Salt Lake City - Police shot 13 year old with autism

several people have justified the police doing this or blaming the parents.

 

I refer you to post 35

 

When did I say that someone said that? I responded to [alexa said: and what is more I would lay a bet that those thinking it was fine to shoot the kid are those who represent the far right!]

 

Yes. They have and it's not right. I am a former LEO from a family of LEOs. Admittedly, it's a tough job but it shouldn't give anyone the right to kill with impunity.

 

US Today says he has Aspergers rather than autism though I guess it possiby is a version of it. They also give details of the injuries Mum is claiming on a Go Fund Me page

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/...-escalation-after-boy-autism-shot/5767759002/

It said that that Police force has 3 officers trained to attend to these issues but they do not respond to all mental health issues. Apparently all police are given 45 hours of training for this. I doubt if that would be enough.

It also repeats that the police were apparently told to attend a violent situation but that it appears no weapon was found.

and goes on to the calls for changes to be made so that police do not rerspond to mental health calls and that sounds like the most sensible thing.

 

I think the parents have some blame in this situation. That's quite different from saying "it is fine to shoot a kid". You understand that, right?

 

Glad you think that. However in many ways it ignores the situation. Even if there is evidence found and the only I have heard as yet is that Mum heard them shouting for him to get on the ground and then heard several shots. We do not know what happened before but it sounds exactly like the situation I saw described as what happened to an autistic man - I am not sure if he was a teenager or a man. Like it seems with this boy the Police demanded he did something and when he did not shot him. With a distressed person with autism you cannot expect them to respond like an adult with good mental health would. The bottom line would appear to be that this kid was not responded to by people with the skills to deal with the problem and that led to him being seriously injured. I would agree though that we probably need further information. He may have become crazy with whoever was looking after him but what he needed was someone skilled in his illness who could help him. That is a situation which seems to be frequently causing problems in the States. In the States where your police carry guns and have a protocol of using them it is all the more important to make sure people with mental help issues do not fall foul of this.

I think your emphasis suggests your priority feeling is that the parents are guilty. We may need to hear the full account of this but I cannot imagine the Mother deliberately put her child in danger. If she did then she of course would be getting arrested. Your putting the emphasis on the Mother whose child has been injured and not understanding that if the US cannot guarantee sending someone with the right skills and are in recent times frequently too quick with their gun, Police should not be involved in such issues. Somehow you never mention any problem with what happened to the child. Here you believe it is the Mum's fault. That is why the kid was shot. I do not think anywhere except to a limited extent in the first part here you have shown any concern about the child being shot multiple times. That certainly suggested you had no problem in him being shot.

 

create the job opportunity, and I am sure people will fill those new positions

 

I agree that we know precious little about the events that precipitated the shooting. And we probably won't know anything more until the police release whatever bodycam footage they have on September 21st.

I wouldn't use the word "guilty" nor "deliberately". I think she put her son's life in danger through some combination of incompetence and foolishness. I certainly wish the cops had found a way to handle the situation without shooting the boy, but they didn't. If I were talking to cops, or in command of cops, I might put my emphasis on their choices, but I'm not. I'm talking largely to other citizens who also aren't cops and don't have much power over cops' decisions. They do, however, control their own decisions. They decide when to call 911 or not, and so in talking to them, I focus on the thing they might be able to change about situations like this.

It's a trickier issue than you appear to think. If you start sending unarmed social workers to 911 calls with crazy people acting out, some of them are going to get stabbed, or taken hostage, or killed.

As I've already said, it was an unfortunate outcome.

 

That contradicts what was in the original article and even the article you linked contains. In both it said the mother called the police and told them he unarmed. Is there other information that says other people called the police reporting a weapon and threats?

In your article "Horrocks said there was no indication that the subject had a weapon, but stressed that the investigation was in its early stages. Without using his name, Horrocks said that Linden, who is white, fled from the address on foot, and that one police officer fired at him during a "short foot pursuit."". I don't see any information about a report that he had a weapon and was threatening people.

 

This is literally a paragraph in the NPR article you quoted from:

 

Sorry, I must be blind. I thought I read it over twice and glossed over it.

 

The mother knew and the mother is the one who called the police to begin with. I think it is unfortunate, and I don't know based on the linked article what other facts may be present in this case. What I do think is that the mother is every bit as much culpable as the police. Her he is just a "little boy" apparently applies to the police but not to her own inability to deal with him to the point she called for them.

 

How on earth do you find her 'culpable' for her son being shot several times?

 

The answer was the very first sentence: "The mother knew and the mother is the one who called the police to begin with"

 

There is absolutely nothing to base this idea on. Do you think that Police only deal with people with 1st Class degrees? On the information we are now being given it would appear you are finding her guilty for following the advice she was given and phoning for help which she was given reason to believe would be professional. The only way I can see you coming to the conclusion you have is if you as some posters have suggested believe that to phone for help is to phone for death. That is if you believe that anyone who phones the police should expect them to come out and kill- and as has been gone into before in this thread it was not the police themselves she asked for help from but emergency services. I have certainly heard people say never call the police or someone will end up dead but they are activists. I do not think there is any reason to expect the Mother should expect that and that is particularly true if she was advised by professionals to phone the emergency number if she needed to.

and you do not know if that was true and if they tried. Questions have first been asked as to what they did to try and calm the situation before they shot him several times. Even without his autism this is a thirteen year old boy. You are even making assumptions you have no evidence to make. The Sergent from the office said that no weapon had been found. The only possiblity given as to the situation which caused him to be shot is that they asked him to lie down, which he did not as could be expected with a 13 year old autistic boy who was clearly in distress.

