Reasonable Accommodations Not Unreasonable Violence

Teresa Sheehan, a woman with schizophrenia living in a group home in San Francisco, recently came across the San Francisco Police Department when her group home called the police to have her transported safely to a mental health facility. At the time, Teresa had been off of medications and was not interested in going to any mental health facility, especially with the police. The police arrive and, of course, find Teresa to be noncompliant with their requests. They leave the room, make a plan in the hallway and come back shooting. They shot Teresa five times.

Before I go any further, can we discuss how incoherent this reasoning is on the police’s part? Let’s pretend for a second that we are the police. I’m police officer #5839 and I’m reporting to a group home after a report that someone needs to be transported ‘safely’ to a mental health facility. I come on to the scene to find said person not interested. I decide the next logical step is to shoot?! Wait. What?! Why, oh why, is this the trained response?!

Fortunately, Teresa survived the incident and is now suing the San Francisco Police Department. In court, she argued that the police violated the “reasonable modifications” protections under the ADA. The Federal Appeals Court of San Francisco agreed with her; however, the San Francisco Police Department has filed an appeal with the United States Supreme Court to exclude the police from following the ADA. Meaning that if the Supreme Court ruled in its favor, police would not be obligated at all to pay attention to a person’s disability during an encounter. For example, if a Deaf person were not following verbal commands, under this new amendment, police would not have to find alternative ways to communicate, but would be entitled to treat the individual as noncompliant. Unfortunately, we can’t ask someone like Robert Saylor, also a person with a disability, what that means, since police smothered him to death when they believed he overstayed his welcome at a movie theater.

To say this feels like an attack on our community is an understatement. However, many advocates are equally concerned with how the Supreme Court will rule and think that this could further remove any incentive for a police department to properly train its police force. Advocates across the board are asking the San Francisco Police to drop their appeal.

Some supporters of the appeal argue that we are asking the police to be sidewalk psychologists by asking them to identify someone’s mental health status in an instant. Yes, maybe we are asking them to do that, but with proper training why can’t this be a part of their responsibilities? After all, we are handing them our lives and a gun, are we really asking too much from them to ask that they properly identify a person’s true intentions? With 60-75% of people currently sitting in the United States prison system identified as having a mental illness, it doesn’t seem as though the police are lacking in experience with dealing with this community.

While it seems safe to say that the United States is currently lacking in any serious social policies addressing mental health concerns, if the Supreme Court does, in fact, decide that the police are exempt from the ADA, this will only worsen the situation. The Council on Crime and Justice has reported that through the current system, many individuals with psychological disabilities find themselves turned down from programs and services, winding up in jail or homeless due to a lack of support. One report showed that most people, with or without a mental health disability, just needed to talk about their experience with someone. To me, providing the average American a person to hear them out seems more fair and sensible than jail time.

Reform is necessary. We cannot continue to criminalize those with Psychological Disabilities. One thing I know for sure is that giving the police exemption from the ADA is not the answer.

Instead, what if we put the guns and strangle holds away for a second and treated people like people, disabled or not? I’m sure Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Milton Hall, James Boyd, Ezell Ford, Kajieme Powell and Tanisha Anderson, to name a few, would all have really appreciated this.