Drugs, Tasers, restraint: Dozens die in Georgia police custody

Credit: Courtesy of family

Credit: Courtesy of family

James McBrayer, 41, had ingested cocaine and driven off the rural road in Tift County. He had a head injury but the deputy would later say he thought McBrayer was about to attack, records show. Tripp shocked McBrayer multiple times with the Taser, bringing him to his knees. Over the next several minutes, more deputies arrived and helped hold McBrayer face down on the ground until he seemed to give up.

The deputies then laid McBrayer across the rear seat of a police cruiser with his wrists handcuffed behind his back and his ankles tied together. Several minutes passed before paramedics dragged McBrayer’s limp body out of the car and rushed him to an ambulance, a body camera recording shows.

“How long has he been unresponsive?” a paramedic asked.

“I didn’t realize he was unresponsive,” Tripp responded.

Across Georgia, local and state police make approximately half a million arrests a year, state data shows.

The AJC looked at death certificates and in-custody death records for restraint-related deaths over the last decade. The incidents crisscross Georgia’s rural counties, suburban neighborhoods and urban cities. In two cases, eight law enforcement officers were charged with murder, including three who were recently acquitted by a Sandersville jury for the death of man in 2017.

Families of a few victims have been paid millions in civil lawsuit settlements.

For more than a decade, Georgia police trainers have instructed officers not to leave people face down and handcuffed. But the death toll raises questions about officer training and the risk even brief periods of restraint pose to certain individuals.

National policing experts now warn law enforcement that restraint should be used briefly and sparingly, after multiple high-profile restraint deaths across the country.

That follows a warning first issued 30 years ago by the U.S. Department of Justice that sudden, unexplained in-custody deaths can occur after a person is positioned in a way that interferes with breathing. Drug use, alcohol intoxication and violent struggles followed by restraint risked an arrest ending in death, federal officials advised.

Georgia has adopted some expert recommendations to make restraint safer but doesn’t plan to restrict police use of restraint, Chris Harvey, executive director of the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST, wrote in response to questions from the AJC.

Many restraint-related deaths in police custody could be avoided if police knew the warning signs, said Jennifer Sommers, deputy director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national policing policy and research group.

“Unfortunately, police will often see that switch, that lack of movement, that lethargy as more of a ‘mission accomplished’ moment and not a sign of impending death,” Sommers said.

Georgia: Restrain and recover

At a sprawling training facility near Forsyth, Georgia, recruits are taught the basics of policing. During a recent visit by the AJC, pairs of recruits wrestled on spongy gym mats learning ground fighting techniques in preparation for what they may face in the field.

Instructors at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center told the AJC that the amount of force used by law enforcement is based on the behavior of the person being arrested. Force is minimal when the person is compliant, but the situation can quickly escalate to a fight when the person being arrested punches, reaches for a weapon or tries to escape.

“Officers get killed every day making arrests,” said John Henson, manager of tactical operations for the training academy.

Most arrests occur standing up. But when the officer faces a suspect who is taller and stronger, the person may be ordered to kneel or to lie face down in the prone position.

The reason is simple.

“To gain control,” said Casey Baynes, who trains officers in the use of force. “The easiest way to handcuff someone is what you call a prone position. But the most important part of this – and what we preach – is what comes after that.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Most problems occur after a person is in handcuffs, Baynes said. Officers should move the person in handcuffs into a recovery position, either on their side, sitting or standing up, and check that they are breathing.

“Leaving them face down is a terrible idea,” he said.

Limits on restraint

In the wake of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder conviction for the 2020 killing of George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, Philadelphia enacted what became known as the “Let Philly Breathe” bill. The law bans officers from sitting, kneeling or standing on a suspect’s back except to prevent serious injury to officers or the public. The New York City Council similarly banned police from compressing the diaphragm. The law was upheld by the state’s highest court in 2023 after being challenged by policing organizations.

In Georgia, officers can use restraint to make arrests. But they are receiving more training to make restraint safer, such as how to recognize medical-behavioral emergencies, de-escalate, summon medical assistance and to keep officer emotions in check, wrote Harvey, director of POST.

In 2024, Georgia nearly doubled the hours of required training for police officers from 408 hours to 785 hours, he added. A portion of that time was to train officers in how to restrain.

State law says that the force police use must be reasonable. And the state trains officers to stop using force when the person is no longer resisting.

