Part Two: Excited Delirium: How Cops Invented A Disease

who I am? You know what we do? Motherfucker's Robert Evans, motherfucker's this is Behind the Bastards? Motherfuck Are we not doing that? And we're not not a little much? That's a little bit much. So it's a little bit much. Turn it down. Come on, this is Behind the Bastard. There we go. He's Robert Evans. Now I am Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. And my guest for part two of our episode on Excited Delirium is Ben Bowland. Ben. How are you doing today, Ben? Ben? Hey, thanks so much,

Thanks so much for having me back again. Guys, and new things got sort of uh dicey at the end for anybody who wasn't listening in to part one. I think a lot of people might be tuning in just for part two. But yeah, yeah, just just for part two. They said, I don't want don't they read the description? Now, I want to go in media rez baby, Yeah, Tabula Rossau, coming in, uh, coming in hot Uh. Yeah. Thanks for having me back. I know things got difficult off air.

We had some creative differences read De Rito's which is fine. But I'm I'm glad. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I'm I'm glad to have you back. I'm also glad to continue to guessing whether or not to reintroduce De Rito's plugs. To be honest, when when it comes to the old running jokes that I'd like to reintroduce, I'm really looking forward to getting in a studio again and just damaging company property with a machette and various thrown objects.

That's that's the thing I'm most excited for. I've been practicing and I'm gonna throw a bagel in your face. Really yeah, I mean it's one of those things. I've come to the conclusion that, you know, the pandemic, it gave us some necessary pause time you know, um, because we've been doing that a little bit too much. People were like a little bit too much throwing stuff. But now the pandemic, I think people are ready for it again. And that's that that that kind of makes it all worthwhile,

doesn't it. Yeah, I'm gonna everything, Bagel uh good stuff. Before we get started, though, I do wanna give give you a shout out for the show and Robert you personally, because I was I was listening to some of the old school behind the Bastards and and it hit me. I was, I was, I was listening to this and was one of the one of the machete moments, as I call him, and I was thinking, damn, my machete is really old. All right, Well, what's what's your brand? Oh?

Is it one where you don't know the brand? It's just an old knife, old machete. Yeah, yeah, it's just an old is it one of those big stamped steel deals? Like kind of one of those like I think a lot of them, may Mill Salvador. It's kind of a thin stamped piece of metal with an edge on it. Yeah,

actually nailed it. Yeah. Those are great, those are I mean, honestly for most I mean well, it's just because if you actually go to the places in the world where like every single person, like right down to the old ladies, is walking around with a machete, like Guatemala, Like fucking there's big parts of Guatemala where everyone you see is just gonna have one on them because it's like a life tool. I used to live there. Yeah you're right, Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, I spent months there.

Where were you? I was in Ja lah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I wasn't cool enough. It was frauded lan um. But yeah, it's like whenever you see people who who use machetes all the damn time, it tends to be one of those stamped steel ones because like they work, they do the job. They're fucking unkillable. You can just run them on like one of those, you know, one of those foot powered sharpening wheels, um, sharpen it up and it's they're not fancy, so like,

yeah that uses up steel, but you don't care. It's not like a your teasonal knife. Um, they're great. I love those. I love those machetes for all that I enjoyed my artisanal machetes. If I'm just gonna go out and fuck a knife up. I'm going to use one of those, right, But speaking of fucking things up, Robert,

this is part two of a very fucked up situation. Yes, yes it is, and we're we're talking about so when we when we last left, uh, this very fun story we were talking, I had introduced a guy named Dr Jeffrey Hoe. Because we just talked about Charles Wetley and Deborah Mash to Dr years Um, who receive a decent amount of money we don't know exactly how much from the Axon Corporation to Um explain why tasers didn't cause

taser related deaths. And now we are going to talk about Dr Jeffrey Ho, who is like like the the ultimate form of that kind of doctor. This guy is such a shady motherfucker. If there's a single biggest bastard of the episode, it's Dr Jeffrey Ho. So Ho worked for ten years as an e er doctor in Hinnepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. The fact that we're talking about Minneapolis and Key went on some of where this

is going now. From an early stage in his medical career, Doctor Hoe got involved in shall we say extracurricular work. He was hired by a nearby fire department to direct medical services there, which is great. He consulted for a private medical product company, which it is probably okay. He enlisted in the National Guard, and he taught at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and then he took a

side gig working with the Minneapolis Police swat team. This dalliance with law enforcement was apparently so appealing to Dr Ho that in two thousand three he returned to school to get a two year degree in law enforcement, which was a requirement to pass the police Licensing Board in Minnesota. He became a part time police officer near Minneapolis. And so far my feelings on policing aside based on the standards of our society at its present moment, that's not

the worst thing in the world, right. Doctors can moonlight like cops get to moonlight as security guards. I guess why wouldn't it a doctor be able to moonlight as a cop. Like theoretically, if you're a doctor and a cop, when you horribly injure someone, maybe you can provide life saving medical aid to them. More. I don't know, Like, um oh, I'm pictoring like the the worst eighties movie. Right, yeah, Dr Cop, doct doctor Cops. It would be funny to

just redo dirty Harry. But every time he shoots someone, he then like he puts on a tourniquet. Once I kill him, I go right in the doctor mode. Um. So yeah, that's a little a little sketchy. But again based on sort of the standards of our society so far, I guess I don't think he's violating anything. I don't think there's any rule that says a doctor can't be a cop, so whatever, Um seems a little odd to me. Now.

While doctor Hoe was starting his journey into law enforcement, Axon had a Nebraska doctor named Robert Stratbooker as their chief medical advisor. In two thousand five, Dr Stratbucker signed on as a consultant to help conduct a massive study funded by the U S Department of Justice to look at the safety of stun guns. The study was being managed by a University of Wisconsin professor named John Webster, and it was supposed to be completely independent of Axon

or any other stunt gun manufact her. Right, this is the d o J wants to do a big study on whether or not stunned dens are safe, which is a reasonable thing for the d o J to do, right, Like, you're buying all these stun guns, you probably know how often they kill people. Um So, Dr Stratbucker gets named as one of the consultants on that study even though he's in the employee of Accon, which is kind of shady. And I'm gonna quote from an NBC right up now.

