‘I Can’t Breathe.’ Police Use Restraint With Fatal Results

Follow instructions, the manufacturer claims, and The Wrap saves lives.

Across the country, police and jails use the mummy-like restraint to secure combative people from shoulders to feet with straps and buckles. It comes with a 22-page manual from its manufacturer Safe Restraints, Inc., with a long list of warnings about using it on someone who’s intoxicated, distressed, or experiencing a medical emergency.

Some use-of-force experts say using The Wrap in chaotic moments can be dangerous.

Someone in the midst of a mental health breakdown or high on drugs is often agitated. They struggle against the straps. And that can make it harder for them to breathe, increasing the risk of death, experts say.

Bloomberg Law identified 41 incidents where law enforcement used The Wrap on someone who died. The analysis included an examination of US court records, in-custody death investigations, and videos obtained through public records requests.

Officers and jail guards failed to follow the manufacturer’s instructions in 32 of the 41 deaths, according to Bloomberg Law’s analysis. Records detail many factors that played a role in the deaths. But each time, people became unresponsive in the device or soon after it was removed.

“It just seems crazy to me that there’s law enforcement agencies that are allowed to use that out in the field when they have so many other tools they can use,” said Noel Caldwell, a civil rights attorney based in Kentucky who represents the families of two men who died. “I think no agency should be using The Wrap.”

There are better ways to restrain people, Caldwell said.

Experts in police use of force say there is an inherent risk linked to the restraint because the manual instructs police to put people into the prone position in order to apply The Wrap.

The position — face down, with hands often cuffed behind the back — restricts breathing and can lead to suffocation if someone is left in it for an extended period of time. It is the same position George Floyd died in at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

Some police departments across the country have tried to minimize how long officers keep someone in the prone position. This includes agencies in some of the largest cities, including New York City, Washington, New Orleans, Denver, Detroit, and Indianapolis. None of these agencies currently use The Wrap. Departments that do use The Wrap often track it the same way they track officer-involved shootings and Taser use.

Most deaths involved someone who was experiencing a mental health crisis or was high on drugs. Ten people died after authorities were called to help them.

A Bloomberg Law review of lawsuits, government records, and more than 20 body camera and jail videos reveals a litany of common errors: putting pressure on someone’s neck, back, or torso while applying The Wrap, not monitoring the bound person at all times, and not seeking immediate medical help when that person complained about a health issue.

In five separate deaths, law enforcement were restraining people in dangerous positions to be placed in The Wrap, but they became unresponsive before it was applied.

Body camera footage obtained by Bloomberg Law shows that officers repeatedly ignored cries of distress from restrained people before they died.

“You’re suffocating me,” shouted a 38-year-old man outside a Raley’s grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2018.

Outside a Circle K near San Diego two weeks later: “They are going to kill me…I’m fucking dying,” a barber yelled.

“Mommy, Daddy… help me,” another man reportedly cried in a South Texas detox cell in August 2020 in the restraint. “I can’t breathe.”

Similar scenes have played out over the years: in a parking lot in 2021. Near a bus stop in 2022. At a Holiday Inn Express in January 2025.

A representative for Safe Restraints, Jennifer Donahoe, told Bloomberg Law that autopsy reports do not say The Wrap caused these deaths, and that drug overdoses were the most common culprit.

She accused reporters of creating a narrative that “is attributing and/or implicating The Wrap as the cause of these injuries and deaths, when in fact, the absence of lawsuits against The Wrap and official reports state differently.”

The company’s president and CEO, Charles Hammond, declined to be interviewed and did not answer a series of written questions.

“In our 30-year history, and with 50,000+ estimated applications per year, we are not currently facing any lawsuits, have never had a lawsuit against Safe Restraints for a causational death or injury and we are not aware of any cases or incidents citing The Wrap as being the official/sole determined cause of injury or death,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg Law.

“Used properly, it should not cause any injuries or breathing issues,” said John Peters Jr., who leads The Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths.