Harvey said the agency does not track in-custody deaths. He said POST can investigate allegations of excessive force or mistreatment of people in custody. POST also investigates officer terminations or suspensions of more than 30 days and alleged criminal involvement of any officer.

An AJC review of 31 police restraint-related deaths found:

Despite there being restraint-related deaths in Georgia, the public safety training academies have not re-evaluated how restraint is being taught to officers, Henson said. The state academies train officers for most of the state’s police agencies. Some of the major cities, including Atlanta, run their own police academies.

National policing experts recommend that officers not yell commands, and evaluate the need to immediately restrain a person showing signs of a medical or behavioral emergency.

Police in Wichita, Kansas, began training this spring to recognize people at risk of sudden death from restraint, after community trust was shaken by the death of a 17-year-old boy. He was left face down by jailers at a juvenile detention center in 2021.

Credit: Sedgwick County via AP

Credit: Sedgwick County via AP

The department is changing how it handles people in crisis by overhauling its arrest and use of force policies and training officers in coordination with 911 and emergency medical services, said Capt. Jason Bartel, who runs the professional standards bureau for the Wichita Police Department.

Wichita officers recently used minimal force to handcuff a man who was running into the road near a kitchen that serves meals to people in need. The officers talked calmly to the man and called an ambulance. In the past, officers would have acted quicker and likely restrained the man face down, said Bartel.

Wichita Chief Joe Sullivan said the changes are meant to rebuild community trust in policing and prevent in-custody deaths.

“The idea here is to prevent (deaths) from happening in the first place, and it is a work in progress,” Sullivan said.

There is no indication that limiting the use of restraint reduces the efficiency of law enforcement, said Sommers, an expert in police policy. But there can be huge emotional fallout when a death occurs.

“It is devastating for a community when one of these (restraint-related deaths) happens,” Sommers said.

Lumpkin County, Georgia, Sheriff Stacy Jarrard was called in February 2017 to the home of a childhood friend, David Winkler, who was fighting family members, cutting himself and speaking in tongues. Winkler, 50, was taking an opioid medication following a hip surgery.

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jarrard sat on the couch and tried to convince Winkler to go to the hospital for an evaluation. When deputies tried to restrain Winkler, 6’2″weighing 294 pounds, he threw them around like ragdolls, Jarrard said. But eventually they were able to hold Winkler face down on the living room floor for two minutes and handcuff him.

“When you’re trying to restrain somebody and get them under control, sometimes you have to take them down to the ground because you can’t handcuff them upright because they’re still fighting and using everything that they possibly can to overtake you,” Jarrard said.

But then the night took an unexpected turn when Winkler turned blue. Police rolled Winkler on his side and emergency medical responders helped revive him before Winkler started thrashing and then went limp again, records show.

Winkler was taken to a hospital and died.

“It really broke my heart,” Jarrard said. “It really did.”

Stimulants, Tasers contribute to deaths

Experts warn that individuals who abuse stimulants, like cocaine or meth, are at a heightened risk of death when restrained. Warning signs include profuse sweating and inappropriately removing clothing.

“The same thing happens to someone on a stimulant that would happen to you if you were running a marathon,” Sommers said.

Nearly two-thirds of the people who died after being restrained by Georgia law enforcement had a stimulant in their blood, an AJC review of autopsy records found. Other illicit drugs, such as marijuana or opioids, were detected in toxicology reports for a quarter of the deceased.

Many of the fatal encounters in Georgia also involved a Taser, which is seen by police as a less-lethal weapon. The device uses electricity to temporarily incapacitate a person by sending electrical pulses that cause temporary loss of muscle control or pain compliance when driven directly against the skin.

The Police Executive Research Forum recommends that law enforcement not use Tasers or restrain detainees until medical professionals arrive at the scene. But this is not the norm, a review of police reports and body camera footage of Georgia arrests showed.

In 60% of the death cases, officers shocked the suspects with a Taser before or sometimes while restraining them, the AJC found. Commonly, officers pulled the trigger on the Taser more than once or multiple officers used Tasers to shock the same individual, police records show.