In March, both Webster and a Taser spokesman told the AP the company had no ties to their research. In his grant proposal, Webster proposed stratt Bucker received eighteen thousand dollars in salary and travel expenses for his advice. Strat Bucker's resume was included, but did not mention his work for Taser, and Webster checked the box to deny any conflict of interest. Now, Ben, I'm not a doctor, nor am I. Well, I'm a kind of scientist. You can see I I actually am a reverend doctor, so I

am the perfect person. And I've experimented with different kinds of dangerous drugs on my friends and families, so you know, I I am a good person to say this. I would argue that if you are conducting a d J study on whether or not tasers are safe and you're paid by Taser, that is a conflict of interest. Yeah, well, well it's a it's a perfect alignment of interest for the people who are selling out human beings for some extra cash. That's that's jolly good for them as as ah,

it's it's not well written, that's the part. Like, if you were writing this to be as insidious and evil as it is, you would come up with maybe better motivations. And it's one of those things. I don't know how much Stratbucker is getting paid by ACTS. It has to be more than eighteen grand, because like for a doctor, for someone in that kind of income bracket, and I'm in I'm going to guess a similar income bat bracket

to strat Bucker. Eighteen grand doesn't chump change, right, you'd miss it if it came out of your bank account. But it's not enough to sell your soul for, right. He's got to be getting a lot of money from ACTS on on this, because eighteen grand is not enough to sell your soul out um, if you're in that kind of income bracket, right, Because he's not fucking starving

on the street. He's a very prominent doctor and professor. Um, he's got money like that, there's got to be And that's one of the like a lot of times when they talk about how much these different doctors are getting paid, it's like ten or twenty grand, and you know, like, no, there's more fucking cash coming to you than that, Like I don't I can't prove that. I don't know because these are private payments, right, he's not. It's not a government employee. But you have to be getting more money

than that. Eighteen grands not enough, you know, not. It comes through different ways. Yeah, that's how it works. It will come through a different direction. Uh. There there are a lot of things that are easily easily lost unfortunately when it comes to those kind of payments. Uh. And then also we have to consider as messy and and depressing shitty as it is to point out there are people at that income level who are driven to a great degree by a self delusion and ideology, you know

what I mean. So yeah, they're just down to clown. They're down to fucking clown. Yeah. Uh so. Um. In two thousand, in May of two thousand five, documents were uncovered that showed strat Bucker had received both cash and stock options from as On, and again, I don't have an exact number there, but you have to assume it's a lot, especially the stock options, which gives him a further invested interest in the company's success, right, because how much those options are worth are valued on how much

acts On is worth, which has directly related to whether or not the Justice Department decides tasers are safe enough for cops to use. You know, now, the Justice Department very shadily claimed that they've known about Stratbucker's affiliation with ax On the whole time, and they didn't consider it a big deal because obviously you need a taser expert on a study to determine whether or not tasers are

deadly or than advertised. Dr Webster's response to the reveal of his relationship with Axon seems to have put the lie to this. He told the AP quote, in view of this potential conflict of interest, I can make the statement that I have not received advice or paid Stratbucker,

and I will not use him in the future. So Webster pulled back didn't pay Stratbucker the eighteen grand cut him from the study um and this kind of like spoils Dr Stratbucker, right, because now he can't be a part of these studies that they are going to continue to be done on the taser because journalists revealed the fact that he has a conflict of interest. Now, for Axon, this meant that they needed to shop around for a new scientist to tweak research in order to make their

products seem safe. Tasers had gone viral among law enforcement agencies and a ton of folks wound up dying or being horribly injured by cops who were using electrocution guns. Axons lawyers were now fielding dozens of lawsuits and they needed a way to assure investors that they were going to get past this and salvage their image. Now, thanks to Reuters, we have access to a packet for investors that acts On handed out where they proposed a solution

to their bad pr and lawsuit problem. This solution was to employ a group of quote world class medical professionals to defend the brand. Now, the doctors we've talked about, we're all brought on for that reason. And I want to read you a chunk from this investor document because it really is one of the most sociopathic things I've ever come across. So this is the Ason Corporation talking

to investors. As a result of various litigation inquiries and proposed legislation mentioned above, we had to incur significant general and administrative expenditures in two thousand five, an investment in protecting our brand, equity and educating the various public interests in our technology. In particular, we incurred substantial incremental legal, lobbying, public relations, and related traveling costs, which ultimately had an

adverse impact on our overall profitability in two thousand five. However, we believe these investments were well worth the cost. In many cases, what began as adverse circumstances for us yielded opportunities to educate high level public leaders in the faith in the value of our products. Those adverse circumstances were tasers killing people and then being like, well, but then we got to fight it in court proved that it wasn't the taser, So these adverage it really was a

boon to us that we killed these people. It's off the hook. Yeah, not cool, We're good, but totally expected. I guess I'm baffled at the last, like, how much of that is an act and how much of that is, in your opinion, as you said, like a sociopathic lack of awareness or lack of caring about that very apparent lack of carry Like do they know they have to because they're they're the ones. We'll we'll talk about this later, but they are actively fighting to force medical profess chals

not to diagnose UM tasteer related deaths? Is taste related deaths? Like that's a thing they go to do. They hire these people to tweak research and stuff. Now, I'm sure there's a lot of employees that light to themselves about what they're doing. But we have some real problems. I mean, the overall problem is just the fact that there's a

certain amount of these people in any society. And that's why you should dissolve UM systems, that systems that put power in people's hands wherever possible, because you can't get rid of these people. They're always going to exist, but you can get rid of power UM. And this is a perfect example. Axon has a great deal of power and they use it to hide the fact that they sell electrocution machines. Well said, at all points, I I

I agree. I wish it wasn't true, but that might be the most viable, if ambitious solution to remove the power. If you cannot in a feasible way remove the tendency. Yeah, I don't think, and I don't think you can remove

the tendency. There will always be I don't know. This is getting a little off topic, but what one of my favorite books, Tried by Sebastian Younger, does talk a bit, and there's other books that talk about like some of these people who don't have we would say a conscience, right, there's uses for these people Historically, you know, if you're part of a hunter gatherer tribe and you have a real fucking bad winter and some hard decisions need to be made about who's going to be left behind, who's

going to get a limited supply of food. A lot of people can't make those calls, and sociopaths can um. But then you wind up in that that is, in a situation where you have a small number of people and while like you, you decide like they, they are as affected by those decisions as everyone else because it's all part of a small group that's trying to survive.

