Journalist – Historian – Speaker
It started, as it so often does, with a family member calling 911 for help for a loved one in mental health crisis. Lavall Hall was outside, in Miami Gardens, when police arrived. He had a broomstick. Miami Gardens police officers Peter Ehrlich and Eddo Trimino fired their Tasers at Lavall Hall after he struck them …
Recently, video has surfaced of police trying to throw a man in a wheelchair from his chair. Allegedly, the individual ran over the officer’s foot. Here are some other incidents worth remembering. And these are just the ones caught on tape. Brian Sterner thrown from his wheelchair by an officer who thought he might be …
In Texarkana on Monday, a woman called 911 (click for the call) at around 2 AM to report a person in her garage. The woman was frightened and said that she heard banging on the windows from the person in the garage. A police office came to investigate, and found an African-American man holding something in …
In Georgia, a 6 year old with special needs was placed in handcuffs: When a Georgia mother arrived at her 6-year-old son’s school last week in response to a call that he was misbehaving, she was greeted by a shocking surprise: Her first grader was in handcuffs. Lakaisha Reid’s 6-year-old son Patrick is a special …
This story was just brought to my attention in the comment from “Mel” in my previous post. In 2010, John T. Williams, a Native Alaskan woodcarver, was walking down the street holding a 3-inch folding knife and a piece of wood. Officer Ian Birk approached him from behind, firearm drawn, and ordered Williams to drop …
In the world of Down syndrome, we talk about “presuming competence” (hey, go buy a shirt!). That instead of “awareness,” we’d like to see a shift to a general presumption of competence first. More on this in pieces to come. I’ve been working, though, on ways of re-describing the strategic problems with police procedure as …
Yesterday, in something of a rage, I wrote the story of an African-American boy with Down syndrome who was heading to his first day of school in Syracuse. His parents were with him and, as they entered the school, they paused to take a picture. A white security guard intervened and pushed the boy against …
Today’s stories about compliance take a different spin. Thankfully, no one is being shot or tasered by the police in these examples. Two men have, however, been involuntarily committed for what they might do in the future. One is an English professor. His case has not made the news but he was involuntarily committed and …
It’s been a busy week of writing and I hope you are enjoying this holiday weekend. Most of the week was spent on the cult of compliance and police violence. I started with a piece on CNN on 4 police killings of people with mental health issues. I argued that we need to think about psychiatric disability …
Here are four stories literally just from last night (they happened at different times, but made news yesterday). They illustrate the way racism enables and is enabled by the cult of compliance. The cult provides an intersectional lens in which race and class dominate the middle, with disability not far behind. When these categories overlap in …