The Bay Area Rapid Transit police department in San Francisco will no longer use the term “excited delirium” because of its racist connotations.
The transit department said in a press release on Thursday that the term will be removed from its policy manual and that all employees are prohibited from using the term in their written reports.
The organization’s decision comes after the Physicians for Human Rights reconstructed the term’s history by analyzing medical literature, news archives, and transcripts of witnesses in wrongful death cases in its report, “‘Excited Delirium’ and Deaths in Police Custody.”
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The term dates back to the mid-1980s, when law enforcement would use it to describe someone in an “extreme state of agitation or delirium,” the report stated. Oftentimes, the term would be most attached to law-enforcement-related deaths of black and brown people in instances of mental illness or substance use.
The human rights organization, in its own statement, applauded the transit department’s decision to remove the term from its manual.
PHR determined in its report that, of the 166 reported deaths caused by “excited delirium” between 2010 and 2020, black people accounted for 43.3% and black and Latino people grouped together made up at least 56%.
The phrase was labeled “scientifically meaningless” and a misleading explanation for many deaths that occurred in police custody and restraint.
“The term ‘excited delirium’ cannot be disentangled from its racist and unscientific origins,” the PHR report stated.
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Joanna Naples-Mitchell, PHR U.S. research adviser and co-author of the report, said BART police’s decision is an important first step and will call on other law enforcement agencies around the country to follow its example.
“‘Excited delirium’ was dangerous and destructive from its inception in the 1980s,” Naples-Mitchell said. “It has no place in modern medicine or law enforcement.”
