Mt. Pleasant man detained using 'spit hood,' video shared on Twitter

WASHINGTON - A man was detained in Mt. Pleasant Monday evening and put in a spit hood before being taken away by police.

A video posted by WAMU reporter Amanda Michelle Gomez on Twitter shows several police officers handcuffing a man with a spit hood over his face before loading him into the back of an MPD vehicle. According to Gomez, police on the scene said they were responding to a mental health crisis and declined further comment.

The video was viewed over 129,000 times as of writing.

The official DC Police Department Twitter replied to Gomez’s video, explaining that the item over the man’s head was a spit hood and describing why officers use them.

D.C. is currently being sued by Bread for the City over the practice of sending police officers rather than mental health providers in response to mental health emergencies.

What is a spit hood?

A spit hood is a mesh bag that goes over a person’s face. Though there are different variations of the design, it usually resembles a sack with an elastic lining at the base that goes around the person’s neck. The mesh material allows police detainees to breathe while preventing any spitting or biting assaults on officers. Police use them as a means to restrain suspects as well as curb the spread of infectious diseases.

Why are spit hoods controversial?

In recent years, spit hoods have been heavily scrutinized for being inhumane and degrading. In 2020, a man died of suffocation after police put a spit hood over his head and pressed his face into the ground for two minutes. A few weeks later, another man died in a spit hood in Tucson, Arizona while gasping and pleading for water.

In 2020, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund in the United Kingdom advised against the use of spit hoods on children, and Australia got rid of them altogether back in 2019.

According to an executive order from D.C. police signed in September of 2022, spit hoods can be used "on a subject who is actively spitting or when there is reasonable belief that a subject will spit on the member or others." The order details procedures that include that officers must continuously observe the person wearing the hood and document the reasons it was used in their records.

View the full PDF from MPD below.

FOX 5 has reached out to MPD for a police report in connection with the incident Monday.