["Medical Anthropology Quarterly, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nIn the United States, emergency departments aren't supposed to turn anyone away. They are the safety‐net of the safety‐net providing life‐saving care. Yet, what happens to healthcare when conditions are so strained that patients and staff lash out at each other? What happens when the safety net becomes a carceral net? I argue that social and economic pressures placed on emergency medicine generate conflict between patients and nurses who increasingly rely on the restriction of resources, use of restraints, and police in healthcare.\n"]