screen test

One of the reasons for the charges was knowledge of a tradition among some police of what they called in Baltimore “a rough ride” (Fernandez, 2015). The practice is to place a handcuffed prisoner face-down in the back of a police van without securing him to the seat, and then intentionally driving in a reckless manner to throw the suspect around without any way of protecting himself from injury. When David was in police work, officers used to talk about the old-fashioned “screen test” which used a similar technique. The officer would put the prisoner in the back seat of a patrol car in handcuffs, but not in a seat belt. Then the officer would slam on the brakes of the patrol car so that the prisoner would lunge forward, face first into the screen separating the prisoner from the police officer in the front seat.