Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the wake of widely-publicized violent incidents, police departments across the United States have made substantial investments to improve their response to individuals who experience behavioral crises due to severe mental illness. Innovations such as Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) provide one promising approach to improve police responses. Police responses have paid less attention to individuals living with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) such as Down Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, and related disorders. Individuals living with IDD constitute approximately 2 percent of the U.S. population. An estimated one-third of this population experience psychiatric co-morbidities or behavioral risks, which sometimes lead them to interact with police. Prominent incidents such as the Virginia death of Robert Saylor underscore that many police are poorly-trained to address predictable challenges in serving individuals with IDD.