“We don’t have a glass ball to look into to know that this individual has any underlying medical conditions or any previous use of narcotics,” said Henson, the Georgia police trainer whose career spans three decades in law enforcement and as the chief investigator with the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Never thought he would die

Angie McBrayer witnessed deputies restrain and shock her ex-husband with a Taser in Tift County in April 2019. She had spent part of the early morning with him before he suddenly got in his truck and wrecked.

She was struck by the amount of force that deputies used in response to a wrecked vehicle and reports of a person screaming for help. At the time, she thought the cops were being rough, but she chalked it up to small town, hot-headed policing.

“It honestly never crossed my mind that he was going to die that night,” she said.

Craig Webster, an attorney that represented McBrayer’s family members against Tift County, said law enforcement should not transport detainees on their stomachs, and if detainees cannot sit up on their own, then medical transport should be used instead.

“It should be prohibited. There’s no reason for it, there’s no justification for taking a prisoner, handcuffing him, restraining him and then putting him face down or even on their side in the backseat,” Webster said.

The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled in October 2023 that the sheriff’s office could be sued for McBrayer’s detainment in the vehicle and remanded the case to the trial court.

Tift County paid $500,000 to settle the lawsuit about McBrayer’s death, and denied any wrongdoing. McBrayer worked as a truck driver. He had three children and had recently become a grandfather when he died.

The high court’s ruling opens the door to more lawsuits when people die in police vehicles, Webster said.

The Tift County Sheriff’s Office’s transport policy doesn’t address if people should be seated and buckled, and the agency has not changed that policy since McBrayer’s death. Sheriff Gene Scarbrough declined an interview with the AJC.

When contacted by the AJC, former Tift County Deputy Tripp said he was uncomfortable answering the questions about his training and why the incident escalated: “I’m not sure and unfortunately the person that attacked me is not alive to ask.”

Tripp resigned from the sheriff’s office in 2022 for reasons unrelated to McBrayer’s death.

McBrayer is not the only man to have died after being laid face down in a police car.

During a mental health crisis, Tenniel Ealey was restrained with handcuffs and leg irons that were “hog-tied” together behind his back, and then he was loaded face down into the back of a Richmond County Sheriff’s Office vehicle in June 2017. Ealey had consumed meth and stopped breathing while he was being transported to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

Sidney Dewberry died in June 2022 after Lumpkin County deputies left him face down with his head hanging off the seat and handcuffed in a police vehicle for several minutes. Dewberry had ingested cocaine and had acted erratically when officers canceled an ambulance and planned to arrest Dewberry instead, records show.

Sheriffs for both agencies did not respond to the AJC’s requests for comment.

Families wait for justice

When Yvonne West called 911 in DeKalb County for help after her son had a seizure, she didn’t think he would die.

First responders allege Jamon West, 42, tried to bite them and grab his mother. She says her son was confused because of the seizure. Jamon West walked outside and was restrained by police and fire rescue who put him face down on the ground for more than five minutes. The police handcuffed him and emergency medical responders injected him with an antipsychotic and sedative medication, records show.

“They didn’t ask me what kind of medicine he was on or anything,” Yvonne West said. “They just all tackled him to the ground.”

Jamon West went into cardiac arrest and was in a coma for nine days until Yvonne West ended life-sustaining care. In their final moments together, “I told him, I love him. I told him, it’s OK.”

A medical examiner wrote Jamon West’s heart stopped from a combination of “physical restraint” and probable excited delirium, a diagnosis which usually signals drug use but West, records show, had not ingested illegal drugs.

The “excited delirium” diagnosis is controversial and opposed by some medical groups including the American Medical Association because it does not describe a medical condition.

DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston declined to prosecute police and other first responders.

“Our office determined that the actions of the responding emergency personnel did not rise to the level of reckless conduct and therefore criminal culpability,” a spokesperson told the AJC.

Law enforcement is generally shielded from criminal prosecution by qualified immunity, which protects officers from criminal prosecution for actions to protect themselves and others.

Yvonne West filed a civil lawsuit against the police and first responders. A federal judge dismissed the case citing qualified immunity. The judge wrote that despite the officers violating local policy and federal guidance on using restraint there was no “clearly established law” that warned officers “that this conduct would amount to unconstitutional deadly force.” She is appealing the decision.

DeKalb County Police said a full review found “the officers involved acted within policy and that the use of force was justified under the circumstances,” a spokesperson wrote. The officers, who were assisting fire rescue, did not violate any county rules, he said.

