Salt Lake City - Police shot 13 year old with autism

Not alone, but maybe paramedics together with the police? Obviously it was a medical issue with this boy too due to his autism, isn't it?

 

I would like to say that I am surprised at the posts from posters here but actually I'm not. Hardly anyone seems to be concerned that the police shot a 13 year old boy but are blaming the mother for phoning the emergency services (which includes medical services). Unless he was armed with a gun or holding someone hostage what excuse could there be for shooting him? No wonder many people think that the US is a failed state

 

Paramedics are primarily trained to stop the bleeding and keep you breathing while en route to the hospital. Those weren't problems the boy was having. And if the report was "violent psych issue" and "threats with a weapon", the paramedics aren't going anywhere near the subject until the police have "secured the scene" (which in this case apparently included shooting the boy).

 

I’m a civilian now. I retired from the army as an infantryman about 2 years ago. Yes we were the goons with guns. Not in the US, but in Iraq. There were lots of “psychopathic tattoos” and patches. We worked very closely with civilians in our sector, building close relationships with the locals. We did our best to keep them safe and protect them from insurgents. As trust between us and then increased, they would come to us with information on where the insurgency was operating, and we would deal with them.
But, you never know who was going to be hostile. You had to always be on your guard. At one point a teenager dropped an RKG-3 parachute grenade on one of our humvees, killing the driver and severely wounding everybody else. A teenager. You never know...

cities these days have become as bad as the cities in Iraq in some respects. No IEDs yet, but attacks on police officers are getting out of control. They have to always be on their guard. Mistakes will happen from time to time. But overall, they are the sheepdogs guarding the sheep from the wolves.

 

Roger Josh, as we learned in Vietnam, it's really bad to be an army of occupation in a foreign land.

The Brits learned that in 1860 or so.

 

Yes, there is one number. There is another number if you want a pizza or a therapist or a plumber.

 

And we will see why, we will see if this kid grabbed a knife and tried to stab one of the officers or grabbed one of the officers guns. The US is a great place, one of the finest countries on earth.

 

1. The US was in Vietnam to resist an invasion by the Northern Communists and try to transform it into a South Korea style democracy.
2. Er, where did we learn that in 1860 precisely?

 

Chicken and egg. We do send out armed police but only when it is known that what they are being called out for is a life and death situation. By International Law one only has the right to kill someone if that person is an imminent threat to someone. That is you can only shoot if that is necessary to save a life and even then the priority is to cause as little damage as possible - so shoot to disable rather than kill if possible.

 

A request was made for a 'Crises Intervention Team' to come and help as her son was having an 'episode' because he did not want to go to the Hospital. This is a boy who suffers from Aspergers, an illness which by its nature renders the victim with difficulties in effectively socialising and communicating with people.

To shoot someone who is in crises and freaking out when they by the nature of the illness which is the reason help is being asked cannot communicate effectively for not communicating effectively, which appears to be what happened - the Police said 'Get on the Floor' and when he did not gave him a barage of shots.

This is wrong by any standard. The Police ought to have been aware they were asked to intervene in a Crisis caused by a known disease which makes it extremely difficult for said person to communicate or act in the same way socially as most people. They hence ought to have known that just going in and shouting at the child to get on the floor was unlikely to result in that happening. No gun was found. The boy did not have a gun. so it would appear someone was lying saying he did. The situation was two adult armed Policemen versus one unarmed sick adolesent. International Law demands that the minimum force needed should be used to restrain someone if necessary. Even if this was not a minor they were shooting at, even if this was a healthy minor they were shooting at, the had no 'right' by International law to fill his body with bullets.

Now this results in either individual policemen being guilty of misconduct or of the very fabric of the American Police Force and its response to people in crises being untenable.

It was essential that someone who had knowledge of this child's mental health being who responded. It is essential that if Police attend such a person in crises they are aware that that person does not respond as others do to orders. Only a Police who has knowledge of this should be sent to respond to such a situation. The child did not deliberately develop Aspergers and deserves not to be killed by sending people who respond to such a crises with guns to be sent.

Further even if the Police found themselves in a situation where they needed to shoot someone to save a life, they have no right by Internatial law to use more force than necessary. They had no right to riddle this child's body with bullets which it will be a miracle will not result in life changing injuries to someone already having more difficulty than most of us.

Sadly on doing some research on this I have discovered that the killing by American police of children, even those not yet in double figures is not unusual.

The police did not kill this boy but they do kill others and their actions could well have killed him.

If you were not fine about what happened to this boy, you would be trurning your attention to ways to stop this happening to the next person rather than defending those actions and blaming the mother for asking for help.

Your Police system needs immidiate massive overhaul.

 

Oh for goodness sake, I was taught how to take a knife from someone in a ten week self defence course. Are you suggesting the US Police are not trained to do that? This was two armed adults against one unarmed adolescent. Come on....and why did they riddle him with bullets?

 

Sorry, my bad. It should have been 1760 or so, leading up to the 1776 event, during which time the Brits were an army of occupation in the colonies. Like Vietnam centuries later, the domestic guerrillas prevailed against the army of occupation.

Northern Communists, that brings a chuckle.

 

any cop with a "kill the snitch" tattoo should be instantly fired

 

Since you've decided that is relevant to this thread, as a former cop, how do you feel about every U.S. civilian and his uncle being allowed to walk the streets with loaded firearms? Does that make cops feel safer?

 

Bully for you but things are different on the street to the dojo. He was mentally ill and therefore can be incredibly resistant to pain and trauma. Look at the 1986 Miami FBI shooting.

 

We were never an army of occupation, we were the Americans and they us, the WofI was a civil war more than anything else.

Yes, Northern Communists, forget all the blarney about guerrilla's in black pyjamas taking Saigon, it was the NVA pure and simple.

