By REESE DUNKLIN, RYAN J. FOLEY, JEFF MARTIN, JENNIFER McDERMOTT, HOLBROOK MOHR and JOHN SEEWER (Associated Press)
Carl Grant, a Vietnam veteran with dementia, wandered out of a hospital room to charge a cellphone he thought he had. When he wouldn't stay still, the police officer escorting Grant body-slammed him, bouncing the patient's head off the floor.
Taylor Ware, a former Marine and aspiring college student, walked the grassy grounds of an interstate rest stop trying to shake off the voices in his head. After Ware ran from an officer, he was attacked by a police dog, shocked by a stun gun, pinned on the ground and injected with a sedative.
And Donald Ivy Jr., a former three-sport athlete, left an ATM alone one night when officers identified him as suspicious and attempted to detain him. Ivy ran away, and police tackled and shocked him with a stun gun, struck him with batons and held him facedown.
Each man was unarmed. None posed a threat to public safety. Nevertheless, each died after police used a type of force that is not supposed to be fatal — and can be much easier to conceal than the discharge of an officer's gun.
Every day, police rely on standard methods that, unlike guns, are designed to stop people without causing death, such as physical restraints, Tasers and physical strikes. However, when used incorrectly, these methods can still result in death — as was the case with George Floyd in 2020, prompting a nationwide reevaluation of policing. And while that incident was captured on video, documenting Floyd's final words of "I can't breathe," numerous others across the United States went unnoticed.
Over a decade, more than 1,000 people died after police used non-lethal methods to subdue them, as revealed by an investigation led by The Associated Press. In numerous instances, officers were not trained or did not follow best safety practices for physical force and weapons, creating a recipe for fatality.
These types of lethal encounters occurred in nearly every location, according to an analysis of a database created by AP. Major cities, suburbs, rural America, red states, blue states, restaurants, assisted-living centers and most commonly, in or near the homes of those who died. The deceased came from various backgrounds — a poet, a nurse, a saxophone player in a mariachi band, a truck driver, a sales director, a rodeo clown and even a few off-duty law enforcement officers.
However, the toll disproportionately affected Black Americans like Grant and Ivy. Despite representing only 12% of the U.S. population, Black individuals accounted for a third of those who died. Others heavily impacted were individuals impaired by a medical, mental health or drug emergency, a group particularly vulnerable to force even when applied lightly.
"We were robbed," expressed Carl Grant's sister, Kathy Jenkins, whose anger has not diminished four years later. "It's as if somebody entered your house and just took something, and you were violated."
AP’s three-year investigation was conducted in partnership with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University, and FRONTLINE (PBS). The AP and its partners focused on local police, sheriff’s deputies and other officers patrolling the streets or responding to dispatch calls. Reporters submitted nearly 7,000 requests for government documents and body-camera footage, obtaining over 700 autopsy reports or death certificates, and discovering video in at least four dozen cases that has not been widely published or distributed.
Medical officials said that law enforcement caused or contributed to approximately half of the deaths. In many other cases, significant police force went unmentioned and drugs or preexisting health conditions were blamed instead.
Video in several cases showed some officers making fun of people as they died, laughing or making comments such as “sweaty little hog,” “screaming like a little girl” and “lazy f—.” In other instances, officers expressed clear concern for the people they were subduing.
The federal government has struggled for years to count deaths following what police call “less-lethal force,” and the little information it collects is often kept from the public and highly incomplete at best. No more than a third of the cases the AP identified are listed in federal mortality data as involving law enforcement at all.
When force was used, it could be sudden and extreme, the AP investigation found. Other times, the force was minimal, and yet the people nevertheless died, sometimes from a drug overdose or a combination of factors.
In about 30% of the cases, police were intervening to stop people who were injuring others or who posed a threat of danger. But roughly 25% of those who died were not harming anyone or, at most, were committing low-level infractions or causing minor disturbances, AP’s review of cases shows. The rest involved other nonviolent situations with people who, police said, were trying to resist arrest or flee.
A Texas man loitering outside a convenience store who resisted going to jail was shocked up to 11 times with a Taser and restrained facedown for nearly 22 minutes — more than twice as long as George Floyd, previously unreported video shows. After a California man turned silent during questioning, he was grabbed, dogpiled by seven officers, shocked five times with a Taser, wrapped in a restraint contraption and injected with a sedative by a medic despite complaining “I can’t breathe.” And a Michigan teen was speeding an all-terrain vehicle down a city street when a state trooper sent volts of excruciating electricity from a Taser through him, and he crashed.
