Re https://www.sott.net/article/326246-Police-murder-innocent-autistic-man-for-alleged-traffic-infraction
I worked at a college that had a work opportunity collaboration w/ the branch of the local public schools that dealt w/ mentally handicapped youth. The program had the young people bagging up the sorted campus mail into color-coded delivery pouches and then delivering the pouches to the various offices and bringing back the empty return pouches.
Although it was obvious that some of these youth had deficiencies, others looked every bit like regular college students in their physical appearance. It was only after some observation that it would become apparent that they were mentally impaired. This included a very tall (6 ft or more) well-built (not lean or overweight) good-looking young man that any parent would have been more than proud to claim as a son based solely on his physical attributes. But he was in fact quite autistic. One day when he arrived to begin his job, it was discovered that the small plastic pull-cart that he used for delivering the mail was broken. This one thing set off a meