Autism Coaching for Police Is Not Sufficient
Content note: This article talks about police violence and killing of disabled people
Alex LaMorie, a young autistic man, was shot by police in Howard County on March 1st. Alex lived in an apartment complex where a quarter of the units are set aside for people with disabilities. He placed a call to 911 around midnight to ask for help. He wanted to harm himself. Instead of de-escalating the situation, the three officers fired their guns at him.
Since Alex’s death, much of the media coverage of this tragedy has skimmed over the roots of the problem of police violence against autistic people, instead focusing on calling for an ineffective “solution:” police training about autism and other disabilities. This is not new. We saw similar calls after the death of Victor Perez last year, the life-altering injury of Isaias Cervantes in 2021, and the shooting of Arnoldo Rios-Soto’s caregiver in 2016.
After decades of police violence against autistic people and those with other disabilities, we want to reiterate: autism training for police is not enough. ASAN has been saying this for a very long time. There is very little data to suggest that these trainings improve police interactions with autistic people or reduce violence against our community. In fact, according to the Howard County Police Department, where Alex LaMorie was shot, “nearly 80% of county police officers” have already completed “a specialized intervention training that focuses on people with autism and other disabilities.” At least two of the three officers who shot Alex LaMorie went through this training. It was not enough to stop them from killing him. This should make the need for interventions beyond police training obvious.
Training does not change the amount of violence our community faces from police. We deserve solutions that fix the root of the problem. One of the biggest roots of the issue is the culture of policing itself. Police are taught during their training to take control of any situation with escalating violence. One course on disabilities cannot possibly cancel out the overwhelming messages that police receive throughout the rest of their training.
De-escalation is a critical part of reducing police violence. Police should not be the responders to mental health crises such as Alex LaMorie’s. There are alternate models available to respond to people in mental health crisis. One example is CAHOOTS, in Oregon. CAHOOTS was a mobile crisis center that dealt with issues around mental health. They centered de-escalation and getting people that called access to what they needed in order to deal with a mental health emergency.
Our elected officials must reduce how much police are able to harm people. That looks like shifting funding from policing to more constructive community services, including social workers and community-based crisis intervention supports. It also looks like reducing the militarization of police forces. It requires the end of qualified immunity, so police can be held accountable. For anyone interested in further reading, we have also made two toolkits covering police violence and safety for autistic people in greater detail.
Half of all police violence takes place against people with disabilities, mainly disabled people of color. Our community has spent years demanding better, and autism training for police has not fixed the problem. We call on everyone who cares about autistic people to push for solutions that fix the underlying problems driving police violence. We call on reporters covering these tragedies to include what the data we have about police violence says, and how existing data does not support the idea that police training will solve this problem. We call on our elected officials to demilitarize police, fund social services, and end qualified immunity. We call on our community members to organize, so that our elected officials hear that the people they represent demand change. Nothing about us, without us.
Alexander LaMorie