In adverse conditions. Um. Where it becomes maladaptive on a societal level is when you have individuals like that who will never face the consequences of their decisions and who are not impacted by them, and they're just hurting other people because our society allows them to be completely divorced from the consequences of their actions because they have money in a position of influence. UM. That's that's when it

really becomes a problem. These these people who have tendencies that continue to persist in humanity for a reason, um, because they provide some benefits to society, UM, become fundamentally toxic to society because they're completely divorced from the consequences of their actions. You know, when a hunter gatherer tribes, someone like that, if they go too far or get too much power, the rest of the tribe will just

murder them. Like that happens a lot in These people like that doesn't happen here because they're the CEO of acx on, you know, and they have bodyguards and a whole systems set up to protect them. UM. It's the same story with you know, these these pharmacyeos who have jacked at the price of insulin right, it's it's the same story with every American president pretty much. I mean, well said. And then also, I don't think I don't think this is a diversion at all, because you're you're

bringing it back around. And the only point I would add is, um, when we talk about the evolutionary necessity of some of those uh cognitive like some of that cognitive hardware or design, but we have to realize is that, you know, and I think this is what you're getting at, Robert Um. The need, the need for that kind of person in society is somewhat archaic, investigial, like there there is potential to do something else. Humans are just very bad at changing and general Yeah, yeah, yeah, we share

are But you know what we're not bad at? Then, oh, what's that? Producing products and services? And doesn't then make it all worthwhile in the end, the products the services. You know, sure, we're killing the planet and a lot of the people on it and a lot of the life on it, you know, boiling the oceans, all that stuff, But by god, we have products and we have services, and where would we be without those products and services? Watching a lot more sunsets sleeping under the stars anyway,

here's smacks. We're back and we're talking about um um doctor Hoe in his relationship to the Axon Corporation and how it started. So we just talked about Robert strap Bucker who gets exposed in two thousand five, and right around that time, the axe On Corporation reached out to a doctor at the Hinnepin County Medical Center to ask if he wanted to be a consultant for them. Now, this doctor, whoever he was, had too much on his plate already, but he said, Hey, I know another doctor

who's a workaholic boot liquor. Here's his number. And that is how Dr Jeffrey Ho wound up on the payroll of Big Taser. From a write up and the Star Tribune, which is a Minneapolis paper that has done I don't know generally anything about this paper, they've done some incredible

work on this specific issue. Quote. In two thousand and five, with funding from Axon Enterprise Incorporated and the Arizona based Taser, the Arizona based taser manufacturer, Ho wrote an article for Police Magazine disputing claims from human rights groups that It's stun guns were killing people. It has never been scientifically proven that a taser has directly caused an industody death,

Ho wrote. He offered another explanation to these sudden deaths, excited delirium a uh uh now, and keep keep keep a pin in that it has never been scientifically proven that a taser has directly caused an in custody death, which we've heard before, right, you remember the other we were talking about wet Lee. I think it was said like they don't. We've never no evidence that these caused deaths. Um keep that in mind because we'll be talking about

that a little bit later. We're still talking about how for right now and over the next decade, Dr Hoe joy into doctors Mash and Wetly in researching and popularizing the term excited delirium. When interviewed by The Star Tribune, doctor Hoe claimed that excited delirium is real, widespread, and deadly. He claimed that his interest in researching it came from a pure hearted desire to save lives and reduce the

threat of this totally real, deadly disease. He did not initially acknowledge his financial relationship with Axon, but when Axon was reached for comment, they cited doctor Hoe and there are other pet doctors in order to claim quote, there is no longer a true debate among knowledgeable medical professionals on whether excited delirium syndrome is a valid diagnosis. So

though there's not a debate anymore, thank you Axon. Oh okay, as we've already cited a number of knowledgeable medical professionals who will argue that it is very much not a settled debate. Um. We we've we've cited a lot of those people. But considering the number of shill docs who keep making claims like this, I feel the need to keep quote encounter arguments. Dr Homer Vinter is a former is the former chief physician of Riker's Island Jail in New York City. He now works for a nonprofit that

studies healthcare in the criminal justice system. He does not believe that excited delirium is a valid diagnosis. Quote, this is not a medical diagnosis. I think there's still an open question as to the scientific legitimacy of excited delirium. Now, there are emergency medical specialists who do not work for acts ON and believe there is some validity to the

excited delirium diagnosis. They tend to argue that if you don't acknowledge this constellation of symptoms is real, how can you expect police officers to recognize when someone might be at risk of dying in custody because of it, to which I might respond, the cop with the cop with Derek Chauvin that day in Minneapolis recognized excited delirium and George Floyd still died. It sure seems like it doesn't help anyone stop deadly behavior. It just justifies it. Now.

One of the people who went to bat for Dr Hoe in that article was Dr James Minor, Chief of Medical Chief of Emergency Medicine at Hennepin County. Dr Miner authored a taser research article with doctor Hoe. He does not seem to work for Axon. I cannot find any evidence that he is directly paid by Axon, but he's still benefits financially from doctor hose relationship to the company. Here's why quote Axon Enterprise retains ho is its contract medical director, a job to which he dedicates thirty two

hours per month at hc MC. In exchange, Axon pays the hospital about a hundred and forty thousand dollars per year. Hose annual salary at Hennepin Healthcare is currently four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Hose position with Axon is not disclosed on hc MC's website, so you see what's happening here. As long as doctor Hoe is employed by Axon, Dr Miner's hospital has a hundred and forty thousand less dollars they need to find in their budget every year because

