Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Florida school officials keep arresting disabled kids for non-compliance, especially those of color. Now they’re adding guns and promoting mental health stigma. #CultOfCompliancehttps://t.co/zkaX4TRueq — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 6, 2018 Yesterday, I wrote about a series of incidents in which disabled children, mostly non-white, whose stories of arrest and abuse in Florida schools have …
Last April I wrote about the arrest of John Haywood, a ten year old autistic boy, who sobs as he’s taken to the police career, his mother filming it. The video went viral, as well it should, because it’s awful. I wrote: If the video shocks you, and it should, imagine how often children with …
There is no de-escalation training that can build better policing. There is no video monitoring that can hold police accountable. So long as cops can say, “I was afraid,” even when video evidence shows that they are lying, they are legally entitled to commit murder. Patrick Harmon, a black man with, according to his sister, …
Four years ago, a police officer in Ontario shot Michael MacIsaac, who was running naked through his suburban neighborhood. He was allegedly holding a metal chair leg of some sort, and when he didn’t drop it, Constable Brian Taylor shot and killed him. An inquest into the shooting has just wrapped. One of the participants …
Yosio Lopez is a 7 year old boy with ADHD and other emotional disabilities in a Dallas school. Sometimes he has behavioral meltdowns when overstimulated and an aide helps him through the process. As reported on CNN: Yosio Lopez was handcuffed, Tased and bruised by Dallas Independent School District (DISD) Police after the boy started …
The State of CT mandates the tracking of taser use by law enforcement, which is fairly rare across the country. We’ve got the 2015 numbers. From Connecticut Magazine: A total of 650 reported Taser incidents involved 610 people. Of those subjected to Taser use in 2015: 83 percent were unarmed53 percent were people of color49 …
Bakersfield CA police shoot 73-year-old man with dementia. No gun recovered. #DisabilitySolidarityhttps://t.co/IqoZTVnmIA pic.twitter.com/NmPxSjP3Sv — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) December 13, 2016 I’m working on a piece on elderly individuals killed or beaten by police. Here’s four stories from NY, IL, CA, and AL – which is to say spanning the country. Francisco Serna: Dementia, 73, …
#BradleyKing, Avon IN. In crisis, armed with small knife, called 911, shot in his backyard. https://t.co/GFUwuGh8ND #disabilitysolidarity pic.twitter.com/h83IIAaNfY — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) December 1, 2016 We see this story too often. I don’t have all the details on this case yet, and sometimes the details better explain the decision to use lethal force. But …
Ryan Turk, then 14, gets free lunches at his Virginia school. One day, he forgot to grab milk, so went back to grab a 65 cent carton. The School Resource Officer assigned to the lunchroom accused of him of stealing and Turk, alas, did not instantly comply with the SROs orders. He might have talked …
The story of Kaylb Primm got a lot of attention last week. It’s yet another story of a non-white child being handcuffed (I’ve written about such cases regularly. See below for links) in school for behavioral reasons. The MO ACLU is suing. Rebecca Klein, from Huffington Post, wrote a widely shared story. Kaylb Wiley Primm …