David Dehmann died in Ohio police custody last month. A deputy is being investigated after he fatally assaulted 33-year old Mr Dehmann who was autistic and had Tourette’s Syndrome, as the local law enforcement knew.

( Cut for disturbing video )

I like - well, dislike - this newspaper article about hate crime and ridicule.

*trigger warning* this article, and especially the video it links to, is extremely unpleasant, dealing with an example of disability hate crime ( Read more... )

Here's a blog post about how in Britain, mental illness gets confused with crime.

What do you think or feel about this? I was alarmed by the headline, thinking of that old stereotype, 'Mentally ill people are dangerous!' But the Mental Health Foundation reminds us how many prisoners are mentally ill, and Rethink Mental Illness likes the look of this pilot scheme. "We welcome this initiative, which has the potential to stop ( Read more... )

Bijan Ebrahimi was an innocent, peaceful man. He was also a disabled man. Neighbours murdered him after false accusations of paedophilia. Here's an article about this crime and others like itThat news report is by Katherine Quarmby. She contibuted to this Equality and Human Rights Commission report (published 2011) about crime against disabled ( Read more... )

I've been watching the story of Gary McKinnon for years. Today we see this news.

More about Mr McKinnon here.

Another WordPress blogger, Eideard, says this.

According to Sky News http://news.sky.com/story/966077/denver-suspect-was-a-psychiatric-patient the man who went on a killing spree in Denver, Colorado, 'was seeing a university psychiatrist specialising in schizophrenia'. And he'd 'spent a year ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago I asked members of this comm to take part in a consultation about a draft Bill about assisted suicide in Britain. If you haven't done this yet, and if you're a UK voter, you still have time. Please do state your opinions here.