American Attitudes on Autism are Disturbing

Autistic Black Man Sits waits for a library to open and ends up spending 10 years in Jail 

 

An Autistic Black Man who went to the library to early and sits on the grass to wait for it to open ends up with someone calling 911 reporting a Black Man with a gun. Because the officer who arrives to talk to him misjudges the situation so badly, The Autistic individual is instead looking at a 10 year jail sentence for assaulting a police officer.

 

The officer involved does have a 33 year old mentally handicapped child however he still managed to miss the signs of autism so badly that he ended up manhandling the Autistic to the point where the officer ended up injured when the autistic individual responded as any parent of an autistic will tell you is likely to happen in this situation.

 

I have two problems with this. 1/ The individual had 911 called while he was sitting on the grass reading a book waiting for a library to open. This was nothing more then pure and simple racism. That was continued by the officer who arrived and without properly assessing the situation reacted as if this was the case.

2/ The officer involved even though he had a disabled child of his own, was so out of touch with autism that he misjudged the situation so badly that without evidence of wrong doing, he manhandled an autistic which any autistic parent is going to tell you is going to end only one way. With a physical confrontation.

 

We need both in Canada and the US (and likely Internationally as well) for all police officers to be trained in the proper methods of dealing with mentally ill individuals (including autism). While we repeatedly here that police officers are not physiologists' and psychiatrists we really need them to become those. This is because the institutions that would house those who are unable to care for themselves (and are to much of a risk to be on their own) are being removed more and more in favour of inclusion and that inclusion is causing way to many mentally ill individuals to be sent to jail because the facilities that they need to function are no longer available to them.

 

We also need the government to realize that with approx. 1% of newborns being diagnosed with autism at some point in their life and that number growing quickly, we need facilities available to treat and provide therapies to all autistic individuals until such point as they are fully capable of integrating into society to such a point that they are no longer a threat.

 

What is the most supreme tragedy of this situation is that an illness that is believed to be inflicted by the pharmaceutical companies in conjunction with the government, by forced vaccination programs that not all are certain are safe, is leading to the government throwing them in jail for something that they realistically have no ability to control

 

We as autistic parents need to stand up and demand accountability from them.