Special Issues in Law Enforcement and Public Health: Community Voices

Abstract

This community voices chapter highlights the extraordinary complexities of navigating vulnerability in a professional capacity. One concern for editors was to engage readers in a broader conversation about sometimes obscured types of vulnerabilities which though remain relevant to LEPH collaborations. These diverse forms of vulnerability are not new at all, but the discussion of relevance to the policing and to the LEPH fields are developing. This chapter therefore provides five crucial contributions to the field. Jones discusses how vulnerability and trauma can transfer on a police officer, but how such can be turned to strength. Billett analyses the social and normative barriers faced by minorities, in accessing services, as well as in their everyday lives. His contribution navigates the heavily stigmatized structures that have shaped identities, or lead some individuals to hide those identities. Franck David paints a picture of the price one pays when disability is ignored or when support services are not provided to a person. Emily Diamond provides an essential commentary on autism, and her piece is a much needed and timely addition to the topic of neurodiversity in the field of policing. Along the same line, epilepsy is often absent from policing discourses, and yet Lesslie Young’s work provides insight on how crucial it is for practitioners to be prepared in that area.