In hundreds of cases, officers repeated errors that experts and trainers have spent years trying to eliminate — perhaps none more prevalent than how they held someone facedown in what is known as prone restraint.
Many policing experts agree that someone can stop breathing if pinned on their chest for too long or with too much weight, and the Department of Justice has issued warnings to that effect since 1995. But with no standard national rules, what police are taught is often left to the states and individual departments. In several cases, officers disregarded people who told them they were struggling for air or even about to die, often uttering the words, “I can’t breathe.”
What followed deadly encounters revealed how the broader justice system frequently works to shield police from scrutiny, often leaving families to grieve without knowing what really happened.
Officers were usually cleared by their departments in internal investigations. Some had a history of violence and a few were involved in multiple restraint deaths. Local and state authorities that investigate deaths also withheld information and in some cases omitted potentially damaging details from reports.
One of the last chances for responsibility from within the system — known as death opinions — also often cleared officers. The medical examiners and coroners who make these decisions did not connect hundreds of the deaths to force, but instead to accidents, drug use, or existing health issues, sometimes relying on discredited science or incomplete studies from sources linked to law enforcement.
Even when these deaths are labelled homicides like fatal police shootings often are, prosecutors rarely go after officers. Charging police is politically sensitive and legally complicated, and the AP investigation found only 28 deaths that resulted in such charges. Seeking accountability through civil courts was also challenging for families, but at least 168 cases ended in settlements or jury verdicts totaling about $374 million.
The known deaths still averaged just two per week — a small part of the total interactions police have with the public. Police leaders, officers, and experts say law enforcement shouldn’t shoulder all the blame. As the social safety net weakens, people in mental distress or using stimulant drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine are increasingly on the streets. Officers sent to handle these emergencies are often inadequately trained by their departments.
If incidents become chaotic and officers make rapid decisions to use force, “people do die,” said Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Baltimore police officer.
“The only way to get down to zero is to get rid of policing,” Moskos said, “and that’s not going to save lives either.”
But because the United States has no clear understanding of how many people die in this manner and why, holding police accountable and implementing significant reforms will remain difficult, said Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr., a leader in the effort to improve tracking and one of the nation’s few Black chief medical examiners during his tenure in Washington, D.C., from 2014 to 2021.
“Any time anyone dies before their day in court, or dies in an environment where the federal government or the local government’s job is to take care of you,” he said, “it needs transparency. It cannot be in the dark of night.”
“This,” he added, “is an American problem we need to solve.”
Carl Grant wasn’t very interested in football. So on Super Bowl Sunday in 2020, family members said, he got into his black Kia Optima, planning to shop for groceries near his suburban Atlanta home. The 68-year-old ended up 2½ hours away, where he encountered police in a situation that highlights several key findings from AP’s investigation: He was Black, he was not posing physical harm, and a seemingly routine situation escalated quickly.
The former Marine and trucking business owner had dementia and was classified as a disabled veteran. As he drove that evening, he became confused and drove onto an interstate heading west to Birmingham, Alabama. There, Grant twice attempted to enter houses he thought were his.
Both times, residents called 911. And both times, responding officers chose to use force.
At the first house, Grant was taken to the ground and cuffed after an officer said he’d stepped toward a partner. Even though one officer sensed he was impaired, police released Grant without asking medics to examine him — a decision a superior later criticized.
The police found him sitting on a porch at a second house about a half-mile away. When he didn’t obey an order to leave the porch, another officer pushed him down the stairs, as shown on body-camera video that hadn't been released before. Grant cut his forehead when he fell.
Officer Vincent Larry, who pushed Grant, went with him to the hospital. When Grant wouldn’t return to his exam room, Larry used an unapproved “hip toss” to lift and slam him, as seen in the hospital surveillance video. The back of Grant’s head bounced four inches off the floor, causing severe damage to his spinal cord in his neck, according to a nurse's estimation.
After Grant regained consciousness from emergency surgery, he thought his paralysis was a result of a combat injury from the Vietnam War. “I’m so sorry this happened,” he said to his family, as recalled by his sister. He passed away almost six months later due to the injury.
An internal investigation determined that Larry’s use of force at the hospital was excessive. Unlike many other cases found by AP, his department took action: he received a 15-day suspension. He is no longer employed by the city, as per a Birmingham spokesperson. Neither Larry nor the department would comment. A judge recently cited a procedural error in dismissing a lawsuit filed by Grant’s estate, which is appealing the ruling.
“He’s almost 70 and confused,” said Grant’s partner, Ronda Hernandez. “That’s what I don’t understand. You just don’t do that to elderly people.”
