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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Restraint Belt Receives Sheriff’s Endorsement As ‘Low Level Of Force’ Goldman, Deputy Police Chief Side With Coroner On Jail Death

Spokane County sheriff’s officials will continue to use a chest and arm restraint on violent jail inmates, even though autopsy reports show it may have killed a man.

The “emergency response belt” is a safe and effective way to prevent struggling inmates from hurting themselves or others, Sheriff John Goldman said Thursday.

“It has been successfully used dozens of times to safely restrain violent inmates,” Goldman said. “The belt is considered a low level of force.”

Mario Lozada died Sept. 3 in a jail cell - less than 10 minutes after he was put in a nylon belt that strapped his arms to his side. After tying his legs together with a second belt, jailers put him on his stomach in an empty cell and left.

A guard was assigned to look through the cell door window to check on Lozada periodically, Goldman said.

Lozada was high on methamphetamine, which “wound up” his heart, said forensic pathologist George Lindholm, who performed the autopsy. He ruled out an overdose, however, and blamed the death on restraint asphyxiation.

Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend said Lozada died of a methamphetamine overdose - an explanation Goldman and Deputy Police Chief Larry Hersom stood by on Thursday.

Both refused to elaborate because an internal investigation into the death is not complete.

Prepared statements about the death issued Thursday by city police and the sheriff’s office ignored Lindholm’s report and highlighted Amend’s drug overdose conclusion. One statement said Lozada had “toxic levels” of methamphetamine in his system - a claim Lindholm said is simply not true.

“He had significant levels of the drug in his system,” Lindholm said Thursday. “But nowhere near the level of other cases I’ve seen and read about.”

Even though Lindholm called Lozada’s death accidental, he said he’ll urge police and sheriff’s officials to re-examine their policies on restraining suspects.

“I know this is something they may not want to look at,” Lindholm said. “But I am looking at the facts and the evidence, and the facts and the evidence say we need to.”

Before being arrested, Lozada fought with Spokane police officers when they showed up at the apartment building where he was partying. Police handcuffed him, strapped his ankles together and attached his feet to the handcuffs.

Then they rolled him onto a blanket and lifted him into a patrol car, where he was placed on his stomach in the back seat.

The procedure is safer now than it was in 1992, when a 57-year-old man died in police custody, Hersom said. That year the department learned about restraint asphyxiation as a cause of death, he added.

Police in that case hogtied George Roberts after he knocked one officer to the ground and assaulted two others downtown. The 300-pound man died before police could get him into the patrol car.

“After that, we looked at our training and reviewed it and made some changes,” Hersom said. “We’re not doctors. We’re struggling with how to restrain a very violent person and keep people from getting hurt.”

One change was to use a nylon strap instead of a cord for the leg restraint, to avoid rubbing or cutting the skin, Hersom said.

Officials also decided to use the leg restraint technique only on the most violent suspects, Hersom said. A second officer now is required to watch the suspect in the back seat of the patrol car at all times, while the other officer drives.

“If they see any problems, anything at all, they go straight to the hospital,” Hersom said. “It’s important that people in our custody come out healthy and alive. We’re concerned if they don’t, and we are careful.”

Medical experts who’ve studied restraint asphyxiation wish police would do more. Eliminating the hog-tie method altogether would prevent many in-custody deaths, they said.

Thurston County Coroner Judy Arnold has studied the syndrome with medical examiners over the past few years. She said many police departments are reluctant to accept restraint asphyxiation as a cause of death altogether because “they think it makes them look incompetent.”

“To some, it may,” Arnold said. “To me, it makes them look like they’re doing what they were trained to do. The training is what we need to look at.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Restraining a violent suspect