A review of body-worn camera footage by The Sacramento Bee found that Elk Grove police left 37-year-old Scott Saetern alone for about 10 minutes in a full-body restraint device shortly before he lost consciousness and died last year. Saetern was unarmed and experiencing a mental health crisis when officers responding to a report of a man trying to enter a restricted area at a gas station placed him in The WRAP restraint system and a spit hood.
According to The Sacramento Bee, officers arrived around noon on June 28, 2025, after a report that Saetern was trying to enter a restricted office at a gas station. The first two officers on scene found Saetern sitting on a curb, telling them someone was breaking into his car and that there was blood in the back seat — claims an officer found no evidence to support. Four additional officers arrived to help handcuff him as the temperature reached 100 degrees.
Officers laid Saetern face-down on the asphalt for nearly three minutes before placing him in the WRAP restraint after handcuffing him, per the Bee's reporting. He can be heard yelling, “Help call the police,” and later told officers he was thirsty, dizzy, and unable to breathe. An officer then placed a spit hood over his head.
Ten Minutes Alone in the Back Seat
After officers closed both rear doors of the police vehicle, The Sacramento Bee reported that Saetern remained inside, restrained and unattended, for roughly 10 minutes. The Bee's review found that he stopped moving and talking during that period before an officer discovered him unresponsive and without a pulse. Police have said Saetern was face-up and semi-upright and that officers checked on him through a window. The footage reviewed by the Bee showed him lying flat on his back without an officer inside the vehicle. Saetern lost consciousness during that interval and later died at a hospital.
What California standards say about restraints
California's statewide training materials address the risks of additional restraint devices. According to California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training Learning Domain 33, officers should recognize that such devices can create additional concerns for a subject's physical well-being and may consider repositioning a restrained person onto their side to prevent injury. The same POST materials state that Government Code 7286.5(a) bars law enforcement agencies from authorizing techniques or transport methods involving a substantial risk of positional asphyxia. The materials provide statewide guidance on positioning and agency authorization; Elk Grove's separate policy on continuous monitoring of a person wearing a spit hood is described below.
Fire department personnel transported Saetern to a hospital, where officers had already performed CPR, but he never regained consciousness. The Elk Grove Police Department announced his death in a news release on June 30, 2025, according to The Sacramento Bee. Sgt. Jason Jimenez, an Elk Grove police spokesperson, said an officer looked at Saetern through a window several times during that window.
Restraint Manufacturer's Own Warnings
The devices used on Saetern come with explicit safety instructions. Safe Restraints, Inc., which manufactures The WRAP, instructs in its safety manual that officers must never leave a restrained individual unattended, according to Criminal Legal News. WRAP restraint materials say people in the device should not be left unattended, and the Elk Grove Police Department's own spit-hood policy requires continuous monitoring until the hood is removed, per a report from Elk Grove Police Department.
Medical experts and civil rights researchers cited by the same outlet warn that forcing someone face-down to apply restraints creates a severe risk of positional asphyxia, especially for people experiencing drug intoxication or acute mental distress. Law enforcement expert Ed Obayashi said the officers appeared to violate the policies and rules governing both devices used in Saetern's detainment. Obayashi said officers could not leave Saetern unattended for 10 minutes, and that a person lying on his back was in obvious distress.
Coroner Points to Cocaine, Not Force
The Sacramento County coroner's office determined that cocaine toxicity caused Saetern's death, and a forensic pathologist found no evidence of life-threatening injury or impairment inflicted by law enforcement, according to FOX40 News. That finding is central to a dispute over whether the detention falls within California's transparency laws governing police records and deaths in custody.
California lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1421 in 2018 and Senate Bill 519 in 2023. SB 1421 requires police departments to release disciplinary records and video for certain uses of force causing death or serious injury, while SB 519 requires release of records and footage for deaths in jails and prisons. The categories are not identical: SB 1421 concerns specified police or custodial-officer uses of force, while SB 519 addresses deaths in state or local correctional custody. Attorney David Loy said departments may not need to release records when a coroner determines a non-police cause of death during a detention outside a jail. The Elk Grove Police Department has said it does not consider Saetern's death covered by state laws concerning deaths in custody, and it has not said whether the officers involved were disciplined.
That interpretation has drawn a contrary view from law enforcement expert Ed Obayashi. Loy has urged the Elk Grove Police Department to release its disciplinary records in Saetern's case, leaving the scope of the records dispute unresolved while the family's lawsuit continues.
What the disclosure rules and broader record show
The City of Fullerton's explanation of California's transparency law says records involving a peace officer's or custodial officer's use of force that resulted in death or great bodily injury are among the categories subject to disclosure, although the law includes additional definitions and exceptions. That framework helps explain the dispute over whether records from Saetern's encounter must be released: the department has characterized the death as outside the applicable custody-records provisions, while the family's representatives and other critics have challenged that interpretation.
Policies also differ among agencies. For comparison, Berkeley Police Department policy requires people wearing spit hoods to be continually monitored and prohibits leaving them unattended until the hood is removed. Separately, a 2024 investigation by The Guardian, the California Reporting Project and the California Newsroom identified at least 22 people who died in California between 2016 and 2022 after being restrained stomach-down by law enforcement officers. Those incidents were separate from Saetern's death, and the broader pattern does not by itself establish what caused his death.
Questions About a Mental Health Response
Psychologist Corinne McIntosh Sako said Saetern's belief that there was blood in his car was consistent with active psychosis, and that mental health professionals are better suited than police to respond to such calls. She said officers should have called Sacramento County's Community Wellness Response Team rather than responding as they did. The Elk Grove Police Department has not responded to whether it called that team.
The CWRT provides free, 24/7 non-law enforcement mobile crisis intervention for people experiencing mental health or substance use emergencies, according to Sacramento County. Civil rights attorney Mark Merin, who represents Saetern's parents in their wrongful death lawsuit, said officials should have treated Saetern as mentally ill rather than as a criminal.
Saetern's parents filed the federal wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Elk Grove and its police department in September 2025, and the case remains ongoing, as noted by The Sacramento Bee. The Elk Grove Police Department formally banned carotid control holds in June 2020 following state guidance, per ABC10. Statewide, deaths in California jails reached a record high of 215 in 2022, according to the Sehat Law Firm.
