Police need education about persons with disabilities

National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Folks with disabilities are often at a disadvantage, when their human rights are at stake.  In California police tasered and beat a deaf man, not understanding, or taking the time to understand, the characteristics of the deaf that might lead to different behaviors.

Hawthorne, California police were reported to have beaten and tasered the deaf man.  The man, Jonathan Meister, had signaled the police of his condition and that the snowboard he was carrying had been loaned to him.   The deaf man has consequently filed suit in court, according to Courthouse News Service.

The news reports from various media sources have examined various facets of this case.  One of the major concerns has to do with the humanitarian concerns related to the incident.   It was reported that officers had confronted Meiser who was seen picking up a snowboard two days ago outside the home of a friend.  The claim is officers did not pay attention to the signaling of the deaf man and his gestures and instead used aggressive tactics to intervene.

As a corollary to this incident, ARC, the Association for Retarded Citizens, observes people with disabilities are more often than others to be misunderstood or become victims of violent crimes.  The onus of learning how to make the appropriate response to people with special needs is underlined as being upon those who are in authority positions, especially in the criminal justice system, which includes police.

Prison inmates have the right to same-sex marriage, California declares

[caption id="attachment_17533" align="alignleft" width="300"] Prison inmates[/caption]

Editor---"Inmates have the same legal right to marry as those who are not inmates," said Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the state corrections department.

This announcement observes California inmates are eligible to marry non-incarcerated partners of the same sex, according to aCalifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memo which outlines the conditions. On the other hand, there are limitations as well. A memo addresses those limitations follow the US Supreme Court's having declared  Proposition 8 unconstitutional, which prohibited gay marriage.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, presented a memo outlining the law and the legal right to marry a person of the same sex. But in California there had been a serious effort to undercut the right for couples both inside and outside of prison to marry.

The memo cites the law and specifies that inmates are entitled to the same privileges but inmates are not entitled to marry while inside prison another inmate of the same sex.

Same sex marriage has been a controversial subject in the normal population. How will it fair in prisons where men without women sometimes resort to sex with each other, even though outside of prison they have heterosexual lives? What might be the reasons in presenting limitations as observed in the memo? Likely one of those reasons may have something to do with certain prison tenure that can influence sexual choice.

The United States Supreme Court has determined prisoners to have a constitutional right to marry, however the law also states prison officials can impose discretion and can even deny an inmate the right to marry.