Axon pays that chunk of his salary. In two thousand six, h CMC, the hospital they both at, lost forty nine million dollars. In two thousands seventeen, they lost twenty nine million dollars, So they are in in every penny counts sort of situation. And Dr Minor could be argued to benefit directly from doctor hose financial relationship with ax On because that's less money he has to find in his

fucking budget and clearly his budget is tight, right. There absolutely is an ongoing financial interest that this guy has to even if he's not receiving money from Axon. Doctor Hoe took ax On money for well over a decade, which means the hospital would have gotten something like one point four million dollars from the company. UH, and he used his position during this time his position of prominence within the hospital to defend both the ax On corporation

and cops who killed people. In two thousand seven, Ho went to Las Vegas to defend a Nevada cop accused of killing a man by tasting him repeatedly, even after that man had been strapped to a gurney. A coroner's jury determined that the taser had played a role in that man's death. So a cop to he's is a restrained man to death and a coroner's jury says, yeah, the taser is part of why he died, and Taser says, oh,

we're not going to take that ship sitting down. This gets back to what I was saying earlier, Right, Doctor Jo is able to claim I can't think of a single case where a taser was found to have killed somebody. It's because whenever a taser is found to kill somebody, Axon goes to fucking war. Right, That's why that is the case. And they've got the money to throw at it too, right, Yeah, of course they do. She cops are buying a lot of tasers. Now. Dr Hoe was

not about to let that stand. In two thousand five, he'd taken a course with the Las Vegas Police Department on excited delirium, and in two thousand seven in court, he cited symptoms of excited delirium to explain how the man had died totally independent of being repeatedly tasted. The judge ruled in favor of the police and axe On.

In two thousand eight, Axon hired Hoe is part of their lawsuit against a medical examiner in Ohio who cited tasers as a factor in three deaths, who argued that the taser could not have killed any of those people, claiming that excited delirium had caused death in all three cases. The judge ruled again in favor of Axon and the medical examiner was forced to remove any reference to taser

from the death records. In one of these cases, the this exonerated a police officer who was being charged with murder. So that's good, that's good ship. Yeah, it's it's so fun. We're having a good time. So I I I imagine that someone is I don't know, like it's weird. It's it's time, I guess for an irrelevant uh fun fact, uh you know, for any fans of Scrooge McDuck. Right, you might automatically imagine the people in Axon swimming in

a vault of money. Uh, but it's actually really difficult, especially if you want to get a dive with some air, you're much more likely to hurt yourself. And so at this point, Robert, it feels like, and I know we've got we've got more to explore here, but it feels almost like that kind of ridiculous injury is the only consequence that these folks will face for these actions, right, because it appears like business is booming with tasers. They're not getting Yeah, no, taser is is fucking nail in

it these days. Um Yeah, it's not great. Um, And we've we've been talking about how taser goes after and like goes to war basically needs how a medical examiner's like, yeah, obviously a taser killed this guy, or at least a taser was a factor in his death. Right, Like, it's also the fault of the cop tasing him, as opposed to purely the taser, because in a lot of cases, as a general rule, these cops are not using taste

is the way they're supposed to be used. Their repeatedly tasing people at closer range and for longer periods of time than they're supposed to. But Taser doesn't want to deal with any of that bad press, which means defending the cop entirely and removing the Tasers even being involved in the death, rather than just being like they're using

our product improperly, you know, um, which is often the case. UM. Here's another completely sociopathic passage from that Axon Investor document I quoted in the last episode, quote continued aggressive litigation defense to protect our brand equity. We have a simpled a team of world class medical experts at our disposal and hired additional internal legal resources during two thousand and five to provide an efficient means of defending us against

numerous product liability lawsuits. We have had a total of twelve cases dismissed or defense judgments in our favor. We view a continued record of successful litigation defense is a key factor for our long term growth, So it's good for the bottom line. We gotta slander dead people, um, and sue medical examine who dare to say that being taste repeatedly is bad for you? Where did those medical

professionals get off with the audacity to do their jobs. Yeah, yeah, to dare to dare to blame a device that electrocutes people for their hearts stopping. Um, yes, fucking shameful. About a hundred and fifty nine U S dollars per share.

It's up five point three percent today. Oh wow. Yeah, so let's look at their five year Wow, their five year trend line in a in two thousand and sixteen, they were at like thirty dollars to share, and they're they're down from their peak, which was um a little earlier this year February, but they're at like, so that's you know, five years they've like quadrupled in stock values. So that's pretty good. Um, holy smokes. Yeah, let's looks.

Oh yeah, so they were at like a low point in in two thousand so yeah, at around like two thousand four, two thousand five, they're they're like they're like nine sixty a share, um, and really they start to soar after two thousands sixteen. That's like almost all of their stock growth, that growth growth has happened after that point. And they're only twenty eight years old as a company. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why I sometimes get that. I'm probably

not the only one. But I sometimes like if you read a lot about um defense corporations and like the bigger players in the industry, it's it's always easy or attempting to assume like, oh, these dudes are old as ship and they go back to you know, uh, the world wars and so on, But that's not the case. Twenty eight years old founded and obviously we're talking about a new kind of thing with a taser, Like the technology hasn't existed all that long. But yeah, these guys

are like their new to law enforcement. Um IF Even if you're someone who believes cops should exist and there's a benefit to having cops, there's a lot of evidence

that we're capable of maintaining cops are capable. Whatever you think they're doing that's positive can be done without a taser um or at least with a maybe with a taser that's that accepts the deadliness of their product potentially and works to mitigate it, rather than just suing anyone who claims it's deadly, Like an ethical if you're going to if there's any ethical way to do this, and I do think there's ethical reasons for less than lethal weapons,

even though I don't believe in the police. I think that there's reasons to have stuff that's not a fucking gun that you could use against somebody that might stop them from carrying out a violent act. An ethical company where that to be a sort of thing that could exist would be like, oh, God, they died in this case because the person applied the taser for too long. Let's build in like a guidance thing so that it can't do so shocks, like, oh, maybe we have it

too hot, like you. There are ways in which this could be more ethical than it currently is, but it seems like mostly what they do is just sue anybody who claims their products dangerous, which is cool, um and good, Yeah, so good. During his time with Axon, doctor Hope Press has provided expert consulting in more than twenty four lawsuits

in fourteen states and one Canadian province. In addition to the hundred and forty thousand dollars per year Axon paid of his salary, Hope builds four hundred dollars an hour for his services to ax On and the different law enforcement agencies. He defends. He's been hired to give more than a hundred presentations around the world on Taser's wonderful technology. In two thousand six, he lectured to French police. In two thousand eleven, he gave presentations on arrest related deaths

in the use of force in Serbia and Turkey. In two thousand and seventeen, he traveled to London and Ireland to spread the gospel of tays. By two thousand nineteen, doctor Hoe was an extremely valuable and prolific contributor to the spread of Tasers worldwide. That year was the first time his financial relationship with the company was revealed publicly when The Star Tribune published a bomb l investigation titled Where Law and Medicine Collide. Here's how that article opens up.

