By Mason Soto
On February 7, Vaneesa Hopson roamed outside her apartment building before dawn, barefoot, searching for help, frantic and out of her normal state. She pulled a fire alarm, and a neighbor called the police. Within hours, she was handcuffed and held down on her cement parking lot by officers from Olympia Police Department (OPD), then sedated by paramedics with a class of drugs called a “chemical restraint”. She would lose her life as her body reacted to the drugs authorities forced into her. Two months later, a report by the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office declared that no criminal wrongdoing could be found by either police or paramedics that were involved in the incident.
Vaneesa was a 35 year-old woman who worked as a nurse before she moved to Olympia in 2015. She lived at Evergreen Vista Apartments with her eight year-old son, and her family remembers her as a caretaker and as someone who was trying to get back on the right track. Her sister Crystalyn Asbach lives in Centralia, and she has cared for her nephew since the tragedy happened.
Paramedics cited an official handbook titled Thurston County Medic One Protocols to justify their decision. An official from Medic One told the Olympian that this incident did not allow for a supervising physician to help make that decision.
The Sheriff Office’s report says that Olympia police Sgt. Bryan Houser told paramedics to sedate Vaneesa to “prevent unnecessary use of force” due to the “unusual strength” that the victim apparently exhibited. A video shared on Twitter by witnesses and neighbors show three officers huddled over and surrounding Vanessa who struggles as she is laid on the cement driveway and kept there, crying for help. The drug administered goes by the name Versed and is a form of midazolam, a benzodiazepine sedative.
Much of the research around the use of chemical restraints mainly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each drug. A 2004 study published in the Journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine states that among other chemical restraints, midazolam is preferred because of how quickly it sedates and passes, but most of the sedatives used in these situations carry similar risks in terms of things like interaction with other drugs. More recently, midazolam has come into the national spotlight because of its use during lethal injections for prisoners on death row last year, when prisons in Arkansas and Oklahoma rushed through and botched a series of executions. Other information from a website by and for medical professionals called Life In The Fast Lane lists “medical instability” as one of the indications that midazolam should be avoided. Witnesses reported to police that they thought she was on drugs, and hospital tests from that night show some levels of synthetic marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, of which interactions with the administered drug are under-researched. Issues of when and how to restrain, and who has the authority to restrain are at the heart of dialogue going on since Vaneesa’s death, as well as conversation about what social conditions allow for such a tragedy.
In Hopson’s wake, the community organized to bring to light problems with policing, and there were several public meetings revolving around police accountability and de-escalation tactics. Her sister Crystalyn participated in a panel on alternatives to chemical restraints at Traditions Fair Trade on March 5, along with other speakers affected by the institutions that make up policing and mental health care. Folks shared a YouCaring fundraiser on social media to help the family deal with memorial costs, though at the time of writing this article only a small portion of the goal had been raised.
