Hmmm....good question. They exist in every psychiatric facility. All nurses and most other healthcare workers are taught basic communications skills designed to de-escalate people during altercations. Failing that, in anyone just verbally agressive, there's a series of more intrusive interventions that are applied with the most severe being restraint - physical as well as chemical.

For instance - when I watch the UCLA video - when he's yelling Here's Your Patriot Act - Here's Your Abuse of Power - a simple effective communication technique to talk him down would be something like "Yep, it sucks." Agree with him! Disarm his anger! "You're Angry" WEll, yeah, he is, acknowlege it so he doesn't have to keep proving it to you.

Failing that, a simple assisted transport would have got him out of there. That's when 2 people take someone by each side, holding them around the inside of the upper arm and holding their wrists and walking them slightly ahead of the transporters. At anytime, should there be violence, it is easy to move into a take down position. (You just tap the back of the knees with your own knee and lower them down.) Of course, cops go right for the handcuffs, even with an unarmed person that is not under arrest because he is verbally agitated?

It is just basic communication skills for dealing with hostile or combative and or delusional people. They work with all but the most organically damaged patients.

We were always locked in with some very dangerous folks - often murderers and rapists on our forensic unit. All we had was ourselves to defuse situations like the one that happened at UCLA. 98% of the time, simple verbal skills work with no further escalation. Half the time they didn't work, is because they weren't applied early enough.

RE: USA: Excessive and lethal force? Amnesty International's concerns about deaths and ill-treatment involving police use of tasers - Amnesty International