Depending on the day, Jeffrey hose work attire may include a doctor's white coat or a badge and a forty caliber glock with high capacity magazines. Hos Ho transitions between head of Paramedics at HCMC, where he oversees the response to tens of thousands of nine one one calls every year, and a part time sheriff's deputy in rural Minnesota. He also draws on his expertise and healthcare and law enforcement

for a third job. He is a paid advocate for the Taser stun gun, one of the most popular police weapons in North America. Hoose allegiances to medicine police and collided last year when investigators from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights discovered that police officers were urging paramedics to sedate emotionally disturbed people in the field with the powerful sedative ketamine. Some patients were then enrolled without their consent and an hcmc C study on ketamine, on which Ho

was a lead researcher. Now, this is getting us a little bit outside of tasers and excited delirium, but it's a fucked up story and we're gonna talk about it. So, starting in two thousand fourteen, researchers at HCMC, led by Ho, started having paramedics responding to medical emergencies inject quote agitated people with either ketamine or a control group sedative to

see which worked better. As noted in the quote above, patients were not asked for consent, and we're only informed afterwards of what had been done to them and that they've been enrolled in a study. Now, medical ethics does allow for patients to be drugged without consent under certain circumstances. Right. Sometimes people are a danger to themselves and others, and that is considered to be the best way to deal

with it. Right. If the situation is an emergency and the risks of the medication are considered minimal, this can be done. But that is not the case with ketamine being administered in Hinnepin County. From a write up in Nature, quote, thirty nine percent of subjects who received ketamine developed respiratory problems that required the insertion of a breathing tube, compared to only four percent of those who received the sedative

Hello paradol. The study also reported that ketamine sedated patients much more quickly than how a pair at all did, but that respiratory side effects were most likely to develop and severely agitated patients who received ketamine, So there's significant dangers to this. After three years of drugging agitated people at random, the hc MC launched a second study of ketamine use in non compliant patients. Four hundred and twenty

people were enrolled in this study. Although in role was an odd term to use for people who are drugged against their will, the way the study was supposed to work was that all agitated patients admitted to the hospital during the first six months of the year would be

dosed with ketamine. Well, everyone who was agitated and admitted during the last six months of the year would receive how low paradol either or a different sett The hospital had to study had to shut the study down after just six months, though, because a Star Tribune investigation publicized

a report from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights. This report alleged that rather than the study being conducted just on patients admitted to the hospital, local cops had started advising paramedics to drug troublesome patients, including people the police had already physically restrained. Now the hospital devised the police. Yeah, yeah,

that's not good. Is it disturbing? Yeah? Cops are the people who should determine when someone gets fucking ketamine, right, because then then inherently the police who are not doctors, with this one notable exception of doctor, oh, that puts them in a supervisory or administrative role in this study, does it not. You could argue that m hm oh,

but these guys aren't part of the studying necessarily. This is just happening in the field, like the hospital gets approved to do this on patients in the hospital, and so this stuff becomes part of the toolkit paramedics are carrying around, and cops find out about it, and they just start having people drugged when they're having an issue with somebody. Wow, that is it's pretty rad. That has

never happened. Yeah. Well, for every audi in the audience today who was a big fan of recreational drugs and is somehow not familiar with what I mean, is fun Yeah, yeah, well, it's not the right circumstances there. We go very important asterisk there. If you are a fan of recreational drug use, uh, you probably don't want law enforcement calling your dosage or

you don't want to be hanging out with them. Uh. And also I would argue, you know, when you're saying in the right context there, Robert, you probably mean consensual ketamine, right, yes, yes, yeah, yeah. Like the last time I did ketamine was in a hotel in Los Angeles with a bunch of friends, um, well like a friend in their co workers, and we were all railing lines of ketamine off of the side of a machete and having lovely conversations. And that was

a wonderful night. Um. We called it machete amine. Um. But we all consented and none of us were being restrained by police at the time, which I think both of those facts were key to our enjoyment of the machetamine that night. It's it was. It's a good way to do ketamine. Um. I I I highly recommend it. Uh theoretically, you know, theoretically, so um, hypothetically, hypothetically that would be an enjoyable thing to do. And I should

note for legal purposes. H. C mc denies that police ever directed paramedics in this way, but um, you can decide whether or not you believe them. I think the Star Tribunes reporting makes me question that. But you know what, I don't question. Nothing says cool ranch like a mustard gas cloud billowing across the fields of Flanders. Anyway, here's

some products. We're back. And I was just telling my friends how while eighteen grand isn't enough to buy my integrity, just giving me a pile of weapons is like if the company that makes bear cats wants to give me a bear cat, I will stop complaining about the police bearcats. I'm telling you all that right now. My integrity is the price of a free bear cat that I could drive around town. Um, I'll do it. I'm not even

