Recently, three articles have appeared on AlterNet.org describing how police officers assaulted three men with disabilities and/or people assisting them. In the first, dated October 9, Emily Shire wrote about how a young man with Down syndrome with an IQ of 40 died of asphyxiation outside of a movie theater in Frederick County, Maryland during a confrontation with three off-duty police officers after his aide had warned them about his condition. On October 15, Alex Kane wrote about how four police officers in Manhattan Beach, California had “terrorized” a child with mental retardation and “brutalized” his caretaker while cracking down on gay sex in public rest rooms. And on October 18, Natasha Lennard wrote about how in Dallas, Texas, police officers seriously wounded a man with mental retardation despite the fact that a video showed that he was standing still with his hands by his side.

These incidents reminded me of my major interaction with police officers. My guide dog, Dunbar, and I were hurrying home from Grand Central Station in New York City late one early spring night in 1995. As I approached the corner of Third Avenue and 54th Street, the traffic on 54th Street began moving, meaning that it was safe for me to cross Third Avenue, something I had done regularly since 1982. Halfway across the street, however, a car knocked me down and dragged us several feet before screeching to a stop. Someone identifying himself as a retired police officer assisted me to my feet and asked if I was OK. After assisting us the rest of the way across Third Avenue, he told me firmly not to move.

As Dunbar and I stood alone shivering slightly, I remember the stranger who had assisted me dashing back into the street shouting at the driver “to stay the fuck where you are.” When two police officers arrived, I remember him telling them that the light was in my favor and that the male driver had tried to leave the scene. I remember learning that the driver was driving an expensive car and that he couldn’t produce his driver’s license when asked to do so. And I remember the police officers not talking to me for at least twenty minutes until offering to drive Dunbar and me home.

“Will anyone be arrested?” I asked from the back of the stuffy patrol car.

“No,” someone said brusquely.

“But I heard someone preventing them from leaving the scene and that the male driver didn’t have his license.”

“No,” I was told, “a female was driving the car.”

Fortunately, Dunbar was unhurt and unfazed, a miracle when considering that many guide dogs can no longer work after nearly hit by a hard-charging car. Despite a sore lower back, I was able to maintain my busy schedule. An insurance representative of the driver who hit me visited my apartment to offer me enough money to buy a new suit to replace the one that had been destroyed and to make a donation to Guiding Eyes for the Blind (the school that trained Dunbar).

Of course, each incident has at least two sides. The Maryland man with Downs syndrome was acting violently outside of the movie theater. In Manhattan Beach, California, the male caretaker was assisting the disabled child to go to the bathroom. In Dallas, police had been called because the man with mental retardation was waving a knife around. And I have often wondered if the person assisting me was really a retired police officer.

In the October 9 AlterNet article, Emily Shire quotes James Mulvaney, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as saying that “law enforcement training tends to focus on the fast rather than the slow, to charge ahead rather than pull back.” That’s sensible: if a bad guy is assaulting me, I want that bias towards speed. The downside, however, is that speed magnifies the power of prejudice and fear, thus increasing the likelihood of poor communication and accidental assaults. This reduces trust between law enforcement and people from underrepresented groups, resulting in less cooperation, fewer successfully closed criminal cases, and increased frustration among officers whose on-the-job stress levels are already too high.

The likelihood of violent acts might be reduced if more police officers with experience working with people significantly different from them are hired and promoted, as the skills and temperament gleaned from these experiences can increase effectiveness and lessen the likelihood of mistakes. Perhaps then people with developmental and intellectual disabilities (and those from other underrepresented groups) will be better served. And perhaps future officers will take us blind people more seriously when light-dependent people who drive wrecklessly knock us down while we’re trying to cross the street.