Every time I hear the words “qualified immunity” I think about this:

I was first trained in acute psychiatry years ago to never ever in forever restrain people face down. Me and my highschool diploma were sitting in a side room in a state hospital for I shit you not a two. week. crash course in inpatient psychiatry after which they dumped me out on the unit to work with criminally insane men for two years. And in my four hour restraint class they hammered into us to never restrain people face down.

I remember seeing two men fighting and I just figured I’d grab one and somebody else would grab the other and we’d pull and I remember looking over my guy’s shoulder and seeing the other guy gnawing on his face and then there’s a hole in my memory (likely about 60 seconds; it happens with adrenaline) and the next thing I remember I guess we had all fallen and I was laying on top of the guy I grabbed and I shit you not the very first thought in my head was “oh shit, he’s face down I need to get off him” and I slid to the side and just kept a hand hovering over his shoulders in case he tried to pop up and… idk, bite my face off or something. I didn’t even know who it was until he looked back at me. But they had hammered that one thing into my head that hard that I didn’t know what the fuck this guy was gonna do and the first thought in my head was still to get off him.

So when I saw all these news stories and all this footage of the cops holding people facedown until they asphyxiate I started asking around. I don’t work with cops in the sense that they’re my coworkers but I do run into them a lot dropping off involuntary holds. So I started asking about how they’re trained to restrain people and if they have any training on how to protect people’s airways. And it turns out they do, actually. Everybody I asked pretty universally told me they’re trained to get the cuffs on then immediately turn them on their side. It’s not super advanced, in fact it’s super basic. Basic in the sense that you could’ve taught it to a highschool graduate in under two weeks.

So it’s funny you mention not being trained for something because actually yeah they are trained to not do things that kill people and yet-