I don't even feel bad about it. You would use it for good though, No, no, no, no, no, no, I absolutely would not, but it would be it would be fun. It would be fun. Um. There's a lot of things you can do with a bearcat that people would have trouble stopping you from doing. Um, So we should probably get back to the episode. Yeah. Now. The Star Tribune report on this Hennepin County Medical Center ketamine study also revealed that in several cases, these involuntary ketamine

doses stopped patients hearts. Multiple people had to be resuscitated at the hospital. And some of these stories are fucking horrifying. Here's the Star Tribune. And remember Dr Hoe was one of the lead researchers on this study. Good guy quote. Body camera footage from one case showed a woman, after

being maced by police, asking for an asthma pump. The draft report said, instead, a paramedic gave her an injection of ketamine if she was having an asthma attack, Giving ketamine actually helps patients, and we're doing a study for agitation anyway, So I had to give her ketamine, the unnamed paramedic told a police officer. According to the report, after receiving ketamine, the woman's breathing stopped and medical staff

resuscitated her. According to the report, it is troubling that the dictate of the study mentioned by the paramedics, it clears, appears to have played a significant role in the decision to administer ketamine. The reports authors wrote, I can tell you, as someone who has had asthma and who has had to deal with other people's asthma, the thing you do is not just give them a bunch of fucking special k you give them there in haler. You know, I'm

not a paramedic that that would be. That would be my go to treatment crass is asthma medication as opposed to a fuck load of ketamine that stops their heart. I'm not a doctor again, none of us, none of us, I think our doctors. But well, actually, like everybody, you

are reverend doctors. Sorry, I recognize, yes, I am not a paramedic now no, yeah, but I feel like that's a reasonable assumption there, Robert, that um that you give someone asthma medication transpect and not ketamine yeah, not to be a backseat first responder, you know, I know, but yeah, right, but um, that seems like, yeah, it's just a weird direction to take it. Like if someone is going into a diabetic shock, right, then wouldn't your go to be

something like insulin? But again not a paramedical, not a paramedic. But yeah, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be ketamine. Um, it wouldn't be had a mean So, Thomas Hoseley, eighteen years old, wound up enrolled in this study because he had a seizure. His mom called and cops and paramedics showed up. His mother insists that he was not combative at all. Quote, he was not arguing. All he was doing was crying for me because they wouldn't let me

be by him. Despite this, the police restrained him and had paramedics shoot him up with special K. When his mother saw him next, he was unconscious and intubated. In all these cases, the victims were informed they'd been enrolled in doctor Hoss study afterwards by letter. Sixty four doctors, bioethicists, and academic researchers co signed a complaint against the h c MC study. Michael Carome director of a health research group and co signer of that complaint, explained quote, this

isn't even a close call. This is clearly a prospective higher risk experiment. This is really just a colossive failure of their program to protect human subjects. Dr Jeffrey Ho did not see it that way. All available evidence suggests he thinks that the costs of this study, which are the dignity, bodily, autonomy, and health of its participants, were minor compared to the prospective public health benefits. He told

The Star Tribune. I very much view my career as an emergency medicine, law enforcement, and research as parallel pathways to public safety. It is my life's work to develop these areas of intersection for the benefit of public protection. Question, M you got a question about that. Do you think he believes that. I think he has to. I think he knows at some level because he's not a dumb man, right you don't. You don't have a resume like this guy.

If you're and you're not that successful at arguing in court, if you're a dumb man. He's not a dumb man. But I also think people are very good at knowing on some level what they're doing is wrong and still doing it because fucking money talks, baby. Yeah, and intelligence also helps yea helps ration with rationalization. Yeah. Well, props to his mental park core. Yeah, props to his mental

park core. UM. Now, I'm watching UM for All Mankind right now, which is an alternate reality TV show about what if the Russians had made it to the moon first, and it kind of follows the American space race if we lose the race to the Moon and like what happens as a result of that. UM. One of the characters in it is Werner von Braun, who was a real guy. He was probably the reason we actually did make it to the moon first. He was a brilliant rocket scientist who also was a Nazi. He was a

member of the s s UM. He would argue that it was forced upon him. I don't think that's a valid and I think a lot of historical research suggests it's not. UM. But he did he did what he did because and he utilized slave labor. There were death camps that provided labor. Thousands of labors died building his rockets, which he wanted to used to explore space. But he was willing to turn into weapons because it furthered his

rocket research. UM. And I think he would have justified it if he'd ever really been called to account for it, by saying, like, look, the importance of my research had value for all of mankind, So even though people were suffering in the immediate term, it was worth it for the long term benefits of what I was doing. UM. I don't think that justifies being a Nazi and utilizing

slave labor. Um. It just doesn't. Um. But you can, if you're a smart person, you can always find a justification, Like I will find a way to justify my partnership with the company that makes bear cats so that I can get a free bear cat to drive around town. And can you imagine just getting up in the mountains doing donuts and whippets and a bear cat That would be so fucking rad shooting out the window, Oh my god.

Yeah yeah, and look at the interior. Really get the covered cab option could live there though, overlanding and a fucking bear cat sounds like a great time. Oh god, look, bear cat people, I I have already admitted on air I will sell my integrity for one free bear cat. So let's let's make it happen. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a Bearcat any any route aran's vehicle. Really, I'll take like defense manufacturers, one of those big up armored trucks they drive around Afghanistan and a rack. Just

send it here and I'll change my tune. You know. That's it's it's that easy, people. I I support you in this, you know, but like at this point, you know, I think you really went hard on the Bearcat angle. Like I think maybe we can maybe you can say that you can be like, hey, I'm a man of integrity. I'll sell my soul for for a rout clearing vehicle, but it's gotta be bearcat, right, I'll sell my soul now,

I'm you know, I'm not I'm not particular. I will sell my soul for any modern armored vehicle as long as it's not like a b MP fucking Russian trash anyway, or a humpy fuck Humpy's no, thank you. I've been in a lot of them and they suck um. But like a big one, it's gotta be real, fuck it. It's gotta be like a like a like a like a real monster of of an arm vehicle. And then and then I'll sell I'll sell out, absolutely absolutely, Lockheed Martin,

we can make a lot of money together. Well, you could make a lot of money and I could go joy writing in an armored vehicle. Win win, Well not for all Woden will die, but for me a win win. So uh. The story about hc mc ces ketamine program broke it right around the same time as the story about doctor host cozy relationship with Axon. There was an immediate outcry by the community and by some elected officials in Minneapolis. H c MC's chief executive resigned over the

ketamine study. Doctor Hose relationship with Axon was a thorn year problem. Publicly, the hospital stood by him, but the Star Tribune revealed a recording of a private meeting doctor ho head with a group of paramedics in which he admitted the hospital had asked him to resign. He told them, why would I resign? I didn't do anything wrong. He blamed politics and an over zealous police oversight board for the fact the fact that people were angry at him.

