[news] Roman Andreichikov: Dead in Custody

[Ishaq]

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/28050.php

Roman Andreichikov: Dead in Custody
by TheTyee.ca . 
<http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/?author=TheTyee.ca&comments=yes> 
Sunday July 18, 2004 at 02:12 PM

    Did Vancouver police fail to save Roman Andreichikov's life? Or did
    they have a hand in killing him? The mystery may centre on a factor
    called 'excited delirium'. 

Dead in Custody

TYEE SPECIAL REPORT
Fri., Jun. 25, 2004
By Dee Hon
TheTyee.ca

"I can't breathe."

Those, says a friend who watched in horror, were Roman Andreichikov's 
last words as he lay pinned to the floor of his Granville Street 
apartment. Three Vancouver police officers had piled themselves atop his 
body while another one stood by his side. One officer pushed 
Andreichikov's head down against the floor. Two officers bent 
Andreichikov's legs at the knees while they used their body weight to 
drive his ankles into his back.

"If you're mumbling, you're still breathing," was one officer's reply, 
reportedly.

Moments earlier, one of the officers holding Andreichikov's legs had 
shot him with a Taser - an electric stun gun that overwhelmed his 
nervous system with 50,000 volts of electricity. With his body in 
convulsions, the officers took hold of Andreichikov and bound his hands 
with cuffs. Then thirty seconds after Andreichikov gasped his final 
words, he drew his last breath.

Roman Andreichikov died May 1, 2004 at the age of 25.

Nobody yet knows for sure what caused Andreichikov's death. But the fact 
that the brawny personal trainer was Tasered and pinned while 
incoherently high on drugs places him at the centre of a complex 
controversy over how police should apply force to make arrests.

Taser use by Canadian police forces has been decried by Amnesty 
International.

Also, the positioning and restraint imposed by the officers just before 
Andreichikov's death is coming under concerned scrutiny across North 
America, with some researchers seeing links to a pattern of deaths in 
custody.

Was it the cocaine in his body that killed Andreichikov? He had been 
using crack cocaine for several days and his irrational behaviour led 
his friend to call for an ambulance.

Or did the police play a part in ending Andreichikov's life?

Finding the answer becomes especially pressing in Vancouver where many 
mentally ill people reside, and where the population of crack and 
methamphetamine users is growing, causing police to resort more and more 
often to the techniques used to subdue Andreichikov, the Taser and 
aggressive physical restraint.

Andreichikov's grief-stricken mother Diana is desperate to know why her 
son died.

"He wasn't a criminal," she says. "Roman never hurt anyone in his life."

The Vancouver Police Department isn't talking about the case while its 
major crime unit investigates what happened. The coroner's office 
automatically reviews every in-custody death, but it may take more than 
a year to complete its findings. Andreichikov's autopsy and toxicology 
reports have yet to hit the coroner's desk.

Nor would the department answer more general requests. The Tyee asked 
for the VPD's written protocols for using Tasers and for dealing with 
mentally disturbed people, as well as related coursework required of 
officers. The department's spokesperson said the VDP was unable "at this 
time" to provide such information to The Tyee.

Taser concerns

Every year in B.C., people die in police custody - some years more than 
a dozen.

Of those unfortunate few, perhaps two or three of them per year would 
have died much like Andreichikov did - shortly after struggling with 
police and being put in restraints. Sometimes the deceased were high on 
cocaine, methamphetamines, or some other stimulant when they died. 
Sometimes they were psychotic due to a mental disorder like 
schizophrenia. In other cases, they die stone sober.

Two British Columbians - Terry Hanna and Clayton Willey - died in 
separate incidents last year after being Tasered and subdued by RCMP 
officers. Their cases are still under review but have added fuel to a 
growing firestorm over police use of Tasers.

Amnesty International called on the Canadian government and others to 
suspend police use of Tasers until further review. Several police forces 
in the United States have already holstered their Tasers after public 
outrage sparked by a number of in-custody deaths. The manufacturer, 
Taser International, says the total number of deaths after Taser use now 
approaches 50.

The company points out, however, that every autopsy report to date has 
listed a cause of death other than the Taser. None of the reports have 
found the weapon to be a contributing factor.

Taser spokesperson Steve Tuttle says the weapons don't have nearly the 
power required to damage someone's heart. Hospital defibrillators 
generate 150 to 400 Joules of energy per pulse. The Taser generates a 
maximum of 1.76 Joules per pulse.