Accountability in death cases is rare. Only three deaths identified by Bloomberg Law led to criminal charges — law enforcement officers were cleared of wrongdoing in external investigations in nearly half of all the deaths, even when medical examiners classified the deaths as homicides. Despite this, law enforcement agencies have paid out more than $9 million in settlements in seven Wrap-related lawsuits, making it difficult for the courts to set a legal precedent that could ban or limit its use.

If someone is going through a mental health crisis or substance abuse withdrawal, devices that could increase the risk of death shouldn’t be used on them, said Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr., president of the National Medical Association and former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia.

“We need to be tracking these deaths accurately,” he said. “And then we need to be reviewing them every time they die.”

A Deadly History

The Wrap emerged in California in the 1990s after a series of alarming news stories about people suffocating while “hog-tied” by police. Back then, officers regularly placed suspects face down, handcuffing their hands behind the back and connecting their feet to their wrists.

The US Department of Justice warned law enforcement agencies against hog tying in 1995, linking it to in-custody deaths from positional asphyxia. Less than a year later, two police sergeants debuted an early version of The Wrap made of steel rebar and heavy duty Velcro. It bundled people into what The San Francisco Chronicle likened to an “enormous human sushi.”

The two officers who started the company began selling the restraint to their own police department in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, with the purpose of allowing police to immobilize violent suspects without suffocating them, according to local press coverage of its launch. An orthopedic surgeon and pulmonary specialist vouched for its safety.

At the time, each restraint cost $200.

The Wrap’s user manual instructs officers to hold someone prone. That position is similar to hog tying, which research shows can lead to death from what medical experts call positional asphyxia.

That risk has been accepted by law enforcement for more than three decades, said Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who has offered expertise on cases before the US Supreme Court, and was a witness at the trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering George Floyd.

Nine years after The Wrap’s debut, a 26-year-old man died in the restraint at a hotel in South San Francisco. Police had been called about a guest yelling and banging on the walls. They said Julio Ayala appeared high on PCP and wrestled him to the ground to arrest him for being intoxicated or endangering himself. As police applied the restraint, officers put him face down and compressed his neck with a carotid hold, according to police depositions in a lawsuit filed by Ayala’s parents. After securing the top part of The Wrap, police checked Ayala’s pulse and found none. An autopsy report said he died from a blunt injury to the neck linked to physical exertion and cocaine intoxication. The district attorney cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing.

Safe Restraints says it has now sold its signature product to more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada. They also sell add-on products for The Wrap, such as a shield and a cart to wheel around restrained subjects.

The Wrap is used for maximum restraint out of a belief by law enforcement that they need to gain full physical control to ensure the safety of everyone, Stoughton said.

“The problem with that method of thinking is it emphasizes how much control officers have over someone, either through that person’s compliance or the physical establishment of control, without properly balancing how much risk there is for officers to gain that amount of control,” he said.

The restraint’s user manual cautions users to look for a long list of warning signs, including: “respiratory or pain complaint by the subject,” “coughing, gasping, gagging, shortness of breath,” ”sudden quiet or inactivity,” “change in facial color,” “elevated body temperature,” “vomiting,” “sweating profusely,” and “suspected drug behavior.” It recommends monitoring individuals in The Wrap, and loosening parts to allow movement if the subject is restrained for long periods of time.

“Any use of force can be misused,” said Dr. Jared Strote, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center. It worries him that The Wrap’s manual instructs police to apply the device while someone lays in the dangerous prone position. “That’s a real problem…the medical community needs to be aware of this.”

Donahoe, the representative for Safe Restraints, said The Wrap was designed as a solution to the risks associated with prolonged face-down prone restraint.

“Developed in collaboration with law enforcement professionals and medical experts, the WRAP reduces the need for prolonged physical force when managing dangerous and combative situations and as a result, reduces injuries that can occur with extended physical struggles and traditional restraint methods,” she wrote in an email to Bloomberg Law. “There’s a reason the WRAP has never been the determined cause of death in our 30 year history - because it results in safer outcomes and care for all lives.”