Grant was one of 1,036 deaths recorded by AP from 2012 to 2021. This is likely an underestimate because many departments restricted access to information. Files that were released by others were redacted and videos blurred, while officers habitually used vague language in their reports to minimize the use of force.
All but 3% of the deceased were men, mostly in their 30s and 40s, when police might see them as more physically threatening. The youngest was just 15, and the oldest was 95.
In terms of numbers, white people of non-Hispanic descent made up the biggest group, accounting for over 40% of cases. Hispanics made up just under 20% of those killed. However, Black Americans were disproportionately affected.
The overrepresentation of Black people aligns with research showing that they experience higher rates and severity of force, and even death. The Department of Justice found in multiple investigations that Black people were subject to more unjustified stops for minor offenses, illegal searches that turned up no contraband, unnecessary force, or arrests without probable cause.
Researchers warn that it can be difficult to prove — or disprove — discrimination due to a lack of information. However, in some cases identified by AP, officers were accused of profiling and stopping Black people based on suspicions, as was the case with Donald “Dontay” Ivy Jr.
Ivy was a 39-year-old resident of Albany, New York, who excelled in basketball during high school, served in the U.S. Navy, and graduated college with a business degree. On a freezing night in 2015, he went to an ATM to check if a delayed disability deposit had been made. Officers thought he seemed suspicious because he was walking with a lean and only had one hand in the pocket of his “puffer” coat — behaviors they believed indicated he might have a gun or drugs.
Ivy was helpful when they stopped him, but, they said, he wouldn’t say how much money he had taken out and denied a prior arrest. Police saw Ivy’s behavior as misleading without understanding that Ivy suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. A witness described that Ivy seemed “slow” when he spoke.
When an officer touched Ivy to detain him — a known trigger for some with severe mental illness — police say Ivy began to resist. An officer discharged a Taser, then Ivy ran away. Officers caught up and beat him with batons, shocked him several more times with a Taser, put him facedown and got on top of him. By the time they rolled Ivy over, he’d stopped breathing.
The department quickly decided that the officers acted appropriately and attributed a “medical crisis” to his death, even though it was classified a homicide. A grand jury declined to indict. However, the local prosecutor urged police to review policies for Tasers, batons and dealing with people with mental illness.
The local chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union continued to question the stop, saying there was “strong reason to suspect” Ivy was racially profiled. After years in court, the city paid $625,000 to settle with Ivy’s estate. His cousin and close friend Chamberlain Guthrie said the way Ivy’s life ended was one of the most painful things his family had endured.
“It’d be one thing if Dontay was out here being a ruffian and he was a thug,” Guthrie said. “But he was none of that.”
When people died after police subdued them, it was often because officers went too fast, too hard or for too long — many times, all of the above.
The United States has no national rules for how exactly to apply force. Instead, Supreme Court decisions set broad guard rails that weigh force as either “objectively reasonable” or “excessive,” based in part on the severity of the situation, any immediate safety threat and active resistance.
That frequently leaves states and local law enforcement to sort out the particulars in training and policies. Best practices from the government and private law enforcement organizations have tried to fill gaps, but aren’t mandatory and sometimes go ignored, as happened in hundreds of cases reviewed by AP and its partners.
In 2019, the mother of Taylor Ware, the former Marine with college plans, called 911 when he wouldn’t get back in their SUV during a manic episode caused by bipolar disorder. She told the dispatcher Ware would need space and urged police to wait for backup because he was a former wrestler and might be a handful — advice that tracked best practices, yet wasn’t followed.
The first officer to encounter Ware at a highway rest stop in Indiana saw the 24-year-old extending him a hand in greeting. Ware then calmly walked through a grassy field and sat down with folded legs.
The officer, an unpaid reserve marshal, assured Ware’s mother he’d had calls like this before. As she and a family friend watched, he stopped about 10 feet in front of Ware, according to video filmed by the friend and obtained by AP. His police dog barked and lunged several times — a provocation officers are told to avoid with the emotionally distressed. Ware remained seated.
After a short time, Ware moved toward the parking area. There, the officer claimed Ware pushed him away, a quick action disagreed by the friend. Her video shows Ware running and the officer instructing the dog to attack, leading to a series of forceful actions that resulted in Ware being in a coma, and he passed away three days later.
A police news release stated that Ware experienced a “medical event,” a reason that resembles how police initially described George Floyd’s death. The prosecutor in Indiana chose not to press charges and commended officers for their “exceptional patience and restraint.” His office’s letter overlooked or omitted important details: multiple dog bites, multiple stun-gun shocks, prone restraint and an injection of the potent sedative ketamine.
