Police having suspects injected with strong anesthetic

Minneapolis police officers asked emergency medical workers dozens of times over three years to inject suspects and others with the powerful anesthetic ketamine, including some who were already restrained, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis reported Friday.

In some cases, the drug caused heart or breathing failure and required those injected to be revived or intubated, according to the newspaper.

The Star Tribune said it had obtained a draft report of an investigation by the Office of Police Conduct Review, a division of the city’s Department of Civil Rights.

Ketamine has for decades been used as an anesthetic for humans and animals, and it has been abused as a recreational hallucinogenic drug known as Special K. Researchers have explored its therapeutic uses in treating depression.

The Star Tribune, citing the draft report, said the number of documented injections of ketamine during police calls increased to 62 last year from three in 2012, including four times on the same person.

Until last month, police had no policy for using the drug, which the department manual classified as a “date rape drug” because it is a powerful sedative that can erase or alter memory.

In one case, officers and emergency medical workers responded to a call about a man who appeared to be in a mental-health crisis.

Four officers and two medical responders arrived and decided to sedate the man, according to the report authors, who reviewed body-camera footage, the Star Tribune reported.

Upon seeing the needle, the man said he did not want the shot. “Whoa, whoa, that’s not cool!” he pleaded, according to the newspaper. “I don’t need that!”

He was injected with the drug twice and secured to a chair. “Shortly after, he became nonverbal and unintelligible, prompting one officer to remark, ‘He just hit the K-hole,’ a slang term for the intense delirium brought on by ketamine,” the newspaper reported.