A new report has said that almost half of all people killed by police have a disability. In many cases urgent care is needed, not the lethal force that leads to lost lives!

Disability organization, the Ruderman Family Foundation, released the report saying that minorities facing death at the hands of the police was of course important but the figures around disability need attention too. Of course, in many cases the two issues are intertwined.

The Summary and description of content of the report says:

Disability is the missing word in media coverage of police violence.

Disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers. Disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated. The media is ignoring the disability component of these stories, or, worse, is telling them in ways that intensify stigma and ableism.

When we leave disability out of the conversation or only consider it as an individual medical problem, we miss the ways in which disability intersects with other factors that often lead to police violence. Conversely, when we include disability at the intersection of parallel social issues, we come to understand the issues better, and new solutions emerge.

Contents

Disability intersects with other factors such as race, class, gender, and sexuality, to magnify degrees of marginalization and increase the risk of violence. When the media ignores or mishandles a major factor, as we contend they generally do with disability, it becomes harder to effect change.

This white paper focuses on the three years of media coverage of police violence and disability since the death of a young man with Down syndrome, named Ethan Saylor, in January 2013. After reviewing media coverage of eight selected cases of police violence against individuals with disabilities, the paper reveals the following patterns in the overall data:

• Disability goes unmentioned or is listed as an attribute without context.
• An impairment is used to evoke pity or sympathy for the victim.
• A medical condition or “mental illness” is used to blame victims for their deaths.
• In rare instances, we have identified thoughtful examinations of disability from within its social context that reveal the intersecting forces that lead to dangerous use-of-force incidents. Such stories point the way to better models for policing in the future.

We conclude by proposing best practices for reporting on disability and police violence.

You can read the full report here.