The data on disability and fatal police encounters is damning — and entirely unofficial
By Michael Phillips | Riptide Analysis
Every year, American police kill roughly 1,000 to 1,300 people. Journalists, researchers, and advocates have spent a decade building databases to track who dies and why — because the federal government won’t do it systematically. Race. Age. Whether the person was armed. Whether they were fleeing.
But one variable is almost never recorded: whether the person who died had a disability.
That gap isn’t accidental. No federal law requires it. No state does it consistently. And the result is that one of the most documented patterns in American policing — disabled people dying at wildly disproportionate rates — exists almost entirely outside official government data.
What the unofficial numbers show
The most cited benchmark comes from the Ruderman Family Foundation, which analyzed high-profile police killings and estimated that people with disabilities account for between one-third and one-half of everyone killed by police — while representing roughly 12 to 20 percent of the general population.
The Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, which has tracked every fatal police shooting since 2015, finds roughly 25 percent of victims showed signs of mental illness or were in behavioral crisis. Other peer-reviewed analyses put the share higher, particularly when autism and intellectual disabilities are included alongside psychiatric conditions.
The Treatment Advocacy Center, which focuses on serious mental illness, estimates that people with untreated psychiatric conditions face roughly 16 times the risk of being killed in a law enforcement encounter compared to the general public.
For autistic people specifically, research suggests police contact rates run approximately seven times higher than for neurotypical peers — driven not by violence but by behaviors that read as suspicious or non-compliant: avoiding eye contact, repetitive movement, literal interpretation of commands, refusal to drop objects during sensory overload.
These figures are not government statistics. They come from journalists counting deaths in news reports, researchers coding bodycam releases, and advocacy organizations tracking cases families bring to them. They are the best available evidence — and they exist because no official system produces anything better.
The federal gap
The FBI operates a national Use of Force data collection program, launched in 2019 after years of pressure following high-profile killings. Participation by law enforcement agencies is voluntary. Disability status of people subjected to force is not a required data field.
The result: the most comprehensive federal database on police violence in American history cannot tell you how many disabled people police killed last year. Or the year before. Or any year.
This isn’t a technical limitation. It’s a policy choice — one that has never faced serious legislative challenge at the federal level.
What the cases look like
The pattern shows up in cases across the country, repeatedly, with similar mechanics.
In 2020, a Utah mother called police for help with her 13-year-old autistic son, Linden Cameron, who was having a sensory crisis. Officers shot him — unarmed — during a welfare check. He survived.
In 2024, Ryan Gainer, an autistic teenager in California, was shot after allegedly chasing an officer with a garden tool during what his family described as a meltdown.
On March 1, 2026, Alexander LaMorie — a 25-year-old autistic man living in a Columbia, Maryland apartment complex designed for people with disabilities — called 911 himself to report an extortion scam. Officers responding to the call shot him at least nine times after he refused to drop a knife. The entire encounter lasted under two minutes.
In each case, the person who died or was shot had called for help, or had help called for them. In each case, the encounter escalated within minutes over an object and non-compliance. In none of these cases was disability status entered into any mandatory government database as a factor in the use of force.
Why the pattern persists
Researchers and advocates broadly agree this isn’t about police targeting disabled people. It’s about structural mismatch.
Mental health crises, autism meltdowns, and episodes tied to intellectual disabilities generate 911 calls — for wellness checks, disturbances, behavioral emergencies. Police arrive trained for threat assessment and command compliance. The populations most likely to be in crisis are also the populations least able to comply with rapid verbal commands under stress.
Crisis Intervention Training exists and shows some effectiveness. Co-response programs — pairing mental health clinicians with officers — have produced promising results in pilot cities. Neither is standard. Neither is required.
And without mandatory data collection, there is no official mechanism to measure whether anything is getting better or worse.
The accountability gap
Advocates have pushed for years for federal legislation requiring disability status tracking in use-of-force reporting. It hasn’t passed. At the state level, requirements are inconsistent at best — most states, including Maryland, have no mandatory disability field in their use-of-force reporting forms.
The Autism Society of Maryland called LaMorie’s death “profoundly tragic.” Howard County officials expressed grief and cooperated with the state’s Independent Investigations Division, which is reviewing the shooting. The investigation is ongoing.
What won’t happen automatically, when that investigation concludes: any official count of how many times in Maryland — or America — a disabled person called police for help and ended up dead.
That number exists. Someone just has to count it themselves.
Alexander LaMorie’s death is under investigation by the Maryland Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division. Bodycam footage was released on March 30, 2026.
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