Not only are the total numbers of police-involved deaths in the US appalling – 1,134 in 2015 alone – the final tally for the year highlighted once again the shockingly disproportionate number of African Americans affected, as was exposed by a Guardian investigation, The Counted. Young black men aged between 15 and 34 accounted for 15% of all deaths logged (five times higher than for their white counterparts), despite being just 2% of the population.

There is another, much less well-documented feature of police brutality and violence: the prevalence of disabled people and, in particular, those with mental difficulties, who are victims.

Raising public awareness is vital to build pressure for change on this link between police aggression and disability

In an attempt to put the problem on the radar, the Massachusetts-based disability rights non-profit organisation the Ruderman Family Foundation has published an eye-opening paper in which it estimates that a third to half of all people killed by police in the US have a disability. In addition, according to the foundation, almost all well-known and widely reported cases of police violence involve a disabled person.

The report, compiled by David M Perry, a professor of history at Dominican University in Illinois, and long-time disability rights activist Lawrence Carter-Long, makes use of available data (there are no official, comprehensive statistics collected on police-based violence and disability at local, state or federal level) and is a call to action for the media to shine a light on the problem.

After examining coverage over the past three years, Perry and Carter-Long say it is shocking that the prevalence of disability is not being accurately, or commonly, reported. “Media coverage of police violence fails to recognise or report the disability element when Americans are injured or killed by law enforcement, resulting in their stories being segregated from the issue in the media,” they conclude.

Raising public awareness is vital to build pressure for change, and this is urgently needed in demonstrating the links between police aggression and disability. We know from campaigning work in the UK and the US that encountering the police or criminal justice system can be an extremely traumatic, confusing and, at worst, deadly experience for someone with a serious mental health problem or with intellectual disabilities.

For example, if a person’s ability to communicate is significantly impaired, be it by psychosis, autism or dementia, and responding officers are ill-equipped to identify or adequately engage with and protect those individuals, the outcomes can be disastrous.

In both countries – despite a number of positive initiatives, including the Crisis Care Concordat in Britain, attempts to improve police training as well as the introduction in some places of “street triage”, where health professionals accompany police on calls – the injury and death of vulnerable citizens after being restrained has been an enduring and shameful occurrence.

In the UK, as recently as last month it was announced that two officers in Somerset faced possible charges following the death in custody in 2010 of 25-year-old James Herbert who had a mental health condition but died of cardiac arrest after being physically restrained. According to Independent Police Complaints Commission figures, eight of the 17 people who died in, or following, police custody in England and Wales in 2014-15 were identified as having mental health issues. Ten of the overall total recorded deaths had involved restraint.

As the Ruderman report says, it is beholden on police and policymakers in the US to fully track what is happening and develop effective, long-term responses.



In Britain, the National Appropriate Adult Network has repeatedly stressed that vulnerable people throughout the justice system, including the courts, need to have their welfare and rights better protected.

There is an indisputable onus on those with the power to protect vulnerable people from abuse and violence, wherever it is perpetrated, to take action. However, the media have to play their part too by exposing when and how the system betrays them. If we don’t, as Perry said when the Ruderman paper was published, “we miss an opportunity to learn from tragedies, identify patterns, and implement necessary reforms”.