In June, police in Elk Grove, California responded to a call at a gas station about a man who appeared to be on drugs and was attempting to go behind the cash register. After struggling for a few minutes, police put 37-year-old Scott Saetern into The Wrap and placed him in the back of a patrol car. According to Elk Grove police, he then had a “medical emergency,” and although paramedics were able to get a pulse and rush him to a hospital, he died a day later.

Saetern’s parents have sued the police, accusing officers of using excessive force when they put him into The Wrap. Bloomberg Law found two instances since 2021 where someone died after Elk Grove police used The Wrap.

The department, which said it’s used The Wrap 10 times between January and October 21, 2025, declined to comment for this story citing the ongoing lawsuit.

In the past decade, Bloomberg Law counted 29 people who died in situations involving The Wrap when they were experiencing a mental health crisis or were under the influence of drugs.

“These people obviously are fighting mostly because they are out of their minds, either psychotic or on drugs, and they can’t comply,” said Alon Steinberg, a California-based cardiologist who has studied the use of restraints by law enforcement agencies.

Punishment and Torture

Before sunrise on a June morning in 2022, Kevin Hall told jail deputies in Kentucky that he thought he was having a heart attack. “Let me call my mom,” he pleaded, according to a jail incident report.

Instead, deputies put him in a restraint chair, shocked him with a stun gun and eventually placed him in The Wrap for alleged behavior issues, according to the lawsuit. When his mom called an ambulance for him, jail staff told paramedics not to come, according to the complaint.

Jail guards bound and unbound Hall in The Wrap for the rest of the day, according to the lawsuit. He was left in the restraint for a total of about 12 hours without medical care, a violation of the jail’s policy, the lawsuit claims. The legal complaint also alleges that, at one point, guards put a spit hood over his head. Later, he defecated on himself. Hall could barely stand when guards would briefly let him out. Jail staff said in incident reports that he was intentionally hurting himself when he repeatedly fell.

Roughly 24 hours after Hall was first belted into The Wrap, jail guards found him motionless in the full-body harness. They unstrapped him, began CPR and called an ambulance. Less than 30 minutes later, Hall was dead, according to the complaint.

Attorneys representing Hall’s mother said jail staff tortured and abused her son in the restraint. She and the county eventually reached a confidential settlement, her attorneys said. A lawsuit against the jail’s health-care company is currently paused as the FBI conducts a criminal investigation into Hall’s death, according to court records.

Montgomery County, which runs the jail, did not respond to questions from Bloomberg Law. In court filings, lawyers representing the county said the allegations did not establish that jail deputies should have known that Hall needed medical care and did not show that their actions were objectively unreasonable.

Michael Little believes police in California restrained his brother Joshua Little in The Wrap so many times that it contributed to his death. He’s seeking an injunction against Central Marin Police, Novato Police, and Fairfax Police to restrict or ban the use of the restraint, based on his claim that the agencies are using it in a way that violates a California law on positional asphyxia, as well as constitutional protections against excessive force.

In court filings, the agencies denied misusing The Wrap and said their departments provide “robust” training to officers who use the restraint and that they have strong policies to minimize the risk of positional asphyxia.

Joshua Little, a father of two, suffered from schizophrenia and worked odd jobs, but was often living on the streets, where police that encountered him refused to believe he had a mental health disability, according to his brother Michael.

After his brother died of a fentanyl overdose at 36, Michael Little said he decided to find out what had happened to him over the years, and obtained body camera video from several police departments that regularly detained him.

Michael Little said in an interview that in at least half a dozen videos, police seemed to put his brother into The Wrap to punish him for no apparent reason, or to force him to confess to using drugs.

In one encounter, in April 2021, Joshua Little’s struggle with Fairfax and Central Marin police left him bleeding from the head in the middle of the street, according to video obtained by Michael Little.

Officers put him in The Wrap, but then pushed on his back and neck, compressing his diaphragm as he was kept in a seated position, the video shows. Body camera video from the incident, Michael Little alleges in his lawsuit, shows Joshua Little’s breathing become labored and slow, as he repeatedly tells officers he is going to “pass out.”

