While specific details vary by case, the common threads that link these stories together are often disconcerting. Law enforcement officials expect and demand compliance, but when they don’t recognize a person’s disability in the course of an interaction, the consequences can be tragic. Misconceptions or assumptions can lead to overreactions that culminate in unnecessary arrest, use of pepper spray, or individuals being tasered.

Sadly, while incidences of this sort aren’t necessarily new, for many of us, learning about them is. The Internet, social media, and ubiquitous cell phones have helped catapult stories that were once easily restricted to local police blotters to unprecedented national prominence.

As National Council on Disability (NCD) Executive Director Rebecca Cokley wrote in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, “misunderstandings, fears, and stereotypes about disability have led to tragic outcomes throughout U.S. history. During the American Eugenics movement, pseudo-scientific ‘evidence’ gave way to popular myths linking disability and criminality, and the inheritability of both.” As a result, people with disabilities were devalued, isolated from the rest of society, prevented from attending school, getting married or becoming active and engaged in their communities.

Fortunately people with disabilities now enjoy far greater civil rights that have come hard fought in the least 50 years. However, harmful attitudes and assumptions, once established, can be difficult to replace even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

In the latest data released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, Americans with disabilities are victims of violent crimes at nearly three times the rate of their peers without disabilities. In 2012 alone, 1.3 million nonfatal violent crimes were perpetrated against people with disabilities aged 12 or older. Statistics bear out that people with disabilities are far more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators of them, and therefore are arguably in greater need of supportive relationships with and understanding from law enforcement.

Disability is varied and complex. Sometimes disability is visibly apparent, making it easier for law enforcement, to see—if not misinterpret. For others, disability is invisible. Whether it is written in the genetic code and is a companion since birth, or becomes a part of one’s experience later because of age, accident, or public service during the course of our natural lifespan many of us will move in and out of states of disability, whether it is due to breaking a limb, becoming diabetic, or conditions related to aging.

The disabled community relies on law enforcement as the first line of defense and protection in countless situations of varying complexity. Strengthening this important relationship could be a step toward preventing the sort of misunderstandings that can result in tragedy.