Twice in two nights this week, my officers had to fight people who were out of control on hallucinogenic substances. These drugs are a serious cause for concern for law enforcement.
In the first instance, an officer rolled up on an unknown situation in the middle of a large intersection. A Good Samaritan was trying to hold down an out-of-control girl who was screaming “Kill me!” over and over again at the top of her lungs.
The officer and citizen managed to keep the 90 lbs. girl on the ground. Another officer arrived to replace the citizen. Now with two officers trying to handcuff her, the girl began to fight and actually began pushing up off the pavement with them on her back.
The first officer unloaded a can of OC into the girl’s face. It had no effect and she pretty much drank it like a Slurpee. Whirling around, she kicked the female officer in the groin. The crazed girl was finally subdued and taken for medical treatment.
At the hospital, she became lucid and told officers she had ingested three mushrooms. She asked what had happened to her. She did not recall the fight in the intersection.
The next night officers responded to a local McDonald’s for a man running around the parking lot shouting that people were chasing him and trying to kill him. In his paranoid state, he did not believe the uniformed officers were really the police.
As in the last case, the fight was on when the officers tried to take him into custody for psychiatric evaluation. Unfortunately, this guy was well over 300 lbs. The officers used good tactics and took him to the ground immediately and decisively, preventing anyone from getting seriously injured.
At the scene, the man began to struggle on the ambulance gurney and tore out an IV in his arm, sending blood spurting. A clip on the IV tube cut one of the officers on the wrist and that officer also went to the hospital for an exposure evaluation. The suspect’s blood tested negative for any biohazards.
After being sedated at the ER, this man said he had smoked synthetic marijuana sold as “K2.” Hospital records showed he had been in the ER before for erratic behavior after smoking this same substance.
Whether they are on psilocybin mushrooms, synthetic marijuana, or any hallucination-producing mood modifier, the suspects’ violent and unpredictable behavior is dangerous to police officers and deputies.
For some reason we are seeing more of the psilocybin mushrooms in my area. We had an impaired driver in our holding cell on a DUI charge. He suddenly lost it and began ramming his body into the reinforced glass wall. He started screaming for us to help him, but he displayed aggressive actions toward us. We fought him on to a stretcher and took him to the ER. They heavily sedated him to put him out of his hallucinogenic “shroom rage.”
In the old days, we fought with bad guys on phencyclidine, called PCP or angel dust, which had powerful hallucinogenic effects. The drug was said to give people superhuman strength and resistance to pain.
Suspects on any of these hallucinogenic drugs do have a heightened resistance to pain compliance, mainly because the drugs dull any physical sensations. Along the same line, they seem to display uncanny strength, but they can exert maximum physical effort because they do not feel fatigue, lactic acid build-up, or pain associated with broken body parts.
The most dangerous side effect of hallucinogens is their distortion of a person’s reality. They may be reacting to what they perceive as a life-threatening situation to them. Because of this, normal moral inhibitions do not come into play. They may be totally committed to murdering you to save themselves from the “monsters.”
Another deadly consideration for our routine day at the office.
Randall is a twenty-four year sworn police officer in a mid-sized Florida police department. He has been an FTO, K9 Handler, Detective, and SWAT Team Leader. He is currently the K9 Unit Sergeant and department SWAT Coordinator.
Randall, if you don’t mind me asking, what county to do you work in?
I’m just curious to see where this is currently happening.
I myself, am in the Palm Beach/Broward area, and pills still seem to be the main drug we’re running into, along with DXM. The synthetic drugs are an issue, but haven’t been as prevalent… Yet.
M@,
I’m on the West Coast. We are seeing the changing trend in synthetics, but I’m just not sure what’s driving this mushroom thing. It was more popular twenty years ago…
Randall
Hmmm… That’s interesting.
I’ll definetly keep my eyes open.
Wow. Off topic but not off focus; Viking berserkers were fed large quantities of mushrooms before battle. It has been a monster for hundreds of years, funny such a thing can become recreational.
Holden,
An observation with which I am unfamiliar, but certainly not off topic. “Berserk” is a good description for the hallucinogen-induced behavior!
Randall
A good book on the topic of responding to such incidents is “Fighting the Pain Resistant Attacker” by Loren Christensen. I contributed a small amount to the book which deals with what to do in the no man’s land where pain compliance is useless and deadly force isn’t called for.
Thanks for the comment, Chief! What was your “small contribution?”
Randall
I introduced Loren to the concept of the “Somatic Reflex Arc” which occurs when your strike to the suspect completely bypasses the brain (and the need for “pain compliance”) and initiates a response from him. For example, a finger jab to the eyes will cause the eyes to close and the suspect to immediately reach for his face. He doesn’t think about it, it just happens. Same for a good shot to the liver, which is, essentially, just a huge bag of blood. Oscar de la Hoya went down in a fight from that kind of punch and he described it as just being helpless to do anything at all. And, of course, the brachial stun, which just plain switches people off. I also shared some war stories, like the time Mitch hit the football player with a brachial stun outside of The Stampede and had to be medevaced out by helicopter (not because of the stun but because his head hit the ground so hard when he fell backward, unconscious).
Good article. All I can say is that, at age 56, I’m very grateful for the invention of the TASER.
I’ve been in law enforcement for 15 years. It has seemed that hallucinogens in my area have always been looked at in a non-threatening manner – like they’re the “funny” drug.
Having been a DRE I always instructed officers to look at hallucinogens as dangerous, and to be ready to go the distance with someone on hallucinogens. My example was always, “to them you are the devil” so you better be ready to fight like you would if the devil came for you. And the disassociation with pain caused by the drug can be a real obstacle to efforts to control.
I’ve also seen similar reactions from persons on high or repeated doses of methamphetamine. Mushrooms have always been on the fringe in my area, but we are starting to see a big increase in K2.