Cade Tyrell

EDU 1400
9 November 2018
Preventable Police Violence & Ableism
Law enforcement must follow the ADA and be held accountable for their treatment of
PWD’s. When officers are not familiar or trained for interaction with those who are disabled, they
may misconstrue and react negatively due to behavior that is unexpected. “Without taking the
disability into account, consequences are often violent and deadly” (Mizner). While researching,
there seemed to be a common theme surrounding government officials acting non-empathetic
towards disability, especially mental health related conditions. In 2015, the Washington Post
reported that 124 cases of officer shootings (27% of all officer shootings that year) involved a
mental health crisis; in 36% of those cases, the officers were explicitly called to help the person get
medical treatment, and shot them instead. Already in 2018, across the US, at least 136 people with
a disability are known to have been killed by police officers (Washington Post). The total number
of individuals who are affected by violence as a result of a disability is unknown. All too often 911
is dialed by family, friends, or caregivers as a call for help but ends up harming those who are
disabled by way of excessive force. Police should not be the default responders for complex
mental health cases.
Police officers may, of course, respond appropriately to real threats to health or safety, even
if an individual's actions are a result of a disability (ADA Q.6). We need to train police officers to
distinguish behaviors that pose a real risk from behaviors that do not, and to recognize when an
individual, such as someone who is having a seizure or exhibiting signs of psychotic crisis, needs
medical attention. For some examples: officers should be trained to interact with deaf people
(because they probably will fail to follow verbal orders). People with autism should not be
attacked and mistreated because of being slow to respond to instruction. Lastly, it’s not okay to
treat those with a mental disability as if they are dangerous criminals and drains on society. When
people with disabilities are harmed in interactions by police and survive, they are likely to be
further disadvantaged by the court system failing to provide appropriate accommodations. It only
gets worse when medical care is denied or delayed in jails. Jails & prisons are centers for unjust
prosecution of those who are disabled due to untrained staff and mismanaged resources.
When police brutality is discussed, race is often the center talking point, but that usually
doesn’t factor in disability. It’s important to mention the societal attitudes towards disabled people,
and how the intersections of disability, race, and class, contribute to their criminalization: the
Ruderman Foundation reports that in police use-of-force incidents, media and police often blame
disabled people for their own victimization, especially by characterizing disabled people of color
as “threatening” and “refusing to comply” with instructions (Oberholtzer). Officers simply do not
understand and may not have experience with PWD’s, which enables this unequal treatment.
Furthermore, Police officers are prosecuted in very few cases involving the deaths of disabled
people (BBC).
What can be done to prevent the unnecessary harm to PWD’s? First of all, we need more
media attention and visibility regarding the violence against people with a disability. It is necessary
to improve police practices and expand training, with a focus on de-escalation tactics and trainings
led by disabled people. Some local police departments design their own programs which is a step
forward but not a solution for training all officers. For example, Florida requires all their officers
to get autism training, but that’s not enough. There's no federal law for all officers to have
disability training, so departments have to be convinced that it’s worth putting in the effort to do
extra training. A disability-rights activist, Kerima Çevik, the mother of a non-verbal teenager
named Mustafa, proposes the establishment of a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-
health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.
I think this is an amazing idea, especially as the number of people with a disability continues to
grow! Overall, the way that situations are approached needs to change (less screaming, tasers,
guns, and forcing) and more of a community health approach. It appears that our criminal justice
system is not well suited to respect PWD’s needs in its current state of function.

Sources

“Police Killings: the Price of Being Disabled and Black in America.” The Guardian, Guardian
News and Media, 22 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/22/police-
killings-disabled-black-people-mental-illness.
COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT AND
LAW ENFORCEMENT, U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division, 4 Apr. 2006,
www.ada.gov/q&a_law.htm.

Hause, Marti, and Ari Melber. “Half of People Killed by Police Have a Disability: Report.”
NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 1 Dec. 2015, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
news/half-people-killed-police-suffer-mental-disability-report-n538371.

Mizner, Susan. “There Is No Police Exception to the Americans With Disabilities Act.” ACLU,
American Civil Liberties Union, 26 Apr. 2015, www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/there-no-
police-exception-americans-disabilities-act.

Silberman, Steve. “Making Encounters With Police Officers Safer for People With Disabilities.”
The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/police-
disabilities-safety.html.

Maqbool, Aleem. “Don't Shoot, I'm Disabled.” BBC News, 4 Oct. 2018,
www.bbc.com/news/stories-45739335.

Oberholtzer, Elliot. “Police, Courts, Jails, and Prisons All Fail Disabled People.” Prison Policy
Initiative, 23 Aug. 2017, www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/08/23/disability/.