This isn’t rare. It isn’t random. And it isn’t just “unfortunate.”

It’s predictable.

Parkinson’s disease changes how a person moves, speaks, reacts, and even how their face looks. Tremor. Slowed movement. slurred or soft speech. delayed response time. shuffling gait. freezing. reduced facial expression. These are not obscure symptoms. They are the core features of the disease, documented by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS, 2024).

Now put that next to what law enforcement is trained to look for during a stop.

Impairment.
Intoxication.
Non-compliance.
Suspicion.

That overlap is not subtle. It is direct.

So what happens is exactly what you would expect.

People with Parkinson’s get misread. And they pay for it.

This is not theoretical. It is documented across years of real cases.

A man with Parkinson’s was knocked to the ground during a welfare check because his rigidity was interpreted as resistance.

A 71-year-old woman was arrested for DUI despite having a blood alcohol level of 0.00.

A retired teacher was handcuffed on his own porch because officers could not understand his speech.

A 70-year-old man with Parkinson’s and dementia was tased after wandering from home.

A 79-year-old man was taken down at his own house while telling officers they were hurting him.

Different locations. Same mistake.

The data now backs up what patients have been saying for years.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal through SAGE Journals found that people with Parkinson’s reported significantly higher rates of mistreatment during traffic stops compared to controls (15.5% vs 1.9%, p = 0.032). The same study found that officers rarely even asked about Parkinson’s during those encounters (SAGE Journals, 2025).

That matters.

Because it means the disease is not even entering the equation before decisions are made.

Now look at the physiology.

Parkinson’s is not just about dopamine loss. It disrupts coordinated motor control, speech production, facial expression, and reaction timing. According to NINDS, symptoms include bradykinesia (slowness of movement), rigidity, tremor, impaired balance, and speech changes such as low volume or slurring (NINDS, 2024).

The American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) describes freezing of gait as a sudden inability to move despite the intention to walk, often worsened by stress or urgency (APDA, 2023).

Now think about that in a police interaction.

An officer gives a command. Move. Turn. Walk. Hurry up.

The person with Parkinson’s freezes.

From the inside, they are trying.

From the outside, it can look like refusal.

That is where things go wrong.

Even standard DUI testing is a problem.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines field sobriety tests like the Walk-and-Turn and One-Leg Stand as divided-attention tasks that require balance, coordination, and cognitive processing at the same time (NHTSA SFST Manual).

Parkinson’s directly affects balance, gait, coordination, and response timing.

So the test is measuring impairment in a system that is already neurologically impaired.

That does not mean every person with Parkinson’s cannot drive.

It means the test itself can produce misleading results in this population.

Zoom out.

More than 1 million people in the U.S. are living with Parkinson’s disease, with roughly 90,000 new diagnoses each year, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation (Parkinson’s Foundation, 2024).

This is not a rare edge case.

This is a large and growing population.

Now look at the system response.

Zero states require mandatory Parkinson’s-specific training for law enforcement.

Zero.

At the same time, organizations like the Parkinson’s Foundation and APDA have created educational materials and voluntary training programs for first responders (APDA First Responder Training Program).

Researchers like Dr. George Ackerman have published work specifically calling for Parkinson’s education in policing (Ackerman, 2025).

Investigations by The Marshall Project have shown a broader pattern of police encounters involving people with neurological and cognitive conditions being misinterpreted as criminal behavior (The Marshall Project, 2022).

The knowledge exists.

The training is optional.

That is the gap.

And here is the part that lands hardest.

When the system does not recognize you, the burden shifts to you.

You have to explain your own body in real time.

“Officer, I have Parkinson’s. I am not intoxicated.”

You say that while your hands are shaking.
Your speech is off.
Your timing is slow.
Your stress is through the roof.

And you are expected to convince someone who has already made an initial judgment.

That is not safety.

That is survival.

The fix is not complicated.

Basic neurological awareness training.
Recognition of Parkinson’s symptoms.
Adjustment to how impairment is evaluated.
Integration into existing crisis intervention training.

That is it.

Parkinson’s does not make someone dangerous.

It makes them easy to misunderstand.

And in the wrong system, misunderstanding turns into force, arrest, or worse.

That is not a rare failure.

That is a predictable one.

And we have had more than enough time to fix it.