Footage shows police slamming Little’s head into the concrete while putting him into The Wrap. In another video, Michael Little alleges in the lawsuit, officers are seen taking photos of Joshua Little in the restraint and joking about sharing them with friends.

“The problem really is these arrests, they were just full scale you know: put him in The Wrap, throw him in the car,” Michael Little said. “And there’s not even evidence that he’s resisting arrest. It’s like they just go right to this hardcore full body restraint.”

An attorney representing the police departments said Joshua Little was never in serious danger when officers placed him in The Wrap. The departments consider the device “a safe, effective and humane tool to restrain violently resisting subjects so that they do not harm themselves or first responders and are able to timely receive the medical care they require,” he wrote in an email.

Michael Little, who says he has spoken with the manufacturer Safe Restraints about their product, says he believes there is not enough training and safeguards in place for its use.

“It bothers me that it would be used on any human being at any time, but especially for people who are having their voices taken away, or don’t have a voice, it’s really scary, ” he said.

ICE Approved

In late 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first term, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorized agents to use The Wrap on deportation flights.

The agency picked it as the “soft” restraint of choice to use on detainees who may be “non-compliant, overly aggressive, combative or in a highly agitated state,” according to contract records.

That’s led to allegations of agents using the device as punishment when people protested their deportations.

“I don’t wish that on my enemies,” a man who was deported to Ghana said in an interview. The man, who is only being identified as John Doe because he is concerned of harm should Nigerian authorities identify him, has a green card and four American children with his wife. “That’s serious. That’s not a joke.”

In the middle of the night in early September, Doe and hundreds of people slept on the floor of an ICE facility at the Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana. An ICE agent woke Doe up shortly before 2 a.m. He’d been granted protection from deportation to Nigeria because of the likelihood he’d be tortured for his role as a political dissident, but the agent told him to get on a military plane. Doe panicked and said he wouldn’t go without speaking to his lawyer, he told Bloomberg Law in an interview.

“So [the agent] called for back up and they pushed me to somewhere where there’s no camera,” he said in a video call from a hotel room in the West African country of Togo, where he was hiding.

A group of agents punched Doe, then slammed him onto the floor and handcuffed him, he said. They put him and three other men who also refused to get on the plane into a restraint that Doe identified as The Wrap, he alleges. The device was so tight that pain shot through his wrists, back, and waist for hours during the transatlantic flight, he said.

Bloomberg Law identified seven people who say they were injured by The Wrap during deportation trips in recent years. All but one had protested their deportation when they were bound. None said they were aggressive or combative, based on interviews and lawsuits, including one filed by the men deported from Louisiana to Ghana in September.

ICE has continued using The Wrap on deportation flights despite multiple civil rights complaints and an internal investigation into its alleged misuse. The US Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights and civil liberties office found that ICE “does not have sufficient policies or operational guidance governing its use of The Wrap,” and recommended that the agency develop a policy dictating its use, documentation, and expanded training, according to a report published by the department in November 2024.

Public contracting data doesn’t detail how much ICE pays for each restraint, but in 2018, the agency’s order of 60 Wraps came out to roughly $1,400 each. ICE has purchased a total of $268,500 in Wrap restraints directly from the manufacturer since 2017 to use on flights, according to the data.

Immigration officials answered questions from the civil rights office, but did not share the same level of concern about The Wrap, said Scott Shuchart, who was then ICE’s assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy. “ICE was pretty confident that it was deploying it appropriately, notwithstanding those concerns.”

“The use of restraints on detainees during deportation flights has been long standing, standard ICE protocol and an essential measure to ensure the safety and well-being of both detainees and the officers/agents accompanying them,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Bloomberg Law. “Our practices align with those followed by other relevant authorities and is fully in line with established legal standards.”