"You do the math," Tuttle says. "We are nowhere near the threshold that 
would cause cardiac tissue to be affected."

Even if Tasers contributed to in-custody deaths, the numbers wouldn't 
account for all the people who have died in restraints or shortly 
thereafter - a total estimated to be in the thousands.

'In-custody death syndrome'

Deaths of people after restraint have been documented beyond B.C.'s 
borders: Ontario, The United States, Great Britain, Iraq. And people 
aren't just dying in police restraints. Children and teenagers have died 
after being pinned down by caregivers in group homes. Seniors have died 
in care homes after being restrained to furniture.

Whether the deaths occur on the street, in jail cells, in group homes, 
seniors' facilities or in mental institutions, the death toll keeps 
mounting. A study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimates that 
between 50 to 150 people die in American health facilities each year 
shortly after being restrained. That's 500 to 1500 in the past decade. 
Other researchers estimate a similar number of people die after police 
restraint.

What's killing these people - and may have killed Andreichikov - is 
known by names like in-custody death syndrome or police custody death 
syndrome. Most commonly, it's called either positional asphyxia, or 
agitated/excited delirium.

Sometimes autopsies reveal the victims died from hypoxia - a lack of 
oxygen to the brain. Whatever force or restraints they experienced 
before they died kept them from being able to breathe. Hog-tie 
restraints, prone restraints and body-pressure to the back, chest, neck 
or abdomen have all proven potentially fatal. An Iraqi prisoner in the 
custody of U.S. navy commandos died last April from positional asphyxia.

'Excited delirium' a factor?

When a person is killed by positional asphyxia, it's usually clear who 
did it. But when a person's heart stops beating before he or she stops 
breathing, they call it excited delirium and the blame game becomes more 
complex.

Do police or caregivers contribute to such deaths when they restrain the 
victims, do they merely fail to stop the fatal effects of psychosis?

Anthany Dawson died August 1999, after a violent struggle with Victoria 
police. Prior to his arrest, he had been seen lying on his back in the 
middle of a road screaming and hitting the pavement with his fists. He 
was mentally ill and psychotic. Five police fought to gain control of 
Dawson. Afterwards, they strapped him face-down to an ambulance 
stretcher where he struggled against the straps. He soon lapsed into a 
coma and died two days later in hospital.

The police complaint commissioner's report on the Dawson case cited the 
work of San Francisco assistant medical examiner Steve Karch. In Karch's 
opinion, people who die from excited delirium are doomed regardless of 
what police do. The victims are delirious, adrenaline jacks up their 
heart rate, their hearts fail and they die. Such people are merely the 
victims of their own drug use. "If death occurs while the officers are 
trying to restrain the victim, the police will be assumed to be 
responsible," Karch says.

But other researchers note that every excited delirium death is preceded 
by a forceful struggle with police. A study published in the Canadian 
Medical Association Journal examined the deaths of 21 people due to 
excited delirium in Ontario. In all 21 cases, the deceased were 
forcefully restrained in a prone position, sometimes with pressure 
placed on the neck. Twelve of them (57 percent of the total) had a 
psychiatric disorder. Only a minority of them - eight out of 21 (38 
percent) - had cocaine in their system.

In other words, while other factors may vary, the use of forceful 
takedowns remains a constant element in excited delirium deaths. Larger 
American studies have corroborated these findings.

Coroner: potentially lethal combo

Vancouver coroner Sandy Barabe believes stimulant drugs and forceful 
restraint can combine for lethal effect. You panic automatically when 
you're squeezed so you can't breathe. Catecholamines - your body's fight 
or flight hormones - kick in to help you battle for air. That adrenaline 
surge spikes your heart and makes it race.

"When someone is restrained or fighting - that's a well-known, 
documented phenomenon that causes cardiac arrest," Barabe says.

Psychotic episodes due to illness or stimulant drugs like cocaine raise 
the heart rate too - and for a prolonged period of time. Experts believe 
the combined stresses of psychosis and fighting asphyxiation can 
overwhelm the heart's ability to function.

"It's because you crank the system," Barabe explains. "It's like being 
in the maximum stress state and prolonging it."

Cocaine and methamphetamine use is rising. Mental institution closures 
throughout North America have put far more mentally ill people back into 
the community. Even rising diabetes rates mean more people acting 
strangely because of missed insulin shots.

"Police officers are more than ever being called on to deal with these 
situations," says the Justice Institute of B.C.'s deputy director of 
police training, Mike Trump.