I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you that I think that doctor ho is a grifting scumbag, and any ethical society would be stripped of his medical license and flung into the sun. I could rant about him for a while, but it is time to move

on because there is much more fuccory afoot. But so far we've discussed how excited delirium came about, how it's used to explain away police murder, how taser hired experts like doctor ho to blame deaths caused by their product on excited delirium, and how they sue medical examiners who rightfully blame their products for deaths and custody. But it gets shadier than that. I want to quote now from a Reuter's article which opens with yet another story of a man being killed by a cop with a taser.

Quote with a police officer close behind, Israel hernandez Lock ducked into an apartment building and dashed down the hall, busting through a rear exit. He scrambled over an iron fence, landing hard on a parked car, and sprinted across the parking lot. Within seconds, officer Jorge Mercado caught up with him, drew his taser, and fired a single shot to the chest. The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. The chase lasted six minutes.

It was five twenty am on August six thirteen. At six eighteen am, he was pronounced dead and by the way, Israel Hernandez Locke was being chased by a cop because he was spray painting ship. He got murdered for graffiti. Four hours later, the Miami Beach Police Department received an email from stunned gun manufacturer Taser International, so Israel dies six eight teen am from a Taser shot to the chest.

Four hours later, Taser emails the police department. The message, marked confidential and not previously reported, provided guidance on how investigators should proceed, from collecting hair and nail samples to recording the teen's body temperature and documenting his behavior before he was stunned, and included a sample press released and

an evidence collection checklist. In bold letters marked timely and urgent, the dispatch advised Miami's medical examiner to send the teen's brain tissue for testing to Deborah Mash, a University of Miami medical researcher. It did not mention Mash had been paid by Taser to testify, and it's behalf and loss. Yeah, that's right, that's fucking right. If a cop kills you with the taser, they will send your fucking brain tissue to the Axon Corporation or at least one of its

pet medical examiners. Holy ship. Yeah, so that's okay. So when we say guidance, first off, that timeline is four hours profoundly disturbing. Yeah. And then secondly, when we say guidance, what do we that feels like guidance with air quotes around, Yeah, because it feels like it's written kind of like a man tag, Like they write a press release for you and you just slot in the name of the officer and the dead kid. You know. Oh man, um, it's

awesome as shit. It's so good. Everything I just read in that excerpt is part of a total the total package that acts On offers to law enforcement agencies. If you taste some team to death, you're not on your own. Axon will send you a ready made, fill in the brank blank press release and they'll help you come up with a way to blame the victim. Lawyer Todd Falzone, who represented the hernandez Lock family in a liability suit, explains,

from the minute they find out someone dies. They're doing everything they can behind the scenes to set up a legal defense so the case goes away now. When questioned about the Hernandez Lack case, the Miami Dade County Associate Medical Examiner Mark Schumann told Reuters he was unaware that Dr Mash was employed by Axon when he sent that

teenager's brain tissue to her lab for tests. When Reuters reached out to Axon VP of Communications, Steve Tuttle told them it was not the company's responsibility to inform Schuman that they were advising him to send brain tissue to one of their employees. They didn't think Dr Mash's relationship with the company was something police needed to know either. Quote, why would I tell them something that's a legal matter. I'm not a lawyer. He said, Uh, fuck you, Steve,

you fucking pieces ship, you absolute goblet. Oh my god, you soulless monster. Ah it fucking yeah. Tuttle went on to describe Dr Mash as a quote respected independent expert. Reuter's was able to show that she had received at least twenty four thousand dollars from the corporation from two thousand and five to two thousand nine. That's just a four year period. We don't know the full amount that she has been paid by Axon over the years for

her services. We don't even know that that's the full amount from two thousand and five to do this at nine, that's what they were able to verify. We do know thanks to Reuters, who did a great job. It really has been like a fucking uh pit bowl latched on to this, this specific story about like the Tasers and

ax On. They've really done some incredible work on this um and we know thanks to them that there have been at least one thousand and five incidents in the United States where people have died after being stunned with tasers. When questioned about Taser's weird policy of inserting themselves into active investigations over deaths and custody, Tittle told Reuters that his company just wants to ensure investigators get quote, the best available evidence in cases where people are killed or

hurt by their weapons. As he explained it, the scientific information Axon passes on to examiners is just quote things that an outside investigating agency needs to see. Coincidentally, one of Axon's chief finding after all these years of sticking their nose into investigations. Is that the overwhelming majority of people who die after being taste are killed by underlying health conditions, drug use, or some other police force besides

a taser. From Reuters quote. Though the company has warned since two thousand nine that is shocked to the chest can affect heart function, it says no one has died from taser induced cardiac arrest. It asserts its weapons have been a factor in just twenty four deaths, always as a result of secondary injuries, such as hedge injuries from

falls after someone was stunned. In two thousand nine, the American College of Emergency Physicians published a white paper on excited delirium, which is quoted regularly by the FBI and by guys like Dr Jeffrey Hoe and ladies like doctor Deborah Mash when they need to blame deaths caused by tasers or other excessive force on the victim. Incidentally, doctors Howe and Mash were two of the authors of that

white paper. At least one of the other nineteen members of the task force who wrote that white paper was also a paid taser consultant. The paper described excited delirium as quote a real syndrome of uncertain etiology or cause. The white paper didn't Yeah, now, that white paper did not note that three of its authors were paid employees

of ax On. This was justified by the fact that it came out in two thousand nine, when disclosures were not required for task forces assembled by the American College of Emergency Physicians. They started requiring that two thousand eleven. We just didn't require that at the time. It's not a lapse of ethics or anything. No reason to re examine this now. So far, everything I've gone over today

is pretty fucked up and infuriating. But guess what, it gets worse because Axon also decided in the early odds to try to preempt as many lawsuits against medical examiners as possible by just buying up medical examiners like Dr

Deborah Mash Here's Reuters quote. Michael Graham, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners in two thousand five, was approached by Taser in two thousand seven, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis and professor of pathology at St. Louis University, agreed to be a paid Taser consultant and

still receives an annual stipend. He said Taser wanted to educate medical examiners about the physiological effects of its weapons and rebut criticism running contrary to the science, Graham said. In two fourteen, the Medical Examiners Association hosted a big meeting on tasers and stun guns. Graham presented at that meeting, so did Mark Kroll, a University of Minnesota professor and a member of Taser's corporate board since two thousand three.