 

I was there. We were an army of occupation. We occupied that country militarily for many years, just as we occupy A & I, just as the Brits occupied the colonies militarily, just as Russia occupied Afghanistan before us.

The Russians are more sensible than the US. It took them only 8 or 9 years to admit their mistake. Our military industrial complex will not allow the political creatures to get out. Profits are great!

 

Oh I suppose on the course I did you expect that people just allowed you to take the knife off them, Taking a knife off someone is something that anyone can be trained to do if they want to engage in the least harmful way of getting a knife off of someone or if they are an individual who is attacked. I quite simply do not believe police are not taught such things in Northern Ireland and if so I would want to know why.

This is insane. Provide evidence that people with Aspergers do not feel pain. This is like giving yourself an excuse to cause them severe pain because you have dehumanised them. Why do you want or need to cause this person pain.

Again you are dehumanising this person because you say he is 'mentally ill'. The very reason his mother phoned for a 'crisis intervention team' was because he was reacting to the trauma of her being away for the first time in a year and I have heard not wanting to go to hospital. What on earth gives you reason to believe that because someone has autism that they cannot be hurt or be traumatised. I think you are excusing causing hurt and trauma to people who are the least able to cope with it...and why anyway do you believe there is a need to hurt and traumatise someone who is already in trauma.

I get though that you believe that the only way you can control someone is to cause them pain and trauma. Very concerning.

 

Unless your name is Connor Mcloud I'm afraid I don't believe you? The US liberated A&I, our colonies were just that, only if you're a native american/aborigine/maori/first nationer can you consider yourself occupied.

 

Yes but you can't always do it, depends on the circumstances and I want to hear more about them. Mentally ill people are incredibly strong, cannot be reasoned with and pain resistant, hence why you sometimes have to use incredible force to subdue them. Unless you've been there, you don't know.

 

You are under no obligation to believe a word I say.

Liberated A&I? From what? We sure saw to it that the lights went out and the sewers no longer functioned in Iraq. But hey, you probably agree with Hillary's idea about tough love.

We have to destroy countries and kill people so that we can liberate them in Hillary's book. And George's book and Barack's book, and apparently in your book.

Moral dissonance rules the US society today.

 

I was raised in Belfast during much of years of Troubles . From the age of 8, I carried either a 9” ovl or 13” ovl Italian switch blade (still own them) daily until I added a PPK to my edc. as protection from adjacent neighborhood roving predators that would invade our area to cause intimidation, often picking on younger children who they figured to be easy prey. I have been in more than one knife fight, with the scars that recorded the events. I can virtually guarantee regardless of your training you’d not been able to disarm me without likely serious injury unless you had a superior weapon or an alternative non lethal disabling weapon... some thing I used to demonstrate to police in training as well as demonstrations to show reality when training in martial arts which I did for years. Choosing to face a knife regardless of your confidence in your skill is a risky proposition. Hug gap between knife disarming theory and reality; when was last time you heard someone actually disarming a knife weilder? Real knife fights aren’t as the commonly depicted duels by Hollywood... many knife attack victims don’t realize they’ve been stabbed or cut until they see the blood.

 

For a start there is no evidence that this boy had a knife. There was an early call that he had a gun but no gun was found. Now had he had a gun it might have been possible to argue, true or not, that it was necessary to shoot him.

Mentally ill people are no more strong that anyone else - rather they are extremely vulnerable and on the physical level from his photo and age, 13 he looks like he is in early adolescence and not that strong at all. There is nothing to suggest that if need be two adults could not have controlled him. Again there is no evidence that people with autism do not feel pain like anyone else. People used to say babies did not feel pain and gave them proceedures without anesthetic but we all know now that they do feel pain as do people with Autism. I do not know why you are continuing to say such things. It may be something personal but it has nothing to do with reality/ I did though read that he has lost feeling in I think his hand since he has been shot. You do not need to use incredible fource to subdue someone who you have been asked to be involved with as a 'crises intervention', because he has lost it. This was a child/early adolescent. He feels pain and he is no where strong enough to overcome two adult men. This is your excuse for shooting him. International Law says you use the minimun force necessary. The question here is whether any was necessary and most importantly whether, as it seems the shooting of several bullets into various organs of this new teenager happened, whether that was acceptable. The place where people people with Aspergers have difficulties is in their ability to socialise and communicate. That is why to send anyone to him who does not have knowledge of that is unacceptable. ...and from the little we know that seems to be the reason they shot him. He was told to lie down and did not, which is not unusual with someone with Aspergers and so he was shot. Not once but serveral times. I do not know if this is true but there is a rumour the other Officer said something like 'What are you doing. He is a child'

A person with Aspergers is a valuable person with an illness that causes them to perceive the world in a different way to most people. When I was doing a search for information on this boy, I found several instances where the US Police had killed people with Autism, one of them another thirteen year old. He deserves proper care when he needs it. The system in the US at the moment appears to be sending in Police who are not suffiently clued in to what they are dealing with. That is neither fair to the Police or the person they are apparently going to assist. This is one of the reasons to take some of the money currently given to the Police and instead give it to others who have the professional qualifications and skills to deal with it. rather than possibly causing this child both emothing and physicall irreparavble damage. It is the system not the child that is in the wrong here. I would hope you are never engaged in that kind of activity as the imaginations you have are waaaay out.

 

Yes, but we weren't talkng about taking away switch knifes from professionals like yourself. What was being suggested was that this young boy deserved to be shot because it was possible he had picked up a knife. Given that he apparently had no history of violence I do not think this is comparabvle to what you are talking about.

 

So judging from your own personal experience....would U.S. citizens....or those of any other country be safer
if all citizens carried loaded PPK's in their pockets?