NYPD’s “Autism Awareness” Squad Car Is Nothing But a Publicity Stunt

April is Autism Consciousness Month, an typically disappointing time period for the autistic group. We watch public areas implement elevated accessibility measures solely to promptly take away them on Might 1, as if autistic people solely deserve inclusion throughout this one month.

We additionally spend a number of our time explaining to folks round us why well-known campaigns like Mild It Up Blue, promoted by Autism Speaks, do more harm than good for our group by perpetuating prejudice and myths. For instance, blue was chosen because the marketing campaign colour based mostly on the mistaken concept that autism is extra frequent amongst males when in actuality, autistic ladies, ladies and nonbinary persons are a lot much less more likely to be recognized as autistic due to gender bias.

One other frequent critique of Autism Consciousness Month is expounded to the constraints of representation politics: Elevated consciousness is just not synonymous with elevated entry, main the month to be rebranded by some organizations and corporations as Autism Acceptance Month. This shift has introduced with it extra emphasis on accommodating autistic help wants and elevating the language, symbols and culture originating throughout the autistic group.

However even “acceptance” campaigns don’t routinely result in improved materials situations for autistic people, who expertise heightened charges of housing instability, unemployment and social isolation in comparison with non-autistic folks. Nothing may display the constraints of such campaigns higher than the annual Autism Consciousness/Acceptance Day held by the New York Police Department (NYPD) and its accompanying autism awareness squad car.

The squad automotive, which is roofed with rainbow infinity indicators and an assortment of phrases like “respect” and “have a good time” everywhere in the hood, was introduced out in Manhattan final weekend when the thirty fourth Precinct co-hosted an NYPD Autism Consciousness Day occasion.

Police Co-opt Language of the Neurodiversity Motion

The neurodiversity paradigm was launched by autistic sociologist Judy Singer within the Nineties to reimagine the medical mannequin that categorizes neurological, emotional, and psychological experiences right into a binary of both “regular” or “faulty.” Whereas the medical mannequin describes folks’s brains and minds as disordered, the neurodiversity paradigm argues psychological sicknesses or insanity, developmental disabilities, and/or neurological situations are a part of the natural neurobiological diversity of human beings.

The time period “neurodivergent” was later coined by Kassiane Asasumasu as a complementary however distinct idea to explain an individual whose neurological or psychological experiences fall outdoors of what society treats as “regular” and expertise particular oppression associated to their neurodivergence. “Neurodivergent” is a social and political time period that unites all people who find themselves topic to this particular kind of ableism, the system of supremacy that privileges some bodyminds over others and is deeply interconnected with capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy.

The rainbow infinity image represents the neurodiversity-based conception of autism and was adopted by the autistic community to interchange the generally used puzzle piece image for autism, which has its roots within the dehumanizing concept that autistic youngsters and adults are complicated puzzles to be solved, fairly than complete human beings. On the NYPD’s first Autism Consciousness Day 4 years in the past, the adorned automotive was covered in puzzle pieces, so when it unveiled a new car in 2022 on the first Autism Consciousness occasion for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic started, it was clear the NYPD had undertaken a rebrand targeted on aligning imagery and language with the neurodiversity motion.

However utilizing the “most well-liked” language and symbols for adorned squad automobiles is meaningless when policing and prisons are inherently incompatible with the neurodiversity paradigm and the liberation of autistic and different neurodivergent folks and the broader incapacity group.

The medicalized psychiatric perspective that the neurodiversity paradigm was created to problem mirrors the carceral ethos of policing and prisons by relegating neurodivergent and in any other case disabled folks to an immutable “unhealthy” class to justify restrictions on their autonomy. This oppression takes many varieties, for instance through conservatorships, which have been just lately put underneath the highlight as a result of Free Britney movement. In distinction, the neurodiversity paradigm considers neurological and psychological disabilities as frequent human experiences as an alternative of viewing neurodivergent folks as issues to be mounted or managed.

Disabled folks, particularly Black and different disabled folks of colour, expertise disproportionately high charges of policing and incarceration. An estimated 66 percent of the incarcerated population in the USA was disabled in 2016. A report from the identical yr by the Center for American Progress discovered that neurological or psychological disabilities — for instance dementia, psychological sickness/insanity, and autism and different mental/developmental disabilities (IDDs) together with Down syndrome — are particularly frequent amongst incarcerated folks, reporting that these in jail have been 4 occasions extra more likely to report a cognitive incapacity than the unincarcerated inhabitants.