In many other cases identified by AP, individuals who passed away were given sedatives without consent, at times after officers suggested paramedics use them — a suggestion law enforcement is not qualified to make.
A coroner determined that Ware’s death resulted from natural causes, specifically “excited delirium” — a term for a condition that police claim leads to potentially life-threatening agitation, rapid heart rate and other symptoms. However, major medical groups oppose it as a diagnosis and state it is often an attempt to justify excessive force.
“It was as if his body was to blame, rather than the police,” Ware’s sister, Briana Garton, commented on the autopsy ruling.
Two experts who examined the case for the AP stated that police actions — such as ordering the dog to attack, using a Taser in the chest and restraining facedown with handcuffs and back pressure — contributed to Ware’s death.
“This was not appropriate conduct,” said police practices expert Stan Kephart, himself a former chief. “This person should be alive today.”
Like in Ware's case, officers used force in about 25% of the situations despite them not being immediately dangerous. Many of these started as routine calls that other officers have resolved safely on numerous occasions. These included medical emergencies reported by families, friends or the individuals who eventually died.
By resorting to force prematurely, police introduced violence and instability, leading to the necessity of using more weapons, holds or restraints to regain control — a phenomenon known as “officer-created jeopardy.” Sometimes this begins when police mistake someone's confusion, intoxication or inability to communicate due to a medical issue as defiance.
What led to the application of force was sometimes unclear. In over 100 cases, police either withheld important details or witnesses disputed the officer’s account — and body-camera footage was not available to provide clarity. However, in about 45% of cases, officers became physical after claiming that someone attempted to evade them or resist arrest for nonviolent circumstances. For instance, some ran away with drugs, or simply resisted handcuffs or wiggled around while being held down.
Many times, the methods officers used to subdue people did not follow policing best practices, especially when using the standard techniques of restraining people facedown and shocking them with Tasers.
When carried out correctly, placing someone on their stomach or shocking them is not inherently life-threatening. However, there are risks: Prone restraint can compress the lungs and stress the heart, and Taser’s manufacturer has issued warnings against repeated shocks or targeting the body near the heart. These risks are higher when safety protocols are not followed or when people with mental illness, the elderly or those on stimulant drugs are involved.
Some police involved in deaths said they were told that lying face down was not dangerous, but others were trained to roll people onto their sides to help them breathe and didn't do it.
An officer, repeating a common myth about restraining someone face down, told a Florida man that if he was talking, he was breathing, even after being shocked 12 times by stun guns.
An officer in the death of a Minnesota man testified that the stomach was an ideal place for the man to be restrained because it was harder for him to harm the officer, even though the man was found sleeping at a grocery store and restrained for over 30 minutes.
In many police or witness videos, those who died appeared to become weak on screen, with their breathing becoming shallow, as happened in suburban San Diego to 56-year-old Oral Nunis.
In 2020, Nunis was having a mental breakdown at his daughter’s apartment. He had calmed down, but then the first arriving officer grabbed his arm only four seconds after making eye contact. Nunis pleaded to go without being handcuffed, but the officer persisted. Nunis became agitated and ran outside.
At 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 146 pounds, Nunis quickly found himself pinned by several officers — each at least 80 pounds heavier than him. Although his body became still, they continued pressing, placed him in a full-body restraint device, and put a spit mask on him. From just 10 feet away, his daughter tried to console him in his final minutes: “Daddy, just breathe.”
The district attorney’s office later cleared the police, stating their force was reasonable because Nunis had shown “unnaturally strong resistance” for his size.
As part of the family’s lawsuit, two pathologists concluded that the restraint officers used led to his death. One officer was asked under oath if pressure on someone’s back could affect breathing. “I have had several bodies on top of me during different training scenarios,” the 6-foot, 265-pound officer said, “and I never had difficulty breathing.”
The use of Tasers can be similarly misinformed. An officer shocked Stanley Downen, 77, a former ironworker with Alzheimer’s disease who served during the Korean War, as he wandered the grounds of his veterans’ home in Columbia Falls, Montana. The electricity locked up his body and made him fall without control of his limbs. He hit his head on the pavement and later died.
The officer said under oath that he hadn’t read any warnings, including those from Taser manufacturer Axon Enterprise Inc., about the risks of shocking the elderly or people who could be injured if they fell. He testified that Downen was “armed with rocks,” but a witness told police Downen never raised his hands to throw them. The police chief cleared the officer, though a police expert hired by the family found he failed to follow accepted practices.
