The family of a thirteen year old boy with Autism who was tazered last year and allegedly subjected to false arrest has filed a lawsuit and is seeking class action status. According to the complaint the child was acting out in school and the family and police were called. The child’s older sister arrived at the same time as police – and is very good at calming her younger brother down. The officer on scene from the Hawthorne Police Department refused to let the older sister calm the brother down, and instead elected to “mercilessly cycle at least two five-second cycles of potentially deadly and excruciatingly painful, paralyzing electricity through (the boy’s) young body” according to the suit.
After the incident the child was taken to the County Harbor UCLA medical center’s psychiatric ward. When the family was first able to see his son he was in urine soaked jeans with the tazer probes still embedded in his child according to the the father. He states they dehumanized him.
The father attempted to file a complaint with the department, but they would not take the complaint stating that the fathers description of events differs from the official report. He believes his son was arrested for assault on an officer as revenge for his attempted complaint. The charges were dismissed after the family had to spend extensive amounts of money and time fighting the charges.
The lawsuit futher claims that the department has inadequate training for dealing with special needs population.
What training do you think police should go through to help those with special needs?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is absolutely horrific! Not only are we talking about inadrquate training, but you are talkig about unneedful brutality against another human being! And these are the people who are supposed to protect us? My dad (may he rest in peace) would be rolling in his grave! He would never let his men (he was a county deputy sheriff I think though I’m not sure) treat someone like that!
This is what happens when society accepts dehumanization of people as an acceptable practice.
As a hfa adult I feel @ 34 years I’ve become quite good at getting along untill I got pulled over today in my car and I got very nervous which put the officer on the defensive and he arrested me for not signing a ticket. All I asked was to read it first. One of my coping techniques is to write down and read everything so I don’t get confused by peoples words alone. And I was very confused and he yelled at me and pulled me out of my car to arrest me, took me to jail and all. I was not being rude. Or drinking and all my paperwork was in order. I’m very upset.