Among the seven detainees who said they were injured on ICE deportation trips in recent years are four Cameroonian asylum seekers. Agents allegedly confined them to The Wrap to “silence” and “punish” them for raising concerns about their treatment and the dangers they face in Cameroon, which had received widespread attention from members of Congress, according to a federal tort claims lawsuit they filed in 2023. They were reportedly left unmonitored for hours in The Wrap as they tried to alert agents to medical distress from the overtightened restraint, which folded their bodies into 45-degree angles, against the manufacturer’s instructions, according to the complaint.

One of the men said he was partially disabled after ICE bound him in that position for four hours on a deportation flight in 2020, ignoring his pleas to loosen the overtightened restraint. When he asked an agent to loosen the straps, he said they tightened them instead. The 35-year-old man, who suffers from asthma, said he never resisted getting on the flight and was placed in The Wrap when he tripped and fell on the tarmac. Three years later, when filing the lawsuit, he said he could no longer lift heavy items and undergoes physiotherapy for the pain in his waist and back.

There was “no justification for the application of this device,” said Sarah Decker, an attorney with the RFK Human Rights Center. “None of our clients were resisting arrest. They were all simply asserting their rights in detention and as part of their deportation proceedings.”

A group of 11 US senators raised concerns in October about potential human rights abuses aboard ICE flights in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Among other issues, lawmakers demanded answers about how often the agency uses The Wrap and whether it has developed a policy governing its use, citing findings from an Associated Press article that linked use of the restraint to at least a dozen deaths involving local law enforcement in the past decade.

The agency did not respond to detailed questions from Bloomberg Law. In court filings, a lawyer for DHS said the men were not mistreated in ICE custody and denied restraining them in The Wrap.

No Accountability

In September 2021, California became one of the first states to try and ban police actions that could cause positional asphyxia. The Justice for Angelo Quinto Act prohibits “the use of any physical restraint that causes a person’s respiratory airway to be compressed or impairs the person’s breathing or respiratory capacity.” In addition, the law prohibits law enforcement from using “any action in which pressure or body weight is unreasonably applied against a restrained person’s neck, torso, or back, or positioning a restrained person without reasonable monitoring for signs of asphyxia.” In other words, it outlawed police from unnecessarily putting people in a prone position.

The law was named after a man who died in 2020 as police in Antioch held him prone while waiting for officers to bring The Wrap.

Yet law enforcement continues to use The Wrap in California and elsewhere.

In lawsuits reviewed by Bloomberg Law, some police departments and jails reportedly didn’t train officers how to use The Wrap, or didn’t have policies on when or how to deploy it.

Peters, of The Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, said that even agencies that train police to use The Wrap may not do a good job.

“There needs to be quantifiable testing to make sure the officer using it is competent in its use and application,” said Peters, who offers training to police departments on how to safely use restraints. He doesn’t provide training for The Wrap because the manufacturer provides its own.

In 2020, four police officers in Green Bay, Wis., used The Wrap on a man yelling at staff in a hospital. None of the officers had received proper training on how to use the device, according to a lawsuit filed against them. They strapped 47-year-old Jason Thomson into the restraint while he told officers he could not breathe and thought he was going to die.

“If you can talk, you can breathe,” an officer responded, then continued restraining him and put a helmet on his head, according to a judicial opinion. In the squad car, the helmet faced backward on Thomson’s head, covering his eyes, nose and most of his mouth, a federal district court judge wrote in the 2024 civil rights lawsuit Thomson’s stepmother filed.

Judge William Griesbach of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin stated that by the time a nurse checked his pulse in the booking area of the Brown County Jail, Thomson was drooling, pale, and sweaty. The jail refused to admit him, so officers carried him back to the squad car, according to the judge. Surveillance video viewed by Bloomberg Law shows Thomson limp in The Wrap as they opened the car door.

No one took him out of the restraint or called an ambulance for several minutes, Griesbach wrote in the order.

By the time Thomson was taken back out of the car, it was too late. A jail nurse tried to revive him but he was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later, according to the judicial order.

The Green Bay Police Department declined to comment on the matter, citing pending litigation. Brown County, which runs the jail, did not respond to questions from Bloomberg Law.

