Why we need to talk about police reform within the disability community

With all the world events going on surrounding police reform I tend to think about all experiences when it comes to law enforcement and interactions that I’ve had with them.

Some of my interactions with law enforcement were great, some bad since some of them didn’t understand that I have cerebral palsy which may cause them to react differently and have symptoms that could be misunderstood by Law enforcement to be one of the things to look for when wanting to incriminate someone for a crime.

For example, due to my Spastic Cerebral palsy, I have bad eye coordination and tend to move around a lot when nervous and touch my face which in the code of law enforcement means I’m showing guilt.

This is exactly why we need to make police reform a topic in the disability community and the law enforcement community to bring more awareness to interactions with people with disabilities within our society when it comes to law enforcement so that there is not another Sandra Blend who suffered from epilepsy and depression and was killed in the hands of law enforcement and their lack of willingness to understand the in and out of her disabilities.

I feel like if we talked about police reform within the disability community it will bring more awareness to our nation and maybe people will start to fight more for awareness within our law enforcement to want to focus on citizens with disabilities so tragedies won’t happen and we as people with disabilities could live a life worry-free and not wonder if there going to the next victim.