The Carson County Sheriffs Department has some explaining to do after their reaction to a medical emergency at a Texas rodeo that ended up with their officers handcuffing Congressman – and doctor – Ronny Jackson.

The situation at the rodeo involved a medical emergency for a 15 year old girl. There were no police or EMTs on the scene when Congressman Jackson offered his help.

In a Facebook post, Linda Dianne Shouse, a home healthcare and traveling nurse, said her 15-year-old relative was “seizing due to possible hypoglycemia” Saturday night at the White Deer rodeo, about 45 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas. Jackson represents the Amarillo area and was an attendee at the rodeo.”

Shouse said she and another family member, who is also a nurse, were attending to the girl when Jackson, who is an ER physician, stepped in to assist. Shouse said she didn’t know Jackson was a congressman at the time but told CNN they were all working together to help the teen girl.”

“We were just waiting for EMS to get there. The police came up, the deputies, highway patrol, and everyone was just screaming, ‘Get back, get back, get back,’” she said during an interview.”

And when the police arrived, the entire situation went haywire. What were the police thinking, that a crime was occurring?

Shouse said she was pushed back and then punched in the chest by a woman and said she saw a law enforcement official screaming in Jackson’s face, telling him to “Get the f**k back.”

“He was trying to tell them that he was a doctor and probably trying to tell him who he was, to be honest. And they were screaming that they did not effing care who he was,” she said. “And the next thing I knew, they had him on the ground, grabbed him by the shirt, threw him on the ground, face first into the concrete and had him in cuffs.”

Shouse said once they realized Jackson was a congressman and doctor, they uncuffed him and started apologizing.”

“We had the scene under control. We were just ready to give a report to EMS and get the patient out of there. And that’s not what happened,” Shouse said, recalling what she described as a “loud, chaotic” situation. “She wound up going eventually, but whenever you have someone laying there – when it could be neurological – time is on your hands.”

So, not only did police use force to put Jackson on the ground and cuff him, they also shoved back the family member who is a nurse. Even if there were no medical professionals or family members nearby, how on earth was this an appropriate reaction by the police to dash in and start shoving people back while screaming? The on-the-scene apology to Jackson, and the carefully worded statements by the sheriff’s department, indicate that they know that someone screwed up and the results could have been far worse for their interference.

The local sheriff, Tam Terry, said in a statement that one person was “temporarily detained” while authorities responded to calls during a concert at the rodeo Saturday night, but Terry did not release the person’s identity. Terry said his department was “reviewing the incident” and would withhold any names until the review was complete. The sheriff declined to comment further.”

Jackson, for his part, isn’t making a big deal out of the incident. His office offered a statement which doesn’t mention the extent to which he was “briefly detained.”

The incident began after Jackson was “summoned by someone in the crowd to assist a 15-year-old girl who was having a medical emergency nearby,” his office said.”

The GOP congressman had “sat in the stands during the entire rodeo, in full view of the assembled crowd, and was not drinking,” his spokesperson added.”

They described how when Jackson arrived at the scene, “there was a relative, who happened to be a nurse, already providing assistance. Dr. Jackson explained that he was a physician and asked her if she needed help, and she said yes.”

“While assessing the patient in a very loud and chaotic environment, confusion developed with law enforcement on the scene and Dr. Jackson was briefly detained and was actually prevented from further assisting the patient,” Jackson’s statement said, noting that “there were no uniformed EMS providers on the scene at that time.”

“He was immediately released as soon as law enforcement realized that he, as a medical professional, was tending to the young girl’s medical emergency.”

This isn’t really a story about Jackson himself, as it appears that he did everything that a doctor when present at a medical emergency would do. He appeared on the scene, he identified himself as a doctor, he asked if the patient needed help, and then he attempted to assist until emergency services arrived. Him being a congressman is almost a footnote to the story, though it does raise the profile of the incident.

The real issue at hand is the local police who went hard-charging into the situation without knowing what was actually going on. Does a medical emergency require use of force to put someone who, according to witnesses, was noncombative, face down on the ground in handcuffs, and shoving the family member in the chest to get her out of the way? I think it’s pretty obvious that the response was extremely out of proportion to the situation, and the police ran in without attempting to figure out the circumstances at hand. I am certain that Sheriff Terry is looking at the body cameras (if the department had them and they were turned on) and any other video footage of the incident to see just how many apologies will need to be formally offered to people. And it’s not just Congressman Jackson. The family member of the teenager is due for an apology as well.

We here at Victory Girls support the police and are happy to praise them when they excel at their jobs in impossible circumstances. But we are more than willing to call them out when they screw up or fail to perform their duties. While this didn’t end up being a life-or-death situation, it very well could have turned out very badly if the teenager had been denied the medical attention she was receiving, and ended up dead because of the inability of the police to assess the situation at hand. I’m sure that was very much on the sheriff’s mind as he and his PR department crafted their statement – and will end up being a part of the retraining that these deputies clearly need.

Featured image: Representative Ronny Jackson, official Congressional portrait, cropped, public domain