ACLU: Police encounters kill hundreds of disabled Americans

Post Reply New Topic

1) I don't think a two-year community college degree should be qualification enough to be a police officer.
2) Cops are not the right people to respond to 911 callers who are specifically seeking help dealing with mental illness. Right now the choices are cops, EMTs, or fire response. We need a fourth choice - mental health professionals.

A despicable suggestion.

I agree--great insight!

Of course, we'd all be much better off if mental health care were de-stigmatized so that fewer people might actually reach the point of crisis in the first place.

How so? Law-enforcement agencies (LEAs) and their officers (LEOs) have at their disposal non-lethal and less-lethal tactics, don't they? The infamous cases of officers draining the batteries of their Tasers by pressing the triggers repeatedly, choke-holding or shooting their victims until death occurs, have seldom shown evidence that the officers attempted to used non-lethal and less-lethal tactics. Or, for that matter, any desire to stop the aggression when the victim passes out.

That the ACLU (and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network among many other disability groups) have decided to weigh in on this matter by publishing their survey of statistics within their amici curiae (friend of the court) brief ( https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/file ... _union.pdf ) suggests that there is something to the notion that officers are acting outside of law. The ACLU is a lot of things, but offensive to the very courts that make its existence and occasional accomplishments possible isn't one of them. After all, the survey was theirs, but the stats were from the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, LEAs themselves and various news media. They are all getting it wrong?

So, while I agree that there is statistical and anecdotal evidence of suicide by cop, I see the reason for any increase in its existence to be the increase in lethality of officer practices and weapons, not that disabled Americans are suddenly more suicidal (and not too creatively so if they all choose suicide by cop considering that drug overdoses among people with disabilities is easier and more likely with them possessing more drugs than people without disabilities). Even if the latter were true, where else in U.S. history has such a phenomenon occurred? And, when they do occur, where are the LEA offers of settlement in lieu of complaints and criminal charges? Where are apologies? Where are the internal-affairs and federal reviews, and consequent employment dismissals? No, LEAs describe routinely how their officers who kill performed according to law and policy. "Nothing to see here."

In light of all the evidence (see the ACLU brief supra), Occam's razor alone points to the likely culprit: the commonality of increased lethality of LEOs, their weapons and the choices made to pursue pain, punishment and injury beyond that which is necessary for the primary job officers have: arrest.

Cops generally shoot until the threat is stopped and if they shoot someone once, it's still considered lethal force. So if you don't think they were justified in shooting someone multiple times l, they probably weren't justified in shooting that person in the first place.

I think we need to require all police officers to undergo mandatory comprehensive disability training on a continual basis so cops don't misidentify a disabled person as a threat.

Indeed. Their definition of "threat" has shifted regardless of their use of firearms, choke-holding or Tasering. "Stopping the threat" is taught to every firearm owner. However, it is also taught that continuing to fire on a target after the target had been stopped (retreating, hiding, collapsing, falling etc.) has been considered excessive and, in many cases, illegal by many states and punished accordingly.

Don't be a gullible dupe of selective media reporting. They show you what they want you to see, to mold your attitudes, opinions and fears. In a country of 350 Million, all sorts of things are happening, round the clock, every day - showing you isolated incidents, cherry-picked to create a single impression, does not constitute a trend of any kind. Its brainwashing.

The US Mainstream Media right now is nothing but a Propaganda Machine. If you will actually research the stories they're selling you and see how askew the media "truth" is from the actual facts, you'll never believe anything they tell you again.

I agree with this.

You can see how quickly the wrong training kicks in in this (warning: distrubing) video of police shooting a schizophrenic man:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/vide ... n-harrison

and now from the files of "you just can't make this stuff up" comes this-

On Sept. 14, 2013, Times Square visitors witnessed a major flaw in how the New York Police Department deals with the mentally ill at Times Square.
Glenn Broadnax, 35, was walking in and out of traffic when he was confronted by police officers. They eventually opened fire on him and missed him, but hit two women bystanders, who survived. Video of the shooting went viral and critiques over how poorly the officers at the scene dealt with the situation followed.
"Cops don't know enough about the mentally ill," Eugene O'Donnell, a former NYPD cop and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in Manhattan, told CBS News' Crimesider at the time.
Broadnax, who was unarmed, was charged with wounding the bystanders who were shot by police. It was a perverse form of justice, but you could count Broadnax lucky in one way. He narrowly escaped being one of the 56 mentally ill New Yorkers who were fatally shot by the NYPD that year.
they charged a mentally ill person for making the cops negligently shoot two innocent bystanders???! !! what about at least disarming the flatfoots who did that in the first place?

Luckily, I behave better than a lot of people in public - I don't break any laws and act respectful. I have no fear of being killed because of a misunderstanding of beavhiour. But I have heard that cops killed a boy with Down Syndrome once at the movies because of an issue over a movie ticket.

Like f' I have an american police officer friend, who says if anyone tries to harm me - she will soot them.

I believe our dear nation has done gone plumb loco. when thugs are hired as cops, it IS the end.

Also, agreed.

Demonizing law enforcement officers seems to be a trend. The tendency to interpret as acts of evil any deviation from what is perceived as ideal conditions, is another (trend). I'm not sure if nurturing the notion that the mentally disabled should be granted some sort of immunity is the right way to approach what in many cases are acts of suicide. Acts that victimize those who are forced to react according to procedure. Blaming the police officers is a double injustice.

You mean like this man perhaps?
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/04/justi ... s-charges/

The blame should be placed on the lack of training, not the officers themselves. Unless an officer is legitimately at fault in a specific instance.