So now you appear to be saying you believe it was fine that they killed this boy. No, they do not make their own choices and shoot someone who has mental health problems because they do not know to deal with it or worse it was deliberate. If it was ignorance then that goes in favour of stopping to send them on such jobs. If it was deliberate it calls for them being arrested. Possibly in the current situation they may be, but more often than not in recent years police have been able to get away with murder because their Union has managed to make it almost impossible to hold them to account for harming people - in many ways similar to what you seem to be presenting.

Honey we manage it all the time in the UK. The reason police in general in the UK do not carry arms is because we have always known that if they carry them then so will the criminals. In exactly the same way if you send out aggressive people to someone having an 'autistic episode' you are likely as we have seen to see a very bad outcome.

what you said was

Now you are claiming he did. I would suggest if it is legally acceptable for police to go to a very distressed person with autism and to tell him to lie down and if he does not shoot him then your country is making murder legal. People should be fit for the job they do particularly when that ends up shooting thirteen year olds because of their mental health problems - and that is why people were called out.

 

Those people do therapist jobs for big money, they don't cross over.

 

The Mother 'knew' what?

 

No, the reason your police don't carry guns is because they're not common there.

 

Again, I would not use the phrase "guilty". Finding someone "guilty" implies criminal misconduct. I don't think her actions rise to that level.

I wouldn't "expect" them to shoot someone, but I am aware, and my fellow citizens - including this boy's mother - should be aware, that it is a possibility when the police are called to violent / volatile situations. Her not accounting for this possibility was her mistake.

We don't know who advised her to call the police. It might have been "professionals" or it might well have been her Auntie May, or some rando from the supermarket checkout line. Trusting advice from others (even professionals), without giving it some thought on one's own, is a mistake.

Once again, nobody "killed this boy". He's alive and recovering in the hospital. As to whether I believe it was "fine" that they shot the boy, I've repeatedly said I do NOT think it's "fine". Even if there were some legal justification, it's an unfortunate outcome, and if there's no legal justification, it's even worse than that.

 

SO - I take it YOU are NOT a Civilian then .
SO - Then RU the GOON with the GUN ?


& the HOT Psychopathic Tatoo ?



.

 

Just to point out, there are several variations of aspergers.
I have a neighbor with two sons who have that, and I also lived with roommate for a few months in the past who had it. The roommate was almost normal, you almost couldn't tell. He just had a kind of weird personality and got a little inappropriately loud or slightly obnoxious in conversations at the dinner table with people he wasn't familiar with. (Oh and by the way, he was a great roommate, meticulously neat and organized) On the other hand, one of the neighbor's son, despite the fact he is 16, throws temper tantrums sometimes like a 4-year-old, and the other son is still wearing diapers despite being 13.

To make matters more confusing, these are all just labels, and the labels do not really mean one exact thing. It's not really a "specific disease" in the classic sense of the word. To say it one way, it means they don't really know what's wrong and have just applied the best label that they know.

Some of those with this label can't talk, and others could be your college professor.
It's not a simple to understand concept for most people.

 

Correct ... and the strange thing is that this with different numbers is given in many other countries the case.

In the EU all 27 member states have a common emergency number - 112. With this number you can call the police, fire department or ambulance stating what happened, etc.

Locally, however, every country also has its previous emergency numbers, although some here have 112 anyway ... Examples:

France: 15 = emergency doctor / ambulance, 17 = police, 18 = fire brigade
Poland: 997 = police, 998 = fire brigade, 999 = emergency doctor / ambulance
Germany: 110 = police, 112 = fire brigade and emergency doctor / ambulance
Italy: 113 = police, 115 = fire brigade, 118 = emergency doctor / ambulance
The Netherlands is an exception, as there was and is only one number, here 112.

That should and must be the case. Even if the statement sounds bland and lame, the police should be your friend and helper who protects you. But if you have to be afraid of your friend to a certain extent as an innocent citizen, then something is going very badly wrong in the country!

Correct ...
Good, comprehensive and detailed training is important in all professions ... so also with the police.
In the USA, training to become a police officer takes an average of 15 to 16 weeks! Upon graduation he is a rooki, comes to a police station and is assigned to an experienced officer to continue learning and to gain experience.

With us, training to become a police officer takes around 3 years! During this time there are internships at police stations for a few weeks. After graduating from the academy, the rooki comes to a police station, just like in the USA, and is assigned to an experienced officer to continue learning and to gain experience.

A look at the training content also shows clear differences, although differences are of course already encountered with the different duration. But it is the case, for example, that shooting training in the USA has a large part in these 14 or 16 weeks. The corresponding training with us is comparable, but far less "important" in the 3 years. De-escaltion, crisis prevention and management are much more important to us.

 

As I have learned here, there is only one emergency call number for ambulance, fire fighters and police in the USA, isn't it?

 

Generally, yes. What does that have to do with my question? Do you think paramedics or the fire department should be called when a 13-year-old is just screaming and yelling?