Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Two years ago, tonight, three off-duty deputies moonlighting as mall security killed Ethan Saylor. They killed Ethan Saylor by forcing him to the ground, fracturing his trachea. They killed him because they couldn’t figure out how to deal with a large, cursing, man with Down syndrome. They killed him because no one in the theater, …
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 …
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) took the case of Sheehan vs San Francisco. In 2008, Sheehan, who has schizophrenia, threatened her social worker with a knife, then threatened the two police officers who came after. They called for backup. Before backup arrived, the police broke into her apartment, pepper sprayed her, …
Donald Ray “Hambone” Wilson, an African-American man has schizophrenia. This fact was known to the police. He was shot in the chest. In this video, he is surrounded by police as he holds a steak knife. He is clearly in mental health crisis and as the police engage into close proximity, they become in danger …
So here’s the pattern. The family of a person with psychiatric disability decides that they need help. The disabled person isn’t taking their medicine. They are perhaps seeming violent or might become violent. The family calls the police to ask for help getting the person to the hospital. Police arrive. The person with the disability …
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, …
Yesterday, KQED – NPR in San Francisco – published a long piece on police killings and psychiatric disability in San Francisco. 58% of all police killings involve forms of disability such as schizophrenia, many of them include weapons, and yet there may be ways to rethink strategies that could save some of the lives. The piece …
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 …
In South Carolina, a state trooper pulled over a man for a seat belt violation. The man got out of the car, as he was heading to a gas station, when the trooper confronted him. The man ducked his head into his car to get his license and the officer opened fire. The man leapt …
My first piece for Al Jazeera America is a big one: The Cult of Compliance. As regular readers know, I have been talking this for a long time and thinking about police violence in various ways for even longer. I used the phrase for the first time on this post from August 17, 2013. The …