This is pretty much as bad as it gets. It’s like a scene from a dystopian novel, as bio-hazard suit clad officers take a schizophrenic woman, one who they have already handcuffed, and tase her to death, killing her as she screams in horror. Except that it happened. A mentally ill woman who died after…
I am sick. I am sick with that all over body ache and low fever that is not quite bad enough to send me back to bed, but is bad enough to suck all the joy from life. Which is to say, I’m in a fine frame to talk about the upcoming season of Game…
Yesterday, I talked about Donald Ivy, a man with psychiatric disability, who was tased to death in Albany. Today, it’s Elijah Roberts. He wasn’t tased, but the threats used against him reveal a lot about why Donald Ivy is dead. Here’s the story, also from Albany. My emphasis. When she called police because her 22-year-old son,…
Walter Scott’s killing has made national news, propelled by a cell phone video that allegedly shows the officer dropping a TASER by the body, trying to make the death look justified. When Scott died, I expected to hear defenders of the killing blame Scott for running, but there’s been relatively little of that. Instead, Officer…
I am a professor at a small Catholic university on the edge of Chicago. We have an extremely diverse population of students, a teaching-centered institution, a social justice mission, and I go to work feeling extremely lucky in many ways. But especially today. Today we are holding our Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Investigations (URSCI)…
Over the last week, I twice wrote (and tweeted) about Joshua Kim and an essay that I found to be sexist. More importantly, the women he wrote about found it to be sexist, and in the ensuing discussion, Kim spent a lot of time talking about what he thought and he felt, rather than acknowledging…
I’ve been away over the weekend, so am a bit behind on stories to write. I try not to write when spending family time on vacation! Ahead this week – apologies, deaths by taser, death by gunfire, thoughts on undergraduate achievement. I’m also writing about the Middle Ages, the local Zoo, public intellectuals, and the…
There is a standard horrible argument out there that people with low IQ are protected from trauma because they don’t understand what happened to them. It’s used in sexual assault cases (read here if you must. It’s upsetting) sometimes and must be confronted at every turn. It’s been on my mind as part of a…
In Fresno County Jail, in California, a for-profit prison doctor is accused of taking away an inmate’s wheelchair as retaliation for complaints. The details are not proven, but here’s the story (via TPM): Daniel Trebas hasn’t had an easy time in the Fresno County jail. The convicted sex offender has served his punishment, plus about…
Like many people, I spent some time watching great video clips of Trevor Noah’s standup routines (compiled here by Vox) and laughing. I certainly enjoyed his first appearance on the Daily Show, which I happened to catch live (I don’t watch the show routinely, but like many people consume clips via the internet the next…