Okay, Jake or anyone else out there with medical training--is this for real? Apparently there may be a new syndrome whereby young men suddenly and inexplicably die following police arrest. The phenomenon is being compared to a similar one wherein wild animals up and die upon capture, and may have something to do with a surge of stress hormones called catecholamines into the bloodstream.
The research is being done in Spain. No deaths considered in this investigation were supposed to be due to mistreatment, but if this is at all indicative of how Spanish police bring people into custody, consider me a bit skeptical...
Hat tip: C.B.
UPDATE: Jake responds here.
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Just off the cuff(!) there doesn't seem to be enough info about this to reach a solid conclusion. They seem to have ruled out drugs, but I don't see any mention of the circumstances of their arrest, whether or not it's the first arrest, what conditions they were kept in, nor is there any comparison with other nations (or with the female gender). I don't see any autopsy info either. Presumably the actual study gives more detials, but whether that's enough is the issue.
It makes no sense that this could be something new. Violent capturing has gone on since the invention of slavery, so wouldn't somebody have noticed this by now?
More likely it's the police killing the prisoners, either intentionally, leaving little obvious evidence, or accidentally, as in suffocation by weighting the chest or hog-tying. Note that the coroner or medical examiner and the police serve the same paymaster, so take any official pronouncement with a shovelful of salt.
I can't in any way see how if this is real that it could be a new phenomenon. Like Bill the Cat pointed out violent capture has been going on just about for all of human history, this would have been noticed before.
It's far more likely that other factors are causing these deaths, could be malice on the parts of the police though I tend to assume stupidity first and that it might be restraint methods or the over use of tasers or similar devices.
so this would allow police to get away with murder? awesome.