Pamela Powell (PP): Let’s go ahead and talk about this real-life situation. I believe it happened back in 2011 although for some reason I feel like it was just a couple of years ago. That one just left such an indelible image in my mind. Tell me why you chose this particular story because unfortunately there are so many similar stories out there.
David Midell (DM): Right, right. It's become all too common, tragically. This story resonated with me personally for a number of different reasons. In 2016, 2017 I was reading a lot about cases of alleged institutional racism and discrimination in law enforcement, implicit bias and police brutality and I found Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.’s story. It resonated with me in a powerful way for a couple different reasons: I'm on the autism spectrum myself [and] I have worked for years in crisis management related fields. I was a special education teacher for years working with individuals with emotional behavioral disorders. One thing that we had to do working in that field, as well as being somebody on the autism spectrum, was go through very extensive crisis management training. We needed to learn how to interact with somebody suffering from a mental health crisis in a way that kept them safe, kept us safe, and kept everyone else around the situation safe. There are very specific methodologies, strategies, protocols for those kinds of things to ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect and that everyone is safe, [and] that the situation is deescalated safely. It was just so blatantly clear to me that the officers who responded to this call with Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. were completely, tragically misguided, and ill-prepared for what they had to do. That's really why it resonated personally with me and that's why I wanted to tell this story.