DeKalb County fire rescue did not respond to the AJC’s requests for comment.

Criminal charges of police are rare, but in the past decade 8 officers have been charged with murder for the death of two people restrained in police custody.

Three former Washington County deputies were recently acquitted of murder charges for the death of Eurie Martin, a man who was reported as a suspicious person after asking for water in July 2017 while walking many miles to his sister’s house in Sandersville.

The jury was deadlocked on lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct against two of the deputies. The prosecutor said he will consider a retrial, which would be a third attempt to win a conviction.

In another case in metro Atlanta, three City of Hampton police officers and two Henry County police officers were indicted and charged with malice murder for the death of Fernando Rodriguez. The agencies did not respond to request for comment.

Rodriguez, 24, was a charismatic kid who was both funny and witty, said Tina Coria, an extended family member. He loved soccer and the Los Angeles Lakers.

He planned to get a real estate license and manage properties in Virginia and Washington, D.C., with his brother. He was already packed for the move on September 20, 2019, when he went to a music festival with his girlfriend and younger brother.

“He should have come home that night,” Coria said.

Sometime during the concert he took LSD, a hallucinogenic drug. By evening, he was wandering naked in the road. Motorists called the police.

Officers approached Rodriguez after 10 p.m. but he didn’t obey their commands to get on the ground and roll over, police body camera video shows. Officers shocked Rodriguez upward of a dozen times as he screamed in pain, before laying him on his stomach, shackling his ankles and stretching his arms over his head. To keep him on the ground, officers stood on his arms and knelt on his back.

Rodriguez tried to bite the officers, and Hampton Officer Mark Stroud kicked him in the mouth.

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to beat the boy to death,” records and video show Stroud said as he helped restrain Rodriguez.

Credit: Courtesy of family

Credit: Courtesy of family

As officers questioned if Rodriguez was breathing, Stroud added, “He’s playing possum right now.”

Rodriguez died three days later in the hospital.

Medical examiners determined Rodriguez’s death was caused by “asphyxia due to physical restraint in the prone position with compression of the chest.”

For six years, the family has been left in limbo waiting for the officers’ criminal trial. On Dec. 9 a unanimous Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision ruling the officers had been properly charged and that a jury could find that there was a “reasonably foreseeable risk of death.” The case was sent back to the trial court.

“Every year we’re like it’s going to be here in spring, it’s going to be here in fall, we’re going to be ready, but nothing ever materializes,” Coria said. “It’s been swept under the rug here quite honestly.”

All of the officers kept their jobs following the incident. Stroud resigned while under internal investigation but still faces the criminal charges. Stroud was found to have used excessive force when he kicked Rodriguez in the mouth while restraining him and his statements during the arrest violated the department’s conduct policy, records show.

The city of Hampton paid $3 million to settle a civil lawsuit by Rodriguez’s parents, the AJC reported. Henry County paid them an additional settlement of $1 million, records show.

The family doesn’t blame all police. There are law enforcement and first responders in Rodriguez’s extended family, Coria said.

“We are so supportive of the blue, but this was police brutality,” Coria said.

About this investigation:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in January about Ricardo Dorado Jr., a man who was held face down by Atlanta police officers for 17 minutes before he died in August 2022. Two officers were found to have used excessive force and were disciplined, but the district attorney said there was insufficient evidence to criminally charge them.

Reporter Samantha Hogan continued reporting on in-custody deaths across Georgia. She identified 31 people, mostly men, who died after being restrained by police between 2014 and 2024 using death certificate and Georgia Bureau of Investigation custody-death data.

Cases were included in the count if records showed that restraint was used during an arrest involving local police. Autopsy, toxicology and police reports were examined, and when available video footage or court records were also reviewed. Medical examiners often attributed deaths to drugs or underlying medical problems, but the AJC included cases if records or videos showed restraint was used before the death.

Excluded from the analysis were two restraint-related deaths in 2024, because ongoing investigations prohibited the reporters from accessing autopsy records. At the time of publication, the AJC was also waiting for autopsy records for two restraint deaths in 2017 and one in 2015.

At least seven additional men died shortly after law enforcement handed them off to a local jail. The men were restrained and some were shocked with Tasers or pepper sprayed, the AJC found. These cases were excluded from the AJC’s analysis because correctional officers have a different training curriculum and are held to different standards than law enforcement.