A different look at the role of traumatic brain injury in police shootings.

One (possibly more) of the victims of recent police shootings had suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Several bloggers who are victims of TBI are now expressing fear of interacting with police — fear that they too might be killed.

Traumatic brain injury can affect sufferers in a variety of ways.  Some common effects include:

• Speed in processing instructions
• Reaction time to stimuli
• Emotions

What appears to have happened is that a police officer in a confrontation gives an order to someone who does not respond to the order promptly.  The officer interprets the non-reaction as hostility and it escalates from there into a shooting.

TBI patients may not react promptly, and the non-reaction indicates nothing more than that they are having trouble processing the instructions.  They don’t deserve to die for that.  They are already suffering enough.