Risks of handcuffing someone facedown long known; people die when police training fails to keep up

For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long. Yet failures in training of officers have created a deadly disconnect between what’s long been known as safe and what some police do on the streets. An investigation led by The Associated Press found that some officers aren’t being taught that holding someone facedown could impede breathing, and that others who were trained in the best practice of promptly rolling a person off their chest didn’t do so in an encounter that ended in death.