Policing, compliance, and disability in the case of Victor Perez
How the police's expectation of compliance on the part of civilians leads inevitably to police brutality
On April 5th, Idaho teenager Victor Perez was shot nine times by police when he “refused” to drop a knife he was holding. He was in his own backyard, and his family was trying to convince him to drop the weapon. Some might say his refusal to comply by dropping a deadly weapon justifies the police action. Yet we need to learn a bit about Victor first. He was autistic and had cerebral palsy, and was suffering mental distress. His family insist he was not a threat to anyone, but the police interpreted his “refusal” to comply as a hostile act. On the contrary, Victor was nonverbal, and his disability clearly would have made it difficult to interpret and comply with orders being shouted by armed and uniformed men as easily as anyone else.
Notably, the police made no attempt to assess or de-escalate the situation. They shot him within 12 seconds of arriving on the scene. They paid no attention to the family explaining to them that Victor posed no threat. Tragically, life support was removed from Victor earlier this week when medical tests revealed a lack of brain activity. The officers have been placed on administrative leave pending investigation.
Importantly, this tragedy reveals a fundamental moral problem in how state police forces treat non-compliance. Police act with the expectation that any individual can easily hear, comprehend, understand, and respond to orders in a timely fashion, and a failure to comply (especially if they have potential weapons) is assumed to be some kind of violent hostility. This assumption is fundamentally discriminatory towards those who suffer disabilities.
Not the first time …
In August 2010, the Native American wood carver John Williams was walking around Seattle with his knife and a scrap of wood. He was a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe and was around fifty years old, and had suffered with mental health and addiction problems. More importantly, he was functionally deaf. A police officer saw him crossing an intersection, and perceived him as a threat because of his tools. Ian Birk, the officer, got out of his car and ordered Williams to drop his knife, but because Williams was deaf he could not hear Birk. Birk then shot Williams, who later died on the scene.
Williams was no threat to anyone and was not intending to commit violence. He was simply a deaf wood carver whose disability prevented him from knowing that a police officer perceived him as a threat. Though the Seattle Police Department ruled the shooting to be unjustified and awarded Williams’s family with a financial settlement, the shooting was not prosecuted as a crime (Ian Birk did ultimately resign from the police department, but a resignation is a small price to pay).
Once again, we have a case where police procedure is to expect compliance. Once again, this assumes the person has the ability to hear, comprehend, understand, and comply with requests. This assumes that the person has all the relevant cognitive and sensory abilities required to accomplish this task. Insofar as the person lacks these abilities, it is assumed to be their problem and their moral fault.
This is unambiguously a problem for anyone in America who has any disabilities that disrupt this capacity. If they are blind or deaf or if they are unable to hear for some other reason (it may simply be loud) then they obviously cannot hear the command. If they are non-verbal or are not an English speaker, they may not be able to comprehend the request. Even if they can comprehend the request, mental disabilities may make it take longer to understand it. They do not even need to have a mental disability - stress, intoxication, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and any other number of conditions can afflict anyone. Finally, they must need to be able to physically comply, and physical disabilities can make this a challenge.
Importantly, individuals are not responsible in any way for most of these conditions. We might say an individual is at fault for their own intoxication (though not necessarily - an individual might be legitimately medicated), but there is no rational way to make someone at fault for lacking the mental or physical capacities that police simply assume people have.
The same is true for people who suffer mental illness. People who are schizophrenic or otherwise prone to hallucination may misinterpret any commands. Elderly people suffering dementia likewise often cannot understand or comprehend commands. In 2016, 73-year old Francisco Serna was shot by Bakersfield police when he did not remove his hands from his pockets.
The problem of police violence has receded into the background of our politics. It was roughly five years ago now that George Floyd was choked to death by Officer Chauvin. We can attribute the way that police violence has receded to multiple causes - minor reforms like requiring body cameras met the expectations of many voters, the black lives matter movement was drawn into partisan politics, and other issues have come into the spotlight.
Despite the intensity of the black lives matter protests and the (incredibly modest) reforms to policing afterwards, as we can see from Victor Perez’s death the fundamental problem of police violence obviously remains. Innocent people are still getting assaulted, abused, tased, shot, and killed, and it’s not only a problem of racial discrimination. The fixation on racial discrimination was justified by the persistence of police brutality towards African Americans (as well as people from Latin America and Native Americans). Certainly, there is a racial angle in the examples raised here. Yet it’s not only about racial discrimination, and these other problems like disability has not gotten the attention it deserves. We need to question the concept of compliance, and the way a lack of compliance is interpreted as some kind of threat.
What is there to do about this? I am all for substantive changes to the whole logic of policing. I am not unsympathetic to arguments that policing will always be abusive and violent because of the nature of the law and the state. Yet such changes would require a host of deeper systemic changes to work. In lieu of revolutionary changes, short-term measures could include first responders who are not police but mental health experts who can approach the problem from the stance of de-escalation as opposed to violence. Another solution would be real accountability for police officers who shoot disabled people as opposed to the payouts and retirements we saw with officer Birk. This could deter at least some police violence, as officers would be compelled to be more careful and police themselves.
We also need to discuss and address the problem of compliance, and recognize that there are members of our society who will struggle to do so. We ought not accept the argument that compliance towards officers is a duty, and violating that duty is the moral fault of the civilian.