March 7 marked two years since Carlos Hunter died at the hands of Vancouver police. He, along with Clayton Joseph and Michael Pierce, were lost within a month. Since then we also lost William Abbe and Alexander Williams to the Vancouver Police Department and Kevin Peterson Jr. and Jenoah Donald to Clark County sheriff’s deputies.
At a 2019 NAACP meeting, a mother told Chief James McElvain, essentially, “My son is 15. He looks like he’s 22. He acts like he’s 8. Can I bring him to your agency and introduce him to your officers?” In my mind I imagined the implied conclusion, “so they don’t kill him.”
Recently, I met a woman who fears for her life, too. She has mental illness and this month she will be out of her life-saving medicines. She anticipates dysregulating and becoming violent and destructive. In the past she has woken up in jail following one of these episodes.
How do we protect people with mental health disabilities? Black, Indigenous, people of color? Other marginalized groups?
