Excited delirium is a very well-known and documented phenomenon, primarily in individuals that are on excessive doses of stimulants: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Cause" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Cause</a><p>However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality. For some reason the article thinks it needs to deny the existence of something that obviously exists in order to argue against police brutality. This is a strange logical fallacy to commit, because you can easily argue brutality is bad regardless of what substances an individual is on.<p>Responding to child comments, it's possible that this condition is not unique enough to require its own name and label. But in that case, one can simply refer to the effects of doses of the given stimulants themselves, e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Adverse_effects" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Adverse_effect...</a>.<p>Please note I'm not making any claim that brutality is okay or ever justified, just that there obviously does exist strong psychological and physical conditions that occur when an individual is on doses of very strong stimulants.
I heard someone claim that Excited Delirium idea is being spread by Axon (Taser company) lobbyists as a way of justifying the deaths of victims of improper taser use.<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7622314" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=762231...</a><p>"But according to civil-liberties groups and legal filings, Taser may have financial reasons to support — and even encourage — the use of the excited delirium diagnosis.<p>Take the case of Frederick Williams. On a grainy video, Williams is screaming, 'Don't kill me! I have a family to support. I've calmed down!" as several officers carry him into the Gwinnett County Detention Center in a suburb of Atlanta. One officer takes out his Taser and fires it directly onto Williams' chest.<p>The officer yells, "Relax! Stop resisting!" But the shock keeps jerking Williams' chest upward. As several officers hold Williams down, he is stunned six more times. A few minutes later, the officers realize Williams is not breathing. Williams died a few hours later.<p>Williams' family is now suing the county and Taser International. The company has made it clear in proceedings so far that it intends to argue Williams died of excited delirium — not because of the Taser or excessive force. The medical examiner could not determine the exact cause of death."
One time when I lived in Hawaii, I had snuck into an apartment’s hot tub with a girl. When leaving, I saw this massive tree of a Hawaiian man, and I’m 6’3”, so this guy was huge. This man was screaming and hitting his wife, who was trying to run away. I yelled out to distract him so she could get away. Before I could even comprehend it, he had run across the street and was right in front of me. I was a very well trained martial artist at the time and I was scared for my life, this guy was clearly high or crazy. I jumped on a ledge where he couldn’t reach me, and he ran off after the wife. I pounded on people’s doors until the cops came and saw them try to talk him down. Three cops tased him before he went down, but then he pulled them out, stood up, and punched the window out of a nearby jeep. He was eventually subdued.
A cop later told me that this was fairly common in that area, because of PCP use.
I’m amazed this guy came out of it alive because of how easily he shrugged off tasers.
If you want to say someone's toe hurts because they stubbed it, you can refer to it as "<i>stubbed toe pain</i>". Even if "<i>stubbed toe pain</i>" isn't an official diagnosis in some health organizations, that doesn't mean it's junk science.<p>I don't get why the article's attacking the term <i>"excited delirium</i>" in the first place, though. I mean, do the authors think that the correctness of police-brutality hinges on whether or not there's such a thing as "<i>excited delirium</i>"? Do the authors think that, if there's such a thing as "<i>excited delirium</i>", it'd justify police-brutality?
Science doesn’t have a great explanation for everything, but that doesn’t make it junk science.<p>Suffice to say it’s not uncommon for people to die suddenly when they encounter stressful situations, even not related to police interactions. I remember reading about a case where a person fell through the ice on a lake, the water never going over his head. He was pulled out immediately, but died of cardiac arrest. What happened? Not unusual to label it vasovagal syncope that resulted in sudden death. Is it a great explanation? No, but it’s the best we have.<p>Similar to excited delirium, we have folks who exhibit similar symptoms and some of them die. Do we know exactly why? Not always, but it doesn’t make “excites delirium” junk science.<p>Not excusing police brutality at all, but it shouldn’t be surprising some of these sudden deaths happen in police interactions too, especially when you’ve got drugs involved and/or mental illness.
I wouldn't call it junk science. I am not a scientist but I do know of times I've gotten so emotional (and really, pick an emotion here) that I've lost myself. IMO there is a breakpoint for most people when we either get too depressed, or too manic, to fully appreciate and control our behavior. With the fight or flight response kicking in, I think we can find ample evidence of people under extreme stress or duress just...losing themselves and going on autopilot.
It also works in practice almost half the time in states that allow the defense to reduce a conviction from murder to manslaughter, and not only for police, cause juries are made up of humans.