In about 30% of deaths that AP logged, civilians and officers faced potential or clear danger, extenuating circumstances that meant police didn’t always follow best practices. In about 170 of those cases, officers said a person charged, swung or lunged at them, or police arrived to find people holding someone down after a fight. In the other roughly 110 cases, police were trying to stop violent attacks against others, including officers.
A man in Kansas used his elderly mother to protect himself when deputies arrived. In Minnesota, a 41-year-old concrete mason choked and punched his adult daughter before grabbing an officer and pushing her into a window.
In Cohasset, Massachusetts, three officers faced off against Erich Stelzer, a 6-foot-6-inch bodybuilder who was viciously stabbing his date, causing the walls to be covered in her blood.
Instead of shooting him, two officers used Tasers and managed to handcuff 25-year-old Stelzer as he thrashed on the floor. Unfortunately, Stelzer stopped breathing and could not be revived by the officers. The local prosecutor determined that they had handled the situation appropriately and would have been justified in shooting Stelzer because he posed a lethal threat.
While the officers were glad to have saved the woman’s life, they also struggled with the fact that they had to consider killing a man despite their efforts to avoid it.
“As time passed after the incident, I realized that he was someone’s son, someone’s brother,” said Detective Lt. Gregory Lennon. “I am sorry that he died. It was not our intention.”
It can be challenging to understand how and why people die after encountering force. Information is often scarce, and government agencies may not share what they know.
In 2000, Congress began urging the Justice Department to track deaths involving law enforcement. The department has admitted that its data is incomplete, attributing this to inconsistent reporting from police departments, and does not make whatever information it has publicly available.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has incomplete mortality data. The AP's investigation revealed that when a death certificate does not contain words like “police” and “law enforcement,” the CDC’s software does not identify the death as involving “legal intervention.” As a result, police involvement was only marked in about 34% of the more than 1,000 deaths identified in the investigation.
Among the mislabeled deaths is that of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man who died in Rochester, New York in 2020 while being restrained and covered with a spit hood. Despite the incident being caught on video, his death certificate did not directly mention the involvement of the police, only noting “physical restraint.”
The CDC acknowledges that its data undercounts police-involved deaths, but states that it was not primarily designed to identify them. Officials mentioned that the staff lacks the time or resources to verify the details on death certificates.
In 2017, leading pathologists recommended adding a checkbox to the U.S. standard death certificate to indicate deaths involving law enforcement, similar to what is done for tobacco use and pregnancy. They argued that better data could lead to improved practices and help prevent deaths. However, the proposal has not gained much support.
Georgetown University law professor Christy Lopez, who previously led the Justice Department office investigating law enforcement agencies for excessive force, stated, “This has been a longstanding, not-very-secret issue: We have very limited knowledge.”
Meanwhile, regulations in states like Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Delaware prevent the disclosure of most, if not all, details. In other locations, such as Iowa, departments can select what they want to reveal, even to family members like Sandra Jones.
Jones’ husband, Brian Hays, 56, had struggled with an addiction to painkillers after injuring his shoulder at a factory job. She last saw him alive one September night in 2015 after he called 911 due to his mental health and methamphetamine use causing delusions. Officers who arrived at their home in Muscatine, Iowa, told her to leave.
The following day, a hospital informed Jones that Hays was there. As Hays was on life support, doctors informed her that he had several Taser marks on his body and scrapes on his face and knees, she remembered. Neighbors also stated they had seen Hays run out of the house in just boxer shorts and make it around the corner before officers caught him.
When Jones attempted to understand what happened, she mentioned that police wouldn’t hand over their reports. A detective later informed her officers had shocked Hays and tied his feet before he went into cardiac arrest. She couldn’t understand why that much force was necessary.
Later, Jones managed to obtain the autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office, confirming the force and a struggle. But an attorney informed her that winning a lawsuit to uncover more information was unlikely. Hays’ death didn’t even make the local news.
“All I know is, something terrible happened that night,” she said. “I have pictured him laying on that cement road more times than I can tell you. I picture him there, struggling to breathe.”
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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database, and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” premiering April 30 on PBS.
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Contributing to this story were Thalia Beaty, Martha Bellisle, Jacques Billeaud, Michael Catalini, Brett Chambers, Mary Dalrymple, Trenton Daniel, Kristin M. Hall, Roxana Hegeman, Carla K. Johnson, Angeliki Kastanis, Denise Lavoie, Andy Lemberger, Brian McDonnell, Aaron Morrison, Sean Mussenden, Serginho Roosblad, Rhonda Shafner, Taylor Stevens, Mitch Weiss, and Helen Wieffering.
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To read articles by journalists at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs, visit this link.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story was also supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/
