It was after 9:00 p.m. when the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID on the screen and was immediately filled with anxiety. As I listened to the voice on the other end, my worst fears began to play out: “There was an incident… the cops were called… your brother’s at the hospital.” Panic swept over me and my heart pounded. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Was it real? Indeed it was.
Because I was my brother’s legal guardian, a representative from the group home he lived in called to notify me that he'd had a meltdown and struck someone else in the house. The police had been summoned. This was a terrifying scenario because my brother is a six-foot tall, 200-pound Black man with autism who cannot respond to verbal commands.
When my baby brother, whom we refer to affectionately as “Junior,” was diagnosed with autism, my family faced many questions: What kind of life would Junior be able to live? What resources would be required to create the future he deserved, one filled with dignity and humanity? As Junior reached school age, my fears increased.
For Junior, communicating his wants and needs is a challenge, and unfortunately, his frustrations sometimes get the best of him. But moments of frustration do not define a person. Junior, along with all who belong to vulnerable populations, deserves to live a full life free from carceral restraints.
In Detroit, where I lead the Detroit Justice Center (DJC), I’ve dedicated my career to fighting for a future where we shift away from our reliance on police and incarceration and build true community-centered alternatives to safety that keep families intact.
My brother survived his encounter with the police and my worst nightmare did not come to fruition. But unless we reimagine safety and advocate for community-based responses to incidents involving individuals with autism and other disabilities, we are putting many more young people like him at risk.
There are many Black and brown individuals with autism who have not been as fortunate as my brother. Ryan Gainer, a 15-year-old Black boy with autism, was shot and killed by a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy in March. Ryan's parents had insisted he finish his chores before listening to music and playing video games, but he became upset, broke a glass door and hit his sister. A family member initially called 911 for help. But, as an attorney for the family told CNN, prior to the arrival of the sheriff's department, Ryan had calmed down and apologized. Police claimed that Ryan, who was carrying a garden tool, tried to assault one of the officers. Within minutes of interacting with Ryan, the deputies shot him three times, irreversibly destroying a family.
Ryan should still be here today, bringing a smile to the faces of those who knew him. Instead, his tragic death at the tender age of 15 is another unnecessary reminder that police should not be involved with behavioral crises, especially those that involve young people of color. We need trained professionals who understand the art of de-escalation and support those in distress without resorting to violence.
Ryan and my brother's experiences with police illustrate that we have not instituted changes necessary to create a safer environment for young people. In the past decade, autism diagnosis rates among children — especially among Black and brown children — have risen, in part due to improvements in screening for autism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 3% of Black and brown kids have an autism diagnosis, compared with about 2% of white kids.
As these children returned to school this fall, I couldn’t help thinking about this vulnerable population and how the carceral system attacks them before they're even old enough to vote. The school-to-prison pipeline — which primarily pushes Black and brown children into the juvenile and criminal legal system — is particularly harmful to neurodivergent children. Students with disabilities continue to be suspended at much higher rates than their nondisabled peers, and Black students with disabilities continue to have the highest risk of suspension, according to a report released by the Learning Policy Institute.
Moreover, six million students attend a school that has prioritized having a school resource officer (SRO) — a fancy term for law enforcement officers, who are often armed — over a school psychologist. The practice of having SROs actively police school hallways and enforcing zero-tolerance discipline policies, treating standard behavioral issues as criminal offenses, feeds the school-to-prison pipeline.
Although Black students in public schools make up only 16% of enrollment, they disproportionately constitute 42% of all students who have been suspended multiple times, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Black students account for 31% of all school-related arrests, and more than half of the young people who were victims in police use-of-force incidents are Black.
We cannot say the children are our future while simultaneously continuing to funnel them into the carceral system that snatches away their hopes and dreams. In the prison-industrial complex abolitionist future we’re building at DJC, all children — Black, brown, neurodivergent — will be truly free to grow, make mistakes, and just be kids. At DJC, we’re working to promote an inspiring vision of how we can move society beyond police and prisons, transforming the criminal legal system, and investing in proactive forms of safety and well-being.
Through our community-based restorative justice trainings, we bring together dozens of people and train them to be restorative justice practitioners so that they can put these skills and knowledge to work within their families and neighborhoods, building community and mediating conflict when it occurs. We imagine a world where every human life is valued with equal care, where disposing of people is no longer considered justice.
Nationally, we suffer from a lack of vision needed to reimagine a society that actually works for the masses. There are millions of alternatives to police and incarceration at our fingertips, some of which we’re exploring at the Detroit Justice Center; but these solutions require we get out of our comfort zones and tap into our radical imaginations. This should be a collective effort, so that we can build a world where everyone — regardless of race or disability — is free to thrive and live their fullest life. We owe this next generation a better future than the present reality we’ve created.
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