A movement for autism‑ and crisis‑competent policing in the United States
No logs. No alerts. No file.
Just the crash — and blame for the crash.
Autistic people and people in mental‑health crisis keep dying, or being broken, in encounters that police were never trained to recognise. Nobody in government counts them. We are opening the file — case by case, name by name — until a single, enforceable national training standard is tied to every badge.
Support
Three asks: stability, accountability, a movement
Donations currently run through Miki's personal GoFundMe while the Initiative is being set up. Every dollar is accounted for in three buckets, in this order.
- Stability. Rent, medical bills and continued care, therapy, and the formal clinical autism evaluation Miki is still fighting to obtain after the incident left him unable to work.
- Accountability. A legal team to pursue every officer and institution that read autism as attitude and constitutional rights as an insult.
- A movement. Seed funding for The Open File Initiative: case aggregation, model legislation, and a national training standard tied to the badge.
The Open File Initiative is an emerging grassroots effort organised by Miki Gurevich and is not yet a registered 501(c)(3). Gifts made through GoFundMe are personal gifts and are not tax‑deductible. If you cannot give, share — a share can travel further than a cheque.
Help Miki stay housed and recover after harm in state police custody
$1,100 raised
of $3,500 goal · 2 donations
Direct link: gofundme.com/f/help-miki-stay-stable-and-safe
Figures updated 17 Oct 2026. Payments are processed by GoFundMe; this site never handles card details.
Watch
Hear it from Miki
Two films: a short version for sharing, and the full account. Hosted by us, with captions — no third-party players, no tracking, nothing loads until you press play.
The case that opened the file
Twelve hours, handcuffed behind my back, for a breath test I passed
I am a principal‑level cloud engineer. My job is keeping the big computer systems of the modern world safe and running — I build layer upon layer of protection around them so that when something breaks there is always a record, always an alarm, always another layer. I am also autistic, and I spent my whole life camouflaging it, because competence was survival.
On 24 September 2026 I was pulled over for speeding on an empty street in Washington State. My service dog barked at the officer when he approached the passenger side. He smelled alcohol and went straight to full protocol. I tried to explain that three major accidents on the same leg and a hip that never healed mean I cannot walk a straight line sober. He treated a medical limitation as an insult. My mouth went dry — that is what sensory overload does to an autistic body — and when I stood on my rights I heard him radio that I was “resisting.”
Three or four cars arrived. Three men to arrest one, pinning my shoulder in the process. I told them repeatedly that I was autistic. Instead of knowing what that meant, they laughed and asked me to define it for them — handcuffed, overwhelmed, in pain, already in crisis. The detainee was expected to train the officers.
Two hours later, at their station, on their machine, I blew 0.053 — below the 0.08 standard written into Washington law. No charges were ever filed.
What followed had nothing to do with alcohol. Under overload an autistic body can disconnect from the mind; they read my nervous system as belligerence. My cries of pain — a shoulder at eight, nine out of ten — were ignored. Bruised egos wrote my medical chart: an involuntary psychiatric hold. Twelve hours in a locked cell, handcuffed behind my back. No water. No medical care. When I banged my head against the door to move the pain somewhere I could control it, they strapped me into a restraint chair. I screamed for help until my voice died. It took twenty‑three days to come back.
The detainee was expected to train the officers. The person drowning was asked to explain the water.
In every case on this site the crisis existed before police arrived. In mine, they created it — then denied me water and medical care while I drowned in it. I am fortunate: I can speak, I can work, I can stand in front of a camera. Many autistic people cannot. I do not speak for every autistic person. I speak because I am one of the people fortunate enough to, and because silence would abandon those who cannot.
Washington's per‑se DUI threshold is an alcohol concentration of 0.08 within two hours of driving (RCW 46.61.502). The full account, records and requests for independent investigation are with Miki's advocates; the public campaign text is on GoFundMe.
The pattern
My night is not an anomaly. It is a pattern with names.
No government in the United States tracks autism in custody deaths. What follows is assembled from news reports, inquests, court records and volunteer memorial databases. Treat every number as a floor, not a ceiling.
1 in 4
fatal police encounters ends the life of someone with severe mental illness — a risk 16 times higher than for other civilians stopped by officers.
119
people were killed by police in 2024 while officers were responding to reports of a mental‑health crisis or erratic behaviour.
47
confirmed autistic people have died in police custody or at police hands since 2005 in our working compilation — 18 of them during restraint, detention or in jail, without a shot fired.
11 states
required autism‑specific police training as of March 2024. Everywhere else, whether an officer has ever heard the word is a matter of luck.
~40%
of law‑enforcement agencies were estimated to be submitting use‑of‑force data to the FBI in early 2025 — nine years after Congress ordered the Justice Department to publish how often force turns fatal and how often the person had a mental illness.
