Girl was cuffed, led away by police; Parents consider legal action

From ABC News:

Eight-year-old Evelyn Towry was arrested and charged with battery after a scuffle with teachers in her northern Idaho elementary school. Prosecutors dismissed the case Tuesday, and her family says they are considering legal action against the school.

Spring Towry (above, with Evelyn) said her daughter was physically restrained to the point of causing bruises and is now tormented by memories of the incident.

Towry said Evelyn, who has Asperger’s syndrome and weighs 54 pounds, had been refused entry into a school party because she refused to take off a hoodie with cow ears and a tail. She said Evelyn had been put in a separate classroom; when she tried to leave, the adults physically restrained her and she reacted in a violent way.

(Photo from ABC video)

From the New York Times:

Following years of complaints about misuse of handicapped parking permits, the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles is again seeking to reform the system.

Among other things, the department will ask the legislature to approve changes that would require holders to renew their permits periodically, eliminate double permits, and require families to return permits after a person dies.

Some estimates say there are 10,000 permits being used in Connecticut by people who are not eligible for them.

A comparable effort in the 2008 legislative session was defeated after DMV officials estimated implementation would cost $1.1 million annually.

Earlier posts here and here.

‘The list keeps growing’

By Robert Perske in ‘Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities‘, the journal of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), Volume 46, Number 6, December 2008.

Perske presents the cases of 53 people with intellectual disabilities who  confessed to serious crimes they did not commit, including murder, rape, arson and robbery. All cases are from the U.S., and all but 12 occurred within the past 20 years.

Police officers need to know that some people with intellectual and related disabilities can be extremely vulnerable when placed under pressure in interrogation rooms, Perske says, and may say whatever authority figures want to hear. He notes six factors that “may be worth pondering”:

Almost half have been exonerated by DNA tests.

In some cases, the real perpetrators finally confessed to the crimes in question.

Most of the exonerations took place since 1990.

In all cases, a defense lawyer was not present during the interrogations.

These cases cry out for the nonstop videotaping of suspects in interrogation rooms.

Officers need to learn how easy it is to get false confessions from some suspects with intellectual and related disabilities.

From the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times:

A homeless man died in Los Angeles after being doused with gasoline and set on fire. A police spokesman said the man, who had lived peacefully on the streets in the dense residential neighborhood for more than 20 years, was believed to have been mentally ill. An excerpt:

A man in his 20s was seen throwing gasoline on the man, chasing him, throwing more on him and running from the scene, said Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz. Scorch marks stained a wall Friday where the man was burned.

The burning horrified even officers who routinely witness violent crimes, Diaz said.

“To murder somebody who’s probably suffering from mental illness issues and not bothering anyone – just a poor wretch on the street – you’ve got to be a soulless nitwit to do something like this,” he said.

Related story from the Associated Press: Ten years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, there is no federal hate crime legislation extending to sexual orientation or disability. A bill that passed the U.S. House last year would have extended existing hate crime law to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.

See also: Cruel end for LA homeless man — Los Angeles Times

(Danette Kuoch lights a candle at a makeshift shrine where the man was killed; Los Angeles Times photo)

From the [UK] Telegraph, BBC, [UK] Independent:

Sir Ken MacDonald (left), the UK’s highest ranking prosecutor, said this week that disability hate crime is widespread and the criminal justice system is failing to address it. He urged UK police and prosecutors to seek tougher sentences against those who victimize people with disabilities.

“This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice,” he said in a speech. “All institutions involved in criminal justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”

Macdonald said the biggest barrier to effective prosecution is a failure by law enforcement personnel to perceive that people with disabilities are targets of systematic hostility and prejudice. A 2003 law in the UK allows courts to punish offenders more severely if a crime is motivated by a victim’s disability or sexual orientation, but the measure is rarely used.

Research by the charity Mencap says people with learning disabilities in the UK live in fear and face harassment on a regular basis. The UK has seen a number of murders and acts of violence against people with disabilities over the past year.

See also: This hatred is borne out of fear of disability — by Ian Macrae in the [UK] Indendependent. An excerpt:

Disabled people’s impairments frighten people because they show them what they could become. Hate is too easily borne out of that fear. And that is what the judiciary, the police and the criminal justice system – and indeed society at large – have to come to terms with. Disabled people create fear and hatred in just the same way as people from ethnic minorities do for the racist; women do for the rapist, or gay people do for the homophobe.

Earlier posts:

• BBC asks: Does disability hate crime exist?
• UK gang sentenced to life for murder of disabled man
• Columnist: We must protect people from this wave of barbaric and hateful crimes

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: An investigation of Washington state’s troubled $1.8 billion mental health care system. The paper writes that the state leaves thousands of families …

snared in a Kafkaesque system that won’t help people with serious symptoms until they are in imminent danger of harming themselves or others, or gravely disabled — standards so high they exclude many who desperately need help.

But this strategy ends up costing the public more money, and puts citizens at greater risk, a scenario tragically highlighted in this state by a string of high-profile slayings by people who had severe mental illness but could not be treated despite signs that they needed help.

From the Madison [WI] Capital Times

Individuals with autism have up to seven times more contact with law enforcement than others, and police officers don’t always know what to do.

Among the tools available to Wisconsin law enforcement authorities is Project Lifesaver, a new electronic tracking program in which individuals are fitted with personalized electronic tracking bracelets.

Safety officials are also being trained at recognizing and dealing with the confusing behaviors of autism.

“There are so many more people out there with autism that we decided we needed to be proactive rather than reactive,” said Sgt. Lorie Wiessinger, director of the Dane County Law Enforcement Training Center. “These days, we need to be almost like social workers. We need to be sensitive and in front of the changes happening in our community.”