies. “They haven’t just finished running from the police or getting punched or hit or thrown to the ground.”
People who have tried to breathe in spit masks during police encounters describe it as a scary experience. Nzinga Bayano Amani, a civil rights activist, is suing the Knoxville Police Department and the Knox County Sheriff’s Office for a 2022 incident in which officers used a spit hood.
Amani said officers incorrectly placed the elastic band of the spit hood that is supposed to go around the neck, and it caught in their mouth. Amani struggled to breathe, managing to stay conscious by taking deep breaths through their nose, they said.
“I knew if at any time I got any more stressed or agitated, there’s a possibility I could have passed out,” Amani said.
Both agencies declined to comment, citing the active lawsuit. In their response to Amani’s complaint, the agencies said officers acted reasonably.
Combining tactics to deadly effect
In more than half of the 31 deaths involving spit hoods that The Marshall Project and WTSP compiled, police agencies used the hood in conjunction with other restraint techniques or tactical weapons, including hogtying, pepper spray and stun guns.
Medical experts say that these combinations often worsen problems that lead to serious injury or death.
Nearly two years after Tim Peters’ death, his wife Julie Peters said she can still hear him laugh sometimes. The husband she remembers was as witty as he was gentle, an animal lover who liked to play the guitar and serenade her with John Legend.
She doesn’t know what led to his behavior the morning he was arrested. She thought he might have had a psychological breakdown, though she said he had never been diagnosed with a mental illness. Julie Peters remembers the moment after the arrest, when an officer confirmed that her husband was at the jail.
“Oh, thank God,” she thought. “He’s safe.”
Two days later, he was dead.