< 2%
of 988 crisis‑line contacts require emergency services. The overwhelming majority of crises are resolved by someone trained to talk — not by someone trained to arrest.
Names in the file
A few of the cases we carry. In every one, somebody knew — a parent, a caregiver, the person themselves — and said so.
-
Eric Parsa, 16Metairie, Louisiana · January 2020
Severely autistic and nonverbal, in a sensory meltdown in a parking lot. Deputies pinned him and sat on his back for more than nine minutes while he was handcuffed. He died. The $1.25 million settlement requires an outside expert to build autism training — for one sheriff's office.
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Linden Cameron, 13Salt Lake City, Utah · September 2020
His mother called 911 and asked for a crisis‑intervention officer. The officers who came were not specialists. As the unarmed boy ran, an officer fired eleven shots. Linden survived with life‑changing injuries; the city paid $3 million and prosecutors declined to charge.
-
Isaiah Trammell, 19Montgomery County Jail, Ohio · March 2023
Arrested after a neighbour misread an anxious phone call. Alone in a cell, he banged his head on the door. Deputies mocked him, denied his medication, and strapped him into a restraint chair twice. Three days later he was dead. His story is Miki's with a different ending.
-
Ryan Gainer, 15Apple Valley, California · March 2024
A cross‑country runner who wanted to study engineering. His family called 911 for help during a meltdown over chores. Deputies, who had been to the house before and knew he was autistic, shot him within minutes of arriving.
The working compilation lists 47 confirmed cases across the US, UK, Canada and beyond, with sources for each. Read the file (PDF) — and if a name is missing, tell us.
What we demand
One mission: a national standard of autism‑ and crisis‑competent policing, tied to the badge
Federal law already requires it in principle. The Americans with Disabilities Act obliges every police department and jail to make reasonable modifications and communicate effectively with disabled people, and 2023 guidance from the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services says people in behavioural‑health crisis are entitled to a health response, not a law‑enforcement one. What is missing is a standard with teeth.
-
01
Mandatory, recurring training — as a condition of certification
Autism, developmental disabilities, sensory overload, communication differences and neurological distress, taught at the academy and refreshed annually, for every sworn officer and every jail and corrections employee. Not optional. Not “some mental‑health training.” Tied to the licence to carry a badge.
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02
Disclosure triggers a protocol
When a person or a bystander says “autistic,” “disabled,” or “in crisis,” that word must change what happens next: slow down, reduce stimulation, one voice, plain language, medical assessment, and a crisis specialist when one is available — not an invitation for the detainee to explain the water.
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03
No restraint without medicine
Prone restraint, restraint chairs, hoods and prolonged rear‑cuffing of a person in distress are medical events. They require a clinician's assessment, continuous monitoring, water, documented pain checks and a time limit — and every use must be reported.
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04
Count us
Congress ordered the Justice Department in 2016 to publish how often force turns fatal and how often the person had a mental illness; most agencies still do not report. Make reporting a condition of federal funding, and add disability — including autism — to the data.
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05
Health response first
Route crisis calls to 988 and mobile crisis teams, available 24/7 everywhere, so that the person who shows up to a meltdown is trained to end it, not to win it.
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06
Accountability that outlives the settlement
Settlements bought autism training for one sheriff's office in Louisiana and policy promises in Ohio. A family should not have to bury a child to buy training for one county. Discipline, decertification and independent investigation when disclosed disability is ignored.
Grounding: ADA.gov — Criminal justice obligations of state and local agencies · DOJ & HHS guidance on emergency responses to people with behavioural‑health or other disabilities (2023) · 21st Century Cures Act reporting gap (PBS/AP). States moving first include New Jersey, Illinois, Florida and Maryland — proof that it can be written into law.
Share your story
If it happened to you or someone you love, it belongs in the file
Encounters that ended in a cell, a hospital, a settlement, or a funeral. Encounters that ended fine because one officer happened to know better. All of it is evidence. You choose what we may do with it: keep it private for the organisers and legal team, publish it without identifying details, or publish it with your name.
Sealed in your browser. Your name, email, year and the story itself are encrypted on this page with the organisers' public key before anything is sent. The server, its database and its backups hold only ciphertext; the key that opens it lives offline. Checking encryption module…
Nothing here is legal advice, and submitting a story does not create an attorney–client relationship. If you need urgent help, call or text 988 in the US. For civil‑rights referrals in Washington, see the ACLU of Washington.
Join
The firewood has been piling up for years. Be part of the match.
We need autistic adults and families, clinicians, attorneys, educators — and officers who know their training failed them. Tell us who you are and we will tell you what we are doing in your state.