But police officers aren't mental health professionals. "We are not 
training police officers to be psychologists," Trump says. Police are 
taught to handle the situations as best they can.

Taking control of the delirious

So what's a police officer to do when taking a delirious person into 
custody? Use-of-force expert Sgt. Kelly Keith says a forceful takedown 
is never the primary option, regardless of a suspect's mental state. 
Keith trains police recruits at the Justice Institute. He says effective 
communication - an officer's command of "mental judo" - is always the 
first weapon of choice.

But Keith says while police are trained to be aware of excited delirium, 
the issue only becomes of concern after the officers have used taken 
measures - forceful or otherwise -to gain control of the person.

"You're not going to say, 'he may suffer from excited delirium, so we're 
going to use this force option because of this,'" Keith says. "That 
isn't going to happen. Control of the suspect has to be our first concern."

Police are trained to make sure their detainees can breathe and to watch 
for warning signs after they've been restrained. But is that too late a 
time to be worrying about the person's health?

Lawyer Phil Rankin is representing the Andreichikovs to help the family 
search for answers. He feels Vancouver police showed no concern for 
Roman's health and blames them for his death.

"They killed him. It's that simple," Rankin says. "They didn't come 
there to kill him. But they came like stupid cops always do to 
everything. They always use force where brains would work."

'Great guy' with big muscles

Rahim Hadani watched his best friend die in the hands of police that 
day. He was the one who made the fateful call to 911.

Hadani remembers Roman as a fun-loving, easy-going guy with big muscles 
and an even bigger heart. The two of them saw each other almost every 
day whenever Hadani wasn't out of town on business. They loved to work 
out at the gym, ride motorcycles together and go out for spicy Thai 
lunches. "He was a great guy," Hadani looks back fondly, "a really great 
guy."

But Andreichikov was not himself the day he died. Hadani returned from a 
trip to Toronto to find his friend pacing through the apartment picking 
his skin and mumbling incoherently.

Hadani knew his friend recently started smoking crack again after 
quitting two years before. Hadani didn't share his friend's habit, but 
he wasn't concerned it was a problem.

"It didn't bother me as long he kept his life in control," Hadani says. 
If Andreichikov got high one day, he never let it keep him from getting 
up the next morning to go to work.

"He wanted to get off it again, but he didn't get that far," Hadani says 
sadly.

Hadani tried to calm his friend down for an hour and tried to get him to 
go to bed. After Andreichikov threatened to jump from the fourth-floor 
balcony a couple of times, Hadani called for an ambulance.

By the time someone buzzed the apartment, Hadani had Andreichikov seated 
on the couch where he sat holding the couch's arm and rocking. Hadani 
answered the door, but it was the police, and not the paramedics. They 
told Hadani it was standard procedure.

Andreichikov's last minutes

Four officers entered the apartment single file behind another officer 
who targeted Andreichikov with the Taser's aiming laser. After a short 
conversation during which police questioned Andreichikov about his last 
name and date of birth, the officers asked Andreichikov to scoot off the 
couch and lie face-down on the floor. He did as he was told.

Andreichikov was a big man. As he laid face-down on the ground, his own 
body weight may have pushed against his torso making it hard for him to 
breathe. Researchers say this can be common for heavier people. For 
whatever reason, Andreichikov flipped over on his back after ten seconds 
lying prone.

Hadani says his friend was incoherent but calm during time the police 
where there. "If the cops gave me the cuffs, I would have done it," 
Hadani recalls.

But when Andreichikov flipped himself over the police reacted, firing 
the Taser probes into his leg. With that, Andreichikov began the final 
moments of his life.


-\
___\
Stay Strong\
\
 "Be a friend to the oppressed and an enemy to the oppressor" \
--Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib (as)\
\
"This mathematical rhythmatical mechanism enhances my wisdom\
of Islam, keeps me calm from doing you harm, when I attack, it's Vietnam"\
--HellRazah\
\
"It's not too good to stay in a white man's country too long"\
--Mutabartuka\
\
"Everyday is Ashura and every land is Kerbala"\
-Imam Ja'far Sadiq\
\
http://www.sleepybrain.net/vanilla.html\
\
http://awol.objector.org/artistprofiles/welfarepoets.html\
\
http://ilovepoetry.com/search.asp?keywords=braithwaite&orderBy=date\
\
http://www.dpgrecordz.com/fredwreck/\
\
http://www.lowliferecords.co.uk/\
\
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THCO2\
}

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/news/attachments/20040718/7c7a9d2b/attachment.html>