Comply, or We Will Erase your Memory

Need still more reason to dislike Tennessee law enforcement officials? How about having your memory wiped? From Channel 4 in Nashville:

For almost two years, [Nashville] Metro police have had the option of calling for a needle loaded with a strong sedative to control the most unruly people they encounter on the street….

The drug is called Midazolam, which is better known as Versed. People who have had a colonoscopy have probably had a shot of the drug for the procedure.

"The drug has an amnesia effect, and we use that therapeutically because one of the nice ways to take care of the discomfort is to make people forget that they've had it," said biomedical ethics and law enforcement expert Dr. Steven Miles….

"It's something that in the medical community and in the EMS medical community is very common. It's a given. When I surveyed the major metropolitan areas around the country, I think only two cities were not actively using it," said [Dr. Corey Slovis, Nashville's emergency medical director].

Read the whole thing here.

And no, this is not an alternative to being Tasered. Channel 4 reporter Demetria Kalodimos interviewed Dameon Beasley, who said that officers injected him with the drug only after failing to shock him into submission.

Editor Brian Doherty wrote here about police abuses during the 2007 immigration riots. Editor Radley Balko blogged here about police Tasering a man in his own home.