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Calling upon the Congress of the United States to enact the Law Enforcement Education and Accountability for People with Disabilities Initiative, bipartisan policing reform bills to address the high incidence rate of violence involving people with disabilities, offered by Senator Bob Casey.
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WHEREAS, People with disabilities are more likely to be the victim of crime, which leads to more interactions with law enforcement officers; and
WHEREAS, The limited available research has found that people with disabilities are more than two and a half times more likely to be victims of a crime and three times as likely to be victims of a serious crime as people without a disability; and
WHEREAS, A federal divestment from social services and supports has led to more of the responsibility for government interaction with people in need falling to local law enforcement officers, who may be unprepared or lack knowledge about the best approach to communicate with people with different disabilities; and
WHEREAS, The number of people with disabilities experiencing violence and shootings when interacting with law enforcement is also increasing, with at least 25 percent of shootings involve a person with a mental health disability estimated by a Washington Post database of police shootings, and between one-third and one-half of 2015 shootings involving a law enforcement officer included a person with a disability per a 2016 Ruderman Foundation report estimate; and
WHEREAS, Locally, one such manifestation of this tread was the killing by the police during their response to a domestic incident of Walter Wallace, Jr., a 27 year old African American resident of Cobbs Creek who was on medication for bipolar disorder, on October 26, 2020, which led to peaceful protests that were in turn met with further escalations in law enforcement response; and
WHEREAS, Many of these horrible outcomes might have been avoided by redirecting calls for assistance away from 9-1-1 and to hum...
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