For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long.
Prone restraint is commonly used by police to restrain subjects, but poor training can lead to mistakes that may make the tactic deadly. Instructor Dave Rose demonstrates a prone handcuffing position on a student during an Arrest & Control Instructor course in Sacramento , Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024. Rose has trained generations of officers that prone restraint is safe. His pupils are instructors who take his training back to their departments.
Training that is ineffective, or that contradicts longstanding best practices, happens in part because policing in the U.S. lacks a national rulebook. TheEach state writes its own standards, and individual departments and training centers determine what officers hear in classrooms and gyms. The safest techniques don’t always filter down to officers.
Officers almost always used prone restraint with other force, and within AP’s database medical officials cited prone position or asphyxia due to restraint as a cause or contributing factor in 61 of the 740 cases that involved the maneuver during the investigation’s 2012-2021 timeframe. In dozens of other cases, officers used prone restraint and “restraint” was cited as causing or contributing to the death, but prone position or restraint was not specified.
On an autumn night in 2016, Sgt. Adam Celinski responded to a 911 call about a paranoid man banging on the door of a woman’s home., told Celinski he was high on “powder” and needed help. Celinski’s body-camera video showed he was calm and courteous as he handcuffed the man. Clark also was polite, but neighbors watched as he began to struggle and the officer got Clark facedown on some roadside grass, using a knee and hand to ensure he stayed there.
A medical examiner ruled Clark’s death an accident caused by cocaine and heart failure, and did not cite prone position. Celinski said he doesn’t believe the restraint contributed. Given subsequent training, Celinski said he now repositions suspects — and would have with Clark, to ensure he did everything right.
The California Police Chiefs Association opposed Gipson’s bill, writing that it would “remove tools needed to overcome dangerous individuals.” But the law hasn’t stopped some instructors at state-certified training centers in Northern California and Riverside County from continuing to teach that holding someone facedown is a best practice.
“Putting weight on a person’s back in a prone position does not lead to them expiring unless it’s enough that it can actually squash them,” he said. “I’m not going to say it can never happen,” Ross said. “I mean, that would be foolish, but I don’t think that has the compelling percentage or likelihood or even the statistical significance.”, is a leading voice against views like those of Ross. Steinberg said the Ross study is flawed because it includes too few departments and officers knew they were under scrutiny.
To understand what officers knew before deaths involving prone restraint, reporters scoured thousands of pages of interviews and depositions. “Roll me over. I can’t breathe. Please let me breathe,” he could be heard screaming on dashcam video, to which an unidentified officer replied, “if you’re talking, you’re breathing.”
“There’s a big difference between fighting the officers and fighting for breath,” said Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and national use-of-force expert who as a former officer and police trainer has written extensively about prone restraint.
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