I’m pleased to report on Groton, Connecticut’s efforts to make interactions between police and autists…
Well, perhaps… safer. Time will tell.
Otoh, personally?
I don’t believe that any form of quite LITERAL self-policing… Including “awareness training”… of police will EVER work. Whether regarding matters of race, gender…
Or disability. Such as autism.
I’m an #AutisticElder. I remember wave after wave of police reform fads since the Watts & Chicago riots of the late 60s in the US. Some reform attempts going so far as including oversight by civilian review boards…
Yet, 5 DECADES later police violence is still, Still, STILL a burning issue…
Add some hundreds of years of American history that demonstrate police cannot be trusted to interact with People of Color… dating back to slave patrols of Black folk.. and lynching parties…
And the very topical recent reports of PARTICIPATION by police officers from around the US in the Trump Insurrection… and proposed legislation monitoring police for ties to White Supremacist militias…
I simply cannot accept that anything less than fundamental change… around human services delivery by police… is doomed to failure.
No human services should be delivered by someone packing a gun…
Or any other non-defensive weapon.
Mistakes happen. There’s no excuse for deadly mistakes… delivering human services.
Ask 13 year old Linden Cameron. Killed September 4, 2020. Shot by Utah police…
Cuz they couldn’t handle the autistic melt down his parents called 911 for help with…
Without killing him.
To read more about this important issue: Autism & the Police.
