BALTIMORE — A Baltimore-area police sergeant watched a traffic stop take an unexpected turn when a man refused to take his hands out of his pockets.
For officers, hands hidden from view can signal danger. They are trained to be wary because an unseen hand can hold a weapon.
But Sgt. Kevin Moody recognized another possibility: The man might be responding to the encounter in a way shaped by a disability. It is the kind of distinction Moody and Baltimore advocate Mack Dawson are trying to teach through Badges and Bridges, a program that brings law enforcement officers and people with intellectual, developmental and invisible disabilities together before they meet in a crisis.
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“He was saying things like, ‘Y’all just going to have to kill me today,’” said Moody, who works with the Maryland Department of Transportation Police Department. “I said, ‘We have to see your hands.’ He was like ‘Man, you just got to let me stim,’ I’d heard people say that 1,000 times prior to a year ago, and I never really knew what it meant.”
Instead of forcing the man to remove his hands, Moody patted him down while allowing him to keep them in his pockets, understanding that self-stimulatory behaviors — or stim — can relieve stress in individuals. The rest of the interaction was peaceful.
For Moody, it was an example of what can happen when an officer has another way to interpret behavior that might otherwise look threatening.
The stakes can be deadly
Recent fatal encounters in Maryland underscore the stakes. In March, Howard County Police shot and killed 25-year-old Alexander LaMorie, a man with autism from Columbia. Two months later, Baltimore Police officers shot and killed 46-year-old Louis Jackson while responding to a mental-health-related call in Southwest Baltimore. In June 2025, Baltimore Police shot and killed 70-year-old Pytorcarcha Brooks during a severe mental health crisis.
The circumstances differed significantly. Police said Jackson, who was armed and threatening suicide, fired at officers when they arrived on South Caton Avenue. An officer attempted to create distance and gave Jackson verbal commands, police said, but Jackson continued firing and officers returned fire, killing him.
Together, the cases illustrate the difficult intersection of disability, mental illness, crisis response and policing — where a person can be experiencing a crisis while an officer is confronting behavior that may present a genuine threat.
Training for both sides
National research suggests people with disabilities are disproportionately represented in police use-of-force encounters.
A study from Disability Rights Ohio found that 30% to 50% of people subjected to police force have disabilities and that 33% to 50% of people killed by police have disabilities.
Dawson and Moody are trying to reduce the risk of dangerous encounters by giving officers more tools for interacting with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and invisible disabilities.
The two men, who met more than a decade ago while playing on the semi-professional Arbutus Big Red football team, have brought together participants ranging from age 7 to adulthood with law enforcement and first responders from Baltimore City, Baltimore County and other agencies. One of these efforts took place during this year’s National Night Out.
Dawson and Moody invited children and adults with disabilities to participate in Badges and Bridges, hosted by Preparing Youth for Tomorrow, Inc. (PYT) on City Ranch. Moody founded PYT to mentor and guide youth in Baltimore, and beyond, with financial literacy. But, the mission for PYT has since shifted to helping youth, and adult community members, connect to law enforcement through mentorship and leadership opportunities.
Police and community members with disabilities connected with horses before speaking on an equal playing ground about the struggles of police officers and disability communities.
The program is designed around an exchange: Police officers learn how people with intellectual, developmental and invisible disabilities may process information and respond to stressful situations, while residents with disabilities learn why officers are trained to react cautiously to certain movements and behaviors.
“There might be situations that officers are faced with where they are dealing with somebody with an invisible disability, but they don’t have the training or they’re not aware of what they should be able to do,” Moody said.
That training can matter because some behaviors associated with disabilities can collide directly with behaviors police are taught to treat as potential threats.
Moody pointed to an incident in New York from 2024 in which a man shot two police officers from his pocket while officers attempted to arrest him.
“We’re trained to be able to go back home to our families,” Moody said. “That’s why they teach us that stuff.”
Dawson, a professional massage therapist who identifies as having a “neurodifference,” said the training needs to account for what happens to both sides during a high-stress encounter.
“We don’t have enough first responders (learning) how to take care of these dynamic issues,” Dawson said.
Moody said officers can arrive at one crisis carrying the stress of another.
“I could be going to this from seeing deceased babies, you know what I mean?” Moody said. “And when I get there, that is your emergency at the moment, and you’re thinking that I’m not super sensitive to that, but you don’t even know where I just came from.”
Understanding an officer’s perspective
For Dawson, understanding an officer’s perspective is not a concession to the dangers people with disabilities can face during police encounters. It is part of making those encounters safer for everyone.
That two-way understanding is what Dawson hopes distinguishes Badges and Bridges from traditional disability-awareness training: Officers learn how disability can affect behavior during a stressful encounter, while participants with disabilities learn how police training and officers’ experiences can shape their response.
“I know to not just ask a bunch of people who already kind of agree with me to come in a room and tell them ‘Hey, this is how you should interact with people,’” Dawson said. “It’s more so “I can see you’re hurt. We’re hurt too. Let’s try to figure this out and make sure that we both get that.’”
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