WATCH: Cops Mistake Diabetic Emergency for Drug Use, Viciously Beat Man with Batons

St. Johns County, FL — At least three St. Johns County deputies have been placed on administrative leave after cell phone video surfaced of them savagely beating Christopher Butler. Predictably, police were quick to determine Butler was high on PCP but his lawyer says he was suffering from a diabetic event and was not able to follow police officer commands.

They beat him like he was nothing. Like he wasn’t a human being.

Sadly, that isn’t the first time a diabetic has been mistaken for either a drunk or a drug user and it won’t be the last.

There will always be a few bad in every occupation including Endos. Your 100% incorrect to lump them all in one basket. Wait till you need one.

1 Like

I remember almost 40 years ago when they gave me this card. image

4 Likes

As @Tim12 points out, this can be a real concern for those of us using exogenous insulin, and as such it is relevant to the subject of the forum. However, please note that general cop-bashing unrelated to anything to do with diabetes is going to get flagged as off-topic and removed, as I’ve had to do here. There are certainly other forums where that subject would be relevant to discuss, so please feel free to pursue it elsewhere.

5 Likes

I’m not endorsing the cop behavior in any way, there’s a big difference between “necessary” restraining force and continued violence/punishment after a subject is subdued… But what struck me is that the video and article never actually said he was diabetic. There was one single line, with qualifiers, that mentions diabetes. "He was having, as we understand it, a diabetic or blood sugar event… "

To me, that sounds more like layman’s speak for " I’m going to try to use hypoglycemia as a defense", which can be brought on by many causes, even in non-diabetic people, and can easily be explained away when there’s no bloodwork evidence.

I feel like if he actually is diabetic, then the media and his lawyer both terribly represented him. Clear communication would entail specifically starting he was diabetic, and then explaining how hypo or hyperglycemia might have affected his behavior, to better frame the context of brutally. Instead, I’m left feeling general disgust at all parties, with no hero/protagonist in this story.

I’m honestly not one for “cultural misappropriation”. I usually think it’s a joke, and cases of the internet going too far, given that we’re all (countries, nationalities, people, subcultures,etc…) mixing pots of various cultures. I think adopting aspects of other cultures is mostly a good thing, when it’s done out of appreciation. BUT THIS. THIS is the first time I’ve felt my personal diabetic culture is being misappropriated. I really feel like the greasy lawyer specifically used that phrase as clickbait, just because diabetes is big news.

Like I said, I’m not okay with police brutality. We moved to the middle of nowhere where the towns sport slogans like “your civil liberties are protected here” to escape stuff like this. But I also don’t think this is relative to a diabetic forum, because nowhere has it been stated that the victim is diabetic.

1 Like

Resorting to any kind of force should be a last resort in handling someone who seems to be out of control, whatever the reason, so there’s that. But the “diabetic episode” thing does seem like it’s there to add to the victimology-outrage side of things, and without more hard information that makes me cautious. The site linked to in the OP is entirely devoted to stories about police brutality and excess violence, and that kind of “bubble” worldview pings my b.s. meter, the more so if it’s getting mixed up with something that affects me on a deep level and that I suspect they don’t know anything about. For instance, despite the lawyer’s reference to a “diabetic episode” (whatever that is), nowhere is it stated either in this story nor the one on the Jacksonville TV news site that guy is actually diabetic. It’s implied by the reference, but you’d expect it to be stated plainly if that’s going to be the defense. Even the the mom doesn’t mention it, and you’d certainly expect her to. “My son’s a diabetic you dopes!”—but there’s nothing to that effect in the quotes from her.

So I’d kinda like to know that before I engage my outrage, because I want to know what to point that outrage AT. It certainly could have been that the guy was experiencing a bad hypo that was making him slow to a crawl and unable to speak. But if he’s just throwing out the old thing featured in many a TV drama about “Diabetics can seem inebriated when they’re not”* that’s something else and I’d take it pretty harshly. I’m happy to keep my outrage in check pending something more reliable than what’s here.

*An old Night Court episode comes to mind.

1 Like

I always watched that show. So funny!

I also noticed they never said he was diabetic. They never even say what exactly the diabetic event is. This potentially smacks of the twinkie defense.

Not being one that wishes to make rash judgments I did a Google search and found this, a news story, from a more mainstream news source. No where in this story is diabetes mentioned but rather it is confirmed by a local hospital that this gentleman was on PCP. Also the police brutality site story does not mention that this gentleman also had a prior record.

Headlines such as the post by the OP are designed to outrage and if they are true should rightfully do so, it is to bad that the outrage will turn to contempt if the deception is confirmed.

2 Likes

Igot’s got the diabetes rage. I got the diabetes rage, too, sometimes. Hospitals aren’t allowed to release patient medical information. Cops aren’t supposed to kick diabetics or PCP users. I think that in FL, you are allowed to kick bath salt users. But, that’s between FL, bath salt users, and the Chinese government.

Cops are unfortunately made up of some bad people too, I would hope that it is fewer versus more. They have done the wrong thing in a lot of cases and the find a cop and trust them went out the window years ago for me as we have witnessed all the wrong things that they have done.

Saying that, I have a hard time finding any sympathy for a PCP user that was driving under the influence and could have killed someone because he chose to do so. Have you never had a drunk driver aimed straight at you on a road?

There is nothing wrong with his rage but this is being disguised as diabetic rage when in reality it is cop rage.

What happened to this gentleman perhaps should illicit outrage but let us not do it through deception. Deception only weakens any well meant cause.

3 Likes

And to amplify this a bit from the Mod standpoint, reiterating what I said above, this topic very rapidly wants to slide over into “Cops: Bad or Good?” I think it’s obvious that if it were posted that way to begin with that topic would be flagged and deleted at the outset, not because the admins are pro-cop authoritarians but because it has nothing to do with the subject matter of the forum. We allow a pretty wide latitude, but if we don’t maintain some kind of boundaries the forum can drift into being something other than what it was set up to be. There is no shortage of places to get into pro/anti-cop debate, but not so many that have the level of diabetes-focused discussion we have here.

This is more common than people know.

This guy got a $825,000 settlement for being beaten by the cops during a diabetic episode. Of course none of the cops were fired, which is the whole problem.

I’m curious whether the incidence has changed over the years. I mean of insulin reactions while driving, causing accidents or whatever, not the getting beat up by police for it (which shouldn’t happen ever). I had a couple of close calls while driving back when I was on that horrible R/NPH regimen. It could really sneak up and surprise you, and that did happen to me a couple of times behind the wheel, though never bad enough to impair me to this extent. And never once since Lantus, and later pumping, took over for basal. Makes me curious what regimen this poor guy was on.

They don’t beat you if you’re on tresiba. Privilege.

2 Likes

Police Beat Man in Diabetic Shock - and Nevada City Pays for It
By Maria Nikias February 8, 2012

“None of it adds up, because I am basically a gentle person,” he told WOAI-TV.

“Why in the world would they do this?”