Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Woman says father deserved more from police
Man died shortly after being pinned by officers
On a chilly morning in 2019, just after 3 a.m., Roy Anthony Scott called 911 to report that a group of people — one armed with a saw — was trying to break into his apartment.
This wasn’t the first time a dispatcher had sent emergency responders to Scott’s home in Sunset Gardens, a senior living complex in Las Vegas. Seven other 911 calls had been placed from his apartment over the previous year, logs from Las Vegas Fire & Rescue show, including one just hours before he called about an attempted break-in.
A neighbor and a relative said ambulance crews typically responded to Scott’s calls because of his known health conditions. But in the predawn hours of March 3, 2019, it was two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers answering the call: Kyle Smith and Theodore Huntsman.
The officers knocked on Scott’s second-floor apartment door and asked him to come out, but Scott insisted the intruders were now inside his apartment and asked police to kick in his door, body-camera footage shows.
Instead, the officers shined a flashlight through Scott’s apartment window. They later testified they saw a man standing alone, looking off with a “thousand yard stare.”
When Scott eventually left his apartment, police said he came out holding a long, thin metal pipe and a cellphone. Smith drew and pointed his gun at the 65-year-old Scott saying, “put that down.” Scott immediately dropped the pipe.
When police asked him to turn around for a pat-down, Scott refused and said he wasn’t comfortable because he had paranoid schizophrenia.
As the officers became insistent, Scott became more agitated. Body-camera video showed the officers trying to handcuff Scott and the three men falling to the ground.
Officers then turned Scott facedown onto his stomach and pressed the weight of their bodies and gear against him for over 90 seconds while struggling to put on the handcuffs before rolling him onto his back and side. Throughout Scott
repeatedly begged the officers to please stop.
Police left Scott lying on his side on a patch of sidewalk and gravel in front of the complex for nearly 10 minutes before paramedics arrived and told police to uncuff him. Once in the ambulance, paramedics started CPR on Scott, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The medical examiner’s report said Scott’s death was an accident caused by methamphetamine intoxication and not police restraint.
“My dad, he needed help. He didn’t need to be apprehended, handcuffed,” said his daughter, Rochelle Scott, 46. “He didn’t deserve to go out — no one deserves to go out like that — like a dog in the street.”
Scott filed a wrongful death lawsuit in October 2020 against the officers and Metro on her father’s behalf.
A judge in March 2023 found that the force officers used against Scott was unconstitutional, especially given that he had not committed a crime or threatened harm to the officers or himself. Attorneys for the officers have appealed the judge’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is pending.
Contested term obscures risks
Police said they noticed Scott was faintly breathing while lying on his side. One of the officers radioed dispatch, saying Scott was potentially suffering from “excited delirium,” according to an investigative report by police.
Metro does not have training specifically for meth-induced crises. But it does have a policy on “Responding to Persons in Behavioral Crisis or with Special Needs” that identifies excited delirium as an “acute, excited state” that is “usually associated with illicit or prescription drug use and manifested by behavioral and physical changes that may result in sudden and unexplained death.” It says those experiencing excited delirium “should be considered in medical crisis.”
But some criminology and medical researchers question the reality of excited delirium and how the police approach subjects in crisis.
Since 2014, all new recruits in the Las Vegas police department must take 36 hours of Crisis Intervention Team training to learn how to manage situations involving mentally ill people, as well as those believed to be suffering from excited delirium.
The officers who responded to Roy Anthony Scott’s call for help had been trained in crisis intervention the year before, court records show. But Peter Goldstein, an attorney who represents Scott’s daughter, said training programs don’t always mean officers are properly trained.