Journalist – Historian – Speaker
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 …
The shooting of Charles Kinsey and the subsequent disclosure that his client, Arnold Rios Soto, was being kept in a psychiatric ward in the hospital, sparked some very good writing. Here’s four related pieces by people of color that should get more attention. First, Finn Gardiner, Manuel DÃaz, and Lydia X. Z. Brown wrote: “Charles Kinsey’s Story Is About …
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. …
Today at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, CA, I’ll be attending a showing of Where is Hope, a film on police violence and disability. I’ve seen the film, and it’s direct and powerful, forcing viewers to really think about the experience of violence at the hands of law enforcement, and particularly why that violence …