Autistic and in any other case neurodivergent persons are typically stopped by the police or arrested for frequent behaviors akin to stimming which are misidentified as harmful. A research printed within the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in 2017 discovered that 20 % of younger autistic folks had been stopped and questioned by police by age 21, and almost 5 % had been arrested.

Disabled persons are additionally disproportionately subjected to police violence, particularly autistic and d/Deaf folks, typically in reference to showing non-compliant as a consequence of signing or stimming, tone variations or being non-speaking. Sixteen-year-old Eric Parsa was killed by police in 2020 whereas he was experiencing an autistic meltdown in a mall parking zone in Louisiana. The officers who killed him have been conscious he had autism, suggesting that autism consciousness coaching for legislation enforcement is insufficient for disrupting the hurt attributable to methods of oppression, as with all anti-bias training for police.

Not solely do the impacts of structural racism result in racial health inequalities and higher rates of disability within the Black group, racism and ableism additionally work together to extend the vulnerability of Black disabled folks to police brutality. In accordance with a lawsuit filed in 2015, NYPD officers beat a Black autistic teen, Troy Canales, who was sitting outdoors his dwelling within the Bronx. Disabled Black, Indigenous, and different activists of colour have lengthy targeted their organizing across the intersections of white supremacist and ableist state violence by means of cross-movement work, integrating racial justice and abolitionist politics into incapacity activism in alignment with the intersectional Disability Justice framework.

Transferring Away From Pathologizing Towards Incapacity Justice

The disproportionate charges of incapacity amongst incarcerated populations are associated to the historical and present day psychiatric institutionalization of disabled folks, particularly racialized neurodivergent people. Legal guidelines throughout the U.S. allow the involuntary commitment of neurodivergent folks to be able to management disabled and mentally in poor health/mad folks fairly than help them, resulting in the rights of disabled folks being routinely violated within the title of psychiatric “remedy.”

In late 2022, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams ordered the town’s legislation enforcement and emergency medical employees to involuntarily hospitalize folks thought-about unable to take care of themselves as a consequence of psychological sickness, main civil rights organizations to criticize the order as an unconstitutional violation of human rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Different incapacity advocates famous the order’s historical roots within the so-called “Ugly Laws” that have been enacted within the U.S. within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to criminalize poor and disabled folks for merely current in public on the grounds their look would negatively affect the well-being of their communities.

The NYPD neurodiversity-themed automotive is an try and reconcile two essentially incompatible views: a carceral tradition that disproportionately harms disabled and neurodivergent folks, and a motion that at its core resists the pathologization of human beings. It’s additionally an ahistorical, apolitical model of one thing claiming to be neurodiversity that’s disconnected from the highly effective work of incapacity justice and Mad Liberation activists in centering the roles of state violence and white supremacy within the oppression of disabled and neurodivergent folks.

The existence of this absurdly oxymoronic car is supported by unchecked white supremacy throughout the incapacity rights and neurodiversity communities, particularly the autistic group. Black autistic advocates, together with Kayla Smith and Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, ​​have carried out intensive labor to combine anti-racism into autistic advocacy and name out what Kerima Çevik has described as “structural bigotry” within the autism group, particularly at influential autism organizations with predominantly white management.

The same lack of intersectionality of the bigger Incapacity Rights Motion, targeted totally on attaining authorized rights, contributed to the creation of the Disability Justice framework. The principles of Incapacity Justice have been developed by a collective of multiply marginalized disabled activists together with Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Sebastian Margaret, Leroy F. Moore and Stacey Park Milbern.

Incapacity Justice is oriented towards cross-movement and cross-disability liberation by understanding incapacity to be inherently intersectional and centering the management, entry wants, and liberation of our most marginalized disabled group members, particularly Black and Indigenous disabled folks and people with increased help wants.

Within the autistic and broader neurodivergent communities, Incapacity Justice exhibits us the liberation of Black neurodivergent folks, particularly those that are unable to mask stigmatized behaviors for safety, should at all times be on the forefront of our activism and access work.

Incapacity and neurodiversity advocates with racial and sophistication privilege should do extra to actually heart intersectionality in our work and elevate the work of incapacity justice organizers of colour. We additionally should name out the hypocritical co-optation of transformative ideas developed by and for the incapacity group, particularly by establishments just like the NYPD that uphold the very methods that oppress us.

Rainbow infinity signal car appliques do nothing to advance us towards incapacity liberation. The one path towards true liberation for your entire incapacity group essentially includes the abolition of the police and prisons in all their varieties.