The County of Imperial’s legal arguments in their motion to dismiss themselves as defendants in the Edmund Gutierrez lawsuit need to be based on the truth if they are to be valid and just.
Although, the outrageous level of violence unleashed on Edmund by two Imperial police officers played a significant role in his death, he may have ultimately died from mechanical restraint asphyxia, a form of positional asphyxia, which is 100 percent preventable.
Medical Examiner Garber noted, in his autopsy report, that Edmund was placed in the prone position with his hands cuffed behind his back and shackled.
The posterior of his head and torso were strapped to a rigid medical backboard.
Five members of the Imperial County Fire Department, including a captain, were at the scene before the transporting Gold Cross ambulance arrived.
If responders from the ICFD secured Edmund to the backboard in the prone position, if they failed to monitor a patient they placed at risk for positional asphyxia — staying with the patient, listening to his breathing and being ready to respond at the first sign of trouble — it was a mistake.
This event deserves another investigation. We need to understand how and why everyone at the scene, despite adequate policies warning medics and police of the dangers of forceful prone restraint, failed to recognize and correct a mistake that had a predictably lethal result.
If you are to distance yourself from the City of Imperial in this lawsuit, distance yourself, too, from the cowardly and corrupt tactics they use to deny her citizens the accountability and transparency they deserve.
Distance yourself from the silence that shields the guilty from justice, and legitimizes self-interest at the expense of public service — the antitheses of the missions of police and emergency medical services.
Although, the outrageous level of violence unleashed on Edmund by two Imperial police officers played a significant role in his death, he may have ultimately died from mechanical restraint asphyxia, a form of positional asphyxia, which is 100 percent preventable.
Medical Examiner Garber noted, in his autopsy report, that Edmund was placed in the prone position with his hands cuffed behind his back and shackled.
The posterior of his head and torso were strapped to a rigid medical backboard.
Five members of the Imperial County Fire Department, including a captain, were at the scene before the transporting Gold Cross ambulance arrived.
If responders from the ICFD secured Edmund to the backboard in the prone position, if they failed to monitor a patient they placed at risk for positional asphyxia — staying with the patient, listening to his breathing and being ready to respond at the first sign of trouble — it was a mistake.
This event deserves another investigation. We need to understand how and why everyone at the scene, despite adequate policies warning medics and police of the dangers of forceful prone restraint, failed to recognize and correct a mistake that had a predictably lethal result.
If you are to distance yourself from the City of Imperial in this lawsuit, distance yourself, too, from the cowardly and corrupt tactics they use to deny her citizens the accountability and transparency they deserve.
Distance yourself from the silence that shields the guilty from justice, and legitimizes self-interest at the expense of public service — the antitheses of the missions of police and emergency medical services.
