Preparing Students With Disabilities and Police for Successful Interactions

Abstract

Students with disabilities are likely to have contact with a police officer as either a victim or a perpetrator of a crime; however, media outlets often underreport the presence of a disability. The lack of acknowledgment of disabilities raises concerns regarding the ability of a police officer to support a person with a disability. Likewise, students need to be prepared to interact with the police. This article presents a general overview of a two-pronged training approach designed to promote positive interactions between students with disabilities and police officers.

Law Enforcement Officers: A Call for Training and Awareness of Disabilities

“…Although calls for service provide multiple opportunities to interact with PWD, there is a clear need for LEOs to gain a better understanding of disabilities. Results of this study align with prior research indicating that LEOs often overgeneralized what it means to have a disability and do not demonstrate the ability to differentiate between disabilities (Diamond & Hogue, 2021;Modell & Mak, 2008). For example, when asked whether there are any differences between mental health and cognitive or physical disabilities, participants described physical disabilities as being easy to identify because you can see them, and participants described mental and cognitive disabilities as mental illness, autism, Down syndrome, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).…”

“…Because of the higher rates of victimization of PWD and because of the higher levels of fatalities in interactions between PWD and LEOs, disability advocates and researchers have called for justice and change for PWD in the criminal justice system (The Arc, n.d.;McCauley, 2017;Saleh et al, 2018), beginning with better training of LEOs (The Arc, n.d.;Diamond & Hogue, 2021;Eadens et al, 2016;Engelman et al, 2013;Modell & Mak, 2008;Oschwald et al, 2011) and school resource officers (Chan et al, 2019(Chan et al, , 2021. Traditionally, prospective LEOs receive extensive basic academy classroom training followed by field training supervised by a veteran officer (Belur et al, 2019;Dulin et al, 2020;McGinley et al, 2019).…”

“…Following the initial classroom and field training, LEOs attend several mandatory trainings as well as optional in-service trainings (Diamond & Hogue, 2021). Diamond & Hogue (2021) examined the training websites for state law enforcement agencies to understand which states offered optional or mandatory disability awareness trainings. Only seven states required general disability awareness trainings, and one state offered optional disability awareness training.…”

“…The second most frequent kind of training was developmental and/or intellectual disability (ID) trainings (i.e., mandatory = 11 states, optional = three states), followed by trainings about autism (i.e., mandatory = five states, optional = three states), the Americans with Disabilities Act (i.e., mandatory = five states, optional = three states), and physical disabilities (i.e., mandatory = four states; Diamond & Hogue, 2021).…”

Informing care pathways and policies for children and youth with Indigenous perspectives to advance Canada's National Autism Strategy

“…Characteristic behaviors of autism, such as being non-responsive or lack of eye contact, can increase the risks during interactions with the CJS as these behaviors can be perceived as intentional ( 28 ). Misinterpretation of these characteristics can result in the Autistic person being identified as dangerous, suspicious, or unreliable ( 28 , 30 ).…”