The medical examiner’s report said Thomson died of sudden cardiac arrest after police restraint and classified his death as a homicide.

His stepmother accused law enforcement of violating Thomson’s Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force and not providing medical care. She also blamed the police department for not training staff to use The Wrap.

Bloomberg Law’s investigation found only three occasions where officers were criminally prosecuted out of the 41 deaths identified that involved The Wrap.

Some agencies have tried to better train officers on how to use the device. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office enhanced training for The Wrap after the death of Gabriel Alejandro in 2022.

“Since this incident, we have expanded our training on positional asphyxia and enhanced our focus on subject monitoring during restraint,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.

Other agencies have stopped using the device altogether. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office stopped using the device after the 2018 death of a 23-year-old man serving a weekend in jail. And the Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office stopped using The Wrap in jail after the 2024 death of a 34-year-old man arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at a convenience store, a case which sparked three officers being charged with 2nd degree murder.

Six months after Jason Thomson’s death in Green Bay, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced that the district attorney found “no basis” to prosecute any of the officers.

Brown County District Attorney David Lasee did not answer questions from Bloomberg Law about why he made that decision.

Thomson’s stepmother filed a lawsuit against the city of Green Bay, Brown County, the individual officers, jail deputies, and a nurse who were responsible for him in his final hours. Despite the autopsy that linked Thomson’s death to his restraint by police officers, a federal judge granted them qualified immunity, which protects individual officers from civil liability.

Griesbach pointed out that Thomson was resisting them at the hospital and putting him in The Wrap was not unreasonable. And although Thomson told them he couldn’t breathe, he noted that Thomson seemed fully conscious and talkative during the drive to jail. Their only “troublesome” move was putting the helmet on Thomson backward, Griesbach wrote in a 2024 opinion, but he was able to remove it so that likely had no role in his death.

He dismissed the claims against individual police officers and jail deputies.

Griesbach also threw out the case against the police department, but allowed the lawsuit to move forward against the nurse, who was employed by an outside contractor.

The nurse “concluded that Thomson was not medically fit to be booked into the jail, yet she did not instruct The Wrap to be removed or call an ambulance,” Griesbach noted in his opinion. “There is evidence from which a jury could conclude she should have done more.”

Thomson’s stepmother is appealing the judge’s dismissal of her claims against the city, and on Jan. 8, she reached a settlement with the county and its employees for an undisclosed amount. In September, she had reached a settlement with the nurse for an unspecified sum. The nurse, Rebecca Warren, did not respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg Law.

In the meantime, the city of Green Bay sent a bill to Thomson’s estate to recover roughly $6,000 spent on court costs to defend its police.

Financial costs can discourage families from seeking justice through the courts. Relatives of Ryan Thornton, who died in police custody in the summer of 2024, said they are still debating whether they should sue.

San Marcos police had approached the 43-year-old father along a freeway in Central Texas after receiving calls about a man running on the highway, according to law enforcement records. Body camera footage shows Thornton grunting and unable to respond to an officer’s questions. Then he appears to lunge toward the officer, who shoots him with a Taser, dropping Thornton to the ground, according to the video.

Three officers piled on top of Thornton and wrestled him into The Wrap, body camera footage shows. By the time police arrived at the hospital, Thornton was slumped over and unresponsive in the back seat. He died a short time later, according to hospital records.

Hospital staff delayed treating Thornton because police first had to remove him from The Wrap, according to hospital notes shared with Bloomberg Law. A medical examiner’s report said Thornton died of a meth overdose, and that the restraint didn’t contribute to his death.

San Marcos used The Wrap sparingly — just four times in 2024 — and still Thornton died. Police Chief Stan Standridge declined to discuss Thornton’s death because of pending litigation, a department spokesperson said. He shared the agency’s policy on using The Wrap, which warns officers that drug use and physical exertion can make it difficult for someone to breath while they are restrained.

Thornton’s father, Dennis Thornton, said he was devastated after viewing the body camera footage. He said he wished police had shown his son more compassion and concern.

“I just don’t want it to happen to anybody else again,” he said.