Kroll did disclose his tie to the company me when he told medical examiners that tasers satisfy quote all relevant safety standards and advised them to this exclude the weapons as potential causes of death. In two thousand eight, Mark Kroll testified in a wrongful death suit and suggested that tasers were like therapy for people suffering from excited delirium. If you start exhibiting, Yeah, yeah, taser therapy because you're excited.

That's like, that's honestly like saying that that is that is like saying dying is therapy for depression, except that depression is real. Yes, yes, yes, I'm gonna read this quote from Mark Kroll because in a in an episode full of sociopathic ship. This might take the cake. This is what he said in If you start exhibiting excited delirium behavior and you are in the terminal throes of death and you are so bizarre you can't be controlled

any place else, you will receive taser therapy. They need to be brought under control so their lives can be saved. Just a life saving. And I mean obviously in my medical kid, I keep a taser right next to the tourniquet. Sometimes you need the tourniquet. Sometimes you gotta taste people. That's just medically. Yeah. At the end, Look, if you've got ketamine in a taser, you're basically a hospital. Yeah, you're walking hospital at that point. Yeah. So Kroll is

a bioelectricity scientist. In two thousand sixteen, he earned two hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars from Taser and owned one million dollars in company stock. In an email to Reuter's, he insisted that his affiliation with the company did not bias his research, explaining, due to this well known relationship, I was motivated to be very careful, to be extremely

accurate and objective. Oh oh good, good, good. Uh so, so in other news, it's like, uh, Fox calls new hen house design a step forward and better overall for the hens, right if we're using the tired kind of this open air hen house. Really, Foxes are big fans the wider doors really, when you think about it, are

more friendly for everyone, for everybody. Everybody benefits, and then the chickens get more Fox therapy, right right, Fox therapy, which is you know, according to uh, Fox Therapeutics International, that's like a lead. Yes, Uh, this is unconscitable, man, it's pretty bad. Right, So let's end by talking about one more murder. I think this one is valuable to discuss because it really brings together just every shady tactic and shady professional we've discussed in our episodes so far.

In two thousand four, David Glausinski's mother called the police because her son, a schizophrenic suffering from substance abuse, was in the midst of a psychotic episode. She told one he needed to be hospitalized. When the cops showed up, he was standing in the street screaming incoherently while holding a bible in a book about the Grateful Dead. Officers tried to restrain him. Glausinski kicked and screamed the doc.

The cops took him to the ground, and one stunned him nine times by applying a taser directly to his flesh. He was handcuffed, his legs were zip tied, and a two hundred and seventy pound officer pressed him to the ground while another mazed him. David went into cardiac arrest and died on the spot. His mom sued the cops and axe on and you know what comes next from

Reuter's quote. Taser persuaded a judge to exclude a medical examiner and pathologist with twenty five years experience whose testimony was central to the family's case, arguing that it was unqualified, unsupported, and unreliable. Backed by a half dozen experts, Taser asserted that there was no medical certainty its guns shocks caused acidosis, the death was natural and attributable to excited delirium. Taser argued the company had helped from Suffolk County medical examiner.

The post was held then by Charles Whatley, the man who had revived the excited delirium theory to explain Miami cocaine deaths decades earlier. At Wetley's direction, the coroner on the case. His deputy sent Glausinski's brain samples to Deborah Mash at the University of Miami. Mash found evidence of exhaustive mania, a form of excited delirium said to occur when drugs are not present. In his autopsy report, the coroner echoed mashes findings. The Glausinski families lawyers called the

concept of excited delirium a sham. The defense prevailed. In two thousand thirteen, Judge William Waldyce missed Taser from the case, finding no admissible evidence the stun gun killed Glausinski. Fucking hell, it's pretty good. Good ship us rad. How much is Big Taser? I feel like we can say big Taser now, And ironically, how much is Big Taser paying the judge? I don't know if they are, you know, I assume

they're paying a lot for the lawyers. I assume, you know, there's a lot of shitty judges who are sympathetic to Taser. And I don't know if they're paying the judge or if they just know how to make the argument to get Ship dismissed. I I don't know, I don't I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do what is legally slandered

to a judge without more evidence on that. Um, it's possible that the the actual corruption here is just in all of these paid experts, right, and the judge is looking at all of these experts who are paid by Taser and being like, well, of all these people are saying the Taser couldn't have done it, the Taser must not. I don't know. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not defending the judge either. I just don't know enough about his specifics.

You're yeah, I mean, you're right, You're right. That's fair because otherwise it gets a little too far into speculation. But my friend, I think you've proven a solid case that this. I know it's very stereotypical on the nose for me to be the one who says this, But it's kind of a conspiracy, is it not? Call it a conspiracy? Yeah? Ben, Ben thinking something's a conspiracy? What this strange conspiracy? Some way? Call that's all I'm saying. The pieces are there. I'm not saying it's a cake yet.

But there's some flour, there's some sugar. There's a ship ton of people who could have been alive. Most importantly, I think, ye, well that's that's that's the episode. Then that's the episode. Then you've got some plugs that you like to plug at this exact moment in time, drop down in the pie zone baby. So yes, uh uh. If you haven't listened, I'm gonna do a weird reverse plug. If you haven't listened to it could happen here somehow.

Please check it out. If you'd like to hear more about critical theory, apply to allegations of corruption and conspiracy, checkout stuff they don't want you to know. And uh, if you'd like to hear about ridiculous history, because there's a lot of it. Uh, then check us out at ridiculous History. That's that's that's it for me. This is gonna stay with me. You know, I appreciate that. I appreciate that we as a two parter, I think, uh

me bad and not cool. Yeah, yep, anyway, that's gonna do it for all of us here at Behind the Bastards for the week until next week. I don't know Dr Jeffrey hose home address it. I'm soph he's giving me, but I might be committing a felony sign. Okay, well that's just a joke for legal purposes. Also, I don't actually I don't actually know his address, so nor would

know what I suggest anything. Unfortunately, really in the episode over, yeah we have we have to end this now, all right, have a good week or be very angry or both. M