The Phoenix Police Department’s treatment of Tyron McAlpin is now the subject of a lawsuit. Last month, he filed a $3.5 million claim over the incident — which drew national attention and criticism.
McAlpin is a Black man, who’s deaf and has cerebral palsy. But, in body cam video released earlier this Fall, he’s beaten and tased by Phoenix PD officers after they pull into a parking lot where he’s walking. When he didn’t respond, the officer jumped out of his vehicle and punched him. McAlpin’s attorney said, he couldn’t hear their commands. Officers said he swung at them.
The controversy came just two months after the Department of Justice found the Phoenix police use excessive force and violate people’s civil rights.
But for Jon Meyers, executive director of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, it wasn’t a surprise. Meyers says, this all goes back to training and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
JON MEYERS: I wish I could say I was surprised, you know. For all the work that's been done over the last 6-8 years, maybe a decade, it is still too common for events like this to happen. We we like to believe that progress is being made. We like to believe that law enforcement personnel are being better trained. We like to believe that there's more awareness of the fact that people have disabilities that are both visible and invisible. Yet these things continue to happen and we see response to individuals that is out of proportion to the danger they face.
And that is in some cases willfully ignorant. In some cases, innocently ignorant to the fact that disabilities exist or that that individual has a disability. And unfortunately, even when the disability becomes known, the response from law enforcement personnel is still too drastic. And and, and it's disappointing, it is disappointing. I wish I could say it was a surprise but it is not.
LAUREN GILGER: People with disabilities we should say are more likely to have encounters with police it turns out. This is something I didn't know.
MEYERS: It's a fact. Well, II I shouldn't say that categorically, people with disabilities are more likely to have negative interactions with, with police. And part of that again is because certain disabilities are not evident at the outset. But it's also because law enforcement personnel by and large are just not well educated on how to interact with somebody who has a disability. Typically, the worst interactions are with those who have cognitive disabilities because those individuals are not able to necessarily process what they're going through when they're encountering law enforcement personnel.
And so their response may be atypical, it may be, it may be unexpected, they may not know what to do and in return law enforcement personnel may not know what to do. And so things spiral out of control. It is truly unfortunate but it points to the fact that we need to be we as communities need to be better training law enforcement and we need to be better educating individuals with disabilities about what law enforcement interaction can and should look like.
Fortunately, there are some programs that can help to do just that. Unfortunately, at this point anyway, it's almost impossible to make those programs available to everyone. But it's clear that at least on the law enforcement side, our communities need to be investing much more in educating police officers, sheriff's deputies, other individuals involved in law enforcement about what it looks like to interact with somebody who has Down syndrome or who has autism or who has cerebral palsy or who is deaf or who is blind or has some other disability that can hinder the way they interact in a typical fashion with, with police officers or sheriff's officers.
GILGER: OK. So let's talk about that because you head up the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, you released recently this year, a report on exactly this right. Like on how police interact with people with disabilities, how we can improve that situation. Let's start with some of the obvious problems, right, which is just training officers on how to even identify people with disabilities because as you say, many of them are invisible, particularly for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
MEYERS: Well, the training, the training needs to start, of course, when they're in the academy, when they're receiving their initial training to become an officer, there are programs that can help them and, and I'm gonna be clear from the outset, not every disability is going to be evident at the outset of an interaction. We understand that. What we typically propose, what we typically ask for is that law enforcement personnel and, and, and they're trained to do this, I think to some degree that they, that they proceed with caution, that they proceed carefully.
And once a disability is known that they respond in a way that's appropriate to that individual that takes into account what that individual's disability is that, that doesn't disregard the fact that there may still be some danger present that the individual with a disability could perhaps have a weapon, could, could pose some other danger, but that they respond proportionate to the to the risk that's, that's facing them.
They need to have ongoing training. And this is one of the, this is one of the primary issues for those of us who are disability advocates is that the ongoing training is absent. Now, there are optional components. Sworn officers have to go through annual recertification.
The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Trainings Bureau has developed in coordination with the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing some training modules that officers can take when they go through that recertification, but they are optional. They're not mandatory. We would ask for mandatory training on an annual basis. We proposed this a number of years ago, four or five years ago. It was opposed and ultimately defeated by members of the Legislature who felt that it was too expensive and or too time consuming for officers that it simply wasn't necessary.
It was basically that there aren't enough people involved, there aren't enough of these instances. But what we're finding of course is that these instances are happening far too frequently still.
GILGER: How would you make that happen? Would this have to be a bill through the state Legislature?
MEYERS: It could be a bill through the state Legislature. That is the approach we took initially, it could also just become policy within a post, it could become policy within local law enforcement agencies that they would include a module on working with people with disabilities. And I should also say that what training is provided and there, and there is generally speaking training provided on working with individuals with disabilities. But as the officer in the McAlpin case pointed out, the training he received was minimal and he did not feel adequately prepared when he encountered that situation. That is the sentiment of law enforcement officers across the state. What they get is too little. It is not reinforced on an annual basis and they feel unprepared.
GILGER: And this is touchy, right? Like because as you mentioned before, it's not like someone who has a disability is maybe not going to pose a threat that has to be a part of the conversation. I wonder if it is.
MEYERS: It absolutely has to be a part of the conversation. And we would never say all individuals with disabilities pose no threat. We, we certainly would never say that. And, and, and by the way, I wanna really state categorically, we understand the dangers that law enforcement personnel face in their daily work. We're not in any way seeking to diminish that or, or disregard that we understand that it's, it's just a fact of life for them. It's a part of the job and, and we respect them for that.
What we would ask is that when they understand that a disability is present, that their response is proportional to that, to the danger that's faced. It is appropriate to the individual with the disability. And that can only come with better education about what different disability diagnoses look like. And, and to, to that end, we would ask that the the training be expanded, that it be broadened, that it offer more information to them so that when they face those situations and they become aware that that disability is present, they know much better than they do today, how to respond to it.
