Journalist – Historian – Speaker
I wrote a piece for The Nation on people with disabilities killed by police over the last week, writing that the number was four. It was, however, actually at least 9 (the information wasn’t available when I filed). My hope for this piece is to push back at the training and registry narrative that gets so …
The New Statesman reports on deaths in restraint or otherwise in custody of mentally ill civilians in Texas. There’s a new bill pending, the Sandra Bland Act. The paper reports on the bill, but also investigated deaths. Excerpts: Klessig is one of at least 33 people with histories of mental illness who died after being …
The US Department of Health and Human Services has given Chicago 1 million dollars to address “trauma” in its neighborhoods. But it seems like most of the money will go to training cops. The grant will: * Establish a Chicago ReCAST (Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma), Institute to design and deliver trauma-informed training …
Every day, my news feed serves up a few stories about local police departments undergoing Crisis Intervention Team training. Yesterday was Northern Wisconsin and upstate New York. CIT is fine. It provides some good resources to police officers, who generally seem to respond well to the training. It’s resolutely pathologizing, relying on a medical model …
Discussions around police use of force and disabled civilians usually turn quickly to training. In Chicago, for example, several high profile deaths resulted in mandatory CIT training for all Chicago officers – in policy anyway. It’s not clear whether funds have been allocated and to what extent the training is ongoing, but that’s another story. …
My friend RC alerted me to this piece on a police training simulator for learning how to reduce misuse of force when encountering autistic people or people with various mental disabilities. It touts the virtues of the virtual playback versus role-playing-based training. Through the simulator, deputies are immersed in true-to-life scenarios — exactly the kind …
Nice article in the local paper on de-escalation training for Park Ridge law enforcement. Last year, a U.S. Justice Department grant secured by the Park Ridge Police Department allowed for officers to take crisis intervention training, a program that aims to prepare officers to deal with citizens struggling with a broad spectrum of mental health …
A relatively new piece by Mother Jones examines the current state of Crisis Intervention Team training for police in Chicago. As regular readers know, I think CIT training is fine but limited in its utility. It gives officers resources to apply to situations involving certain kinds of disability in crisis mode, but does little to prevent …
Yesterday, I wrote about the death of Anthony Hill, a man with bipolar disorder, who, while naked and unarmed, was killed by police in the Atlanta area. Here are three stories on how police should respond to these sorts of situations (I’m guessing there are 500+ related deaths a year nationally, but numbers are hard …
ACLU releases graphic video of 2012 police shooting of mentally-ill black man in Michigan. More than 45 shots http://t.co/rNYQN2HHZM — Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 27, 2014 Milton Hall stole coffee & refused to drop knife. officers fired 47 shots, 11 hit. All cleared by local PD & feds http://t.co/hxIRQX2gfb — Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) October 27, …