Happy Update on Pedro Guzman

You may remember Pedro Guzman, the Californian picked up on charges of criminal trespass and deported under the assumption that he is an illegal alien. Turned out that he is, in fact, a native-born citizen, and a man with a learning difficulty which, according to his family, makes it hard for him to provide correct answers to questions. Anyway, Guzman had simply been dumped across the border, unable to speak Spanish in any fluent way and completely unfamiliar with the culture and area. His one cryptic call to his family was that he didn’t know where he was. The US government to this day denies that it did anything wrong in deporting a US citizen with mental difficulties.

OK, the update? His family found him and they’re bringing him home. Guzman family, congratulations on your success in finding your lost son. May all families looking for their lost loved ones be as fortunate.

What will it take?

I came across two disturbing news items today. One is a of a diabetic man who was tossed off an Amtrak train in the middle of a forest by personnel who assumed he was drunk, when when he was actually suffering diabetic shock. The other is a report of a police officer who killed a suspect with cerebral palsy. At least the officer has been found guilty of negligent manslaughter and admits that he mistook the young man’s jerky motion for threatening behavior.

If only this sort of story was an anomaly instead of one the constant fears of people with disability, that disability will be mistaken for disobedience and disorder. I don’t expect everyone to know about every disability. But rather obviously, there are too many people who know essentially nothing about any disability and immediately interpret difference as danger. The result is that people get killed for spasticity, shot for being deaf, abandoned or jailed or tasered for diabetes and epilepsy, deported for developmental disability.

I don’t for a moment think that anyone feels good or justified after making such terrible errors in judgment. So wouldn’t it be a good idea to give some training to people who deal with the public? If there was at least some guarantee that an effort would be made to read medical alert bracelets, it would be a step in the right direction.