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Cake day: December 30th, 2023

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  • You can tell based on the pattern of damage. Handcuffs placed very tightly will bite into the skin and cause skin damage to the immediate site, typically beyond the epidermal layer, and because they are cutting off circulation, will cause ischemic injury to areas distal to the handcuff placement and deep to the integumentary borders (because nerves especially are a little more prone to damage due to hypoxia, dying in as little as 3-5 minutes if the area is completely hypoxic). The damage would essentially be similar in appearance to the ligature marks made during a strangulation; you’d see a band of very damaged tissue. If the only thing that had occurred to damage this individual’s skin was handcuffs being too tight, you’d see the line that is pictured in the second and third images, more damage from it, and it would be the only injury.

    If you look at picture 1 and 3, you can see that the damage is very wide compared to the handcuff width, and not localized in a single band. The damage is also all superficial, at it looks like it barely went through to the dermis, much less the hypodermis. These seem like scrapes from the individual pulling and twisting against the cuffs.



  • It happens all the time. Officer makes the decision to arrest, puts the person in handcuffs and the car. A supervisor shows up, a story gets changed, or an officer finds out that something proves someone is lying, and the person is released. I’ve seen it happen when a non-violent offender had warrants, but it turned out they were having a kid’s birthday party (discovered when the dad came out to check on the mom because she’d been outside ‘smoking’ for longer than usual).

    Arrested is a step up from detention. Detention = you’re not free to leave. Arrested = you are not free to go, you’re coming with the officer to jail, and they have belief you committed a crime that you will be charged with (or have a warrant, thus already charged). There is nothing that says once arrested an officer can’t take off handcuffs and let you go. There really isn’t that much distinguishing the two in the law, except for statutes about identifying yourself (where I live, anyway). My laws use the word custody in far greater amounts than arrest.



  • Just want to point out, many, or even most, police work 12 hour shifts as well.

    The second thing I want to point out is that many of these workers want shifts like that. Having to work (depending on your schedule) a 2/2/5/5 or a 3/4/4/3 is seen as a nice thing. I know people in all three of the public service front-facing jobs, and they would fight you if you (as a city council member or something) proposed to change the scheduling from a 12 to an 8.

    The third thing is that rotating shifts suck. I worked one where we switched ever 3-4 weeks, and that was like gargling monkey balls as you try to wake up for that first day shift, or stay awake on that first night shift. I can definitely see how those can contribute to death and dying. Conversely, when I worked straight nights for two years, I never really had issues. Long term, maybe, but the article you linked even mentions that it’s the rotations specifically that make it bad.

    Oh, and the fourth thing. Suburb or not, sleep is rare. I can probably number the number of times a night let you have more than 1-3 hours of sleep in the low scores, whether I was in urban, suburban, or bum-fuck rural (and I’ve done all three, at least 3 years each now). People are always ill, dying, or getting into trouble.