- cross-posted to:
- oklahoma@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- oklahoma@midwest.social
Summary
The DOJ has found that Oklahoma City and its police department discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities by unnecessarily institutionalizing individuals and escalating crises with armed police instead of behavioral health professionals.
The 45-page report highlights avoidable use of force and unmet mental health needs, with the DOJ offering to work with city officials to address violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
State leaders, including the governor and attorney general, acknowledged mental health system issues but criticized the DOJ’s findings as federal overreach.
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Give me a break, almost all cops do this. Post 9/11 we trained cops all over to be looking out for suspicious behavior.
Say if you have an autistic family member who doesn’t like crowds and you all have to fly for the holidays. The airport makes him nervous so he starts pacing. The pacing is clocked as “suspicious behavior” and now the whole family will spend 24 hours trying to convince the airport cops that he is fucking autistic and this whole situation is stressing him worse and making him act out more.
Not to minimize how serious it is, it’s just it’s way more widespread and problematic than this article even gets into.
That’s why the TSA is always changing their process and being assholes. Apparently “looking around” and “making eye contact” are suspicious behavior. One of the agents was being an absolute dick to my wife, I was already waiting to go, he turns around to start doing the same thing to me but I was already standing there waiting on him. The guy looked absolutely shocked that I was looking straight at him in the eyes while I was pissed off.
It’s a shorter list who cops don’t discriminate against
Oh this ones easy that list only has one group on it: Cops!
Not “behavioral disabilities,” “behavioral health disabilities” which often encompasses psychological and cognitive disabilities. The “health” part changes the definition. People should still self regulate (or have a personal care attendant to help) their own behavior in public and when interacting with others regardless of disability.
From the DOJ report they define BHD as:
Behavioral health disabilities include mental illness and/or substance use disorders. Such a condition is a disability when it causes an impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.
Yeah, “behavioural” can sound like it just means people who are antisocial or something, but it includes MDD, schizophrenia, dementia, parkinsons etc.
In separate statements, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Gov. Kevin Stitt acknowledged the need for improvements to the state’s mental health system but were critical of the DOJ under President Joe Biden for what they characterized as federal overreach.
“We will closely review the findings, but the DOJ report appears to be an attempt to bully Oklahoma into compliance with ever-changing and undefined targets,” Drummond said.
So basically “You got us, but we don’t understand the charges, and have no idea what to do, and you shouldn’t have been looking anyway, so we’re gonna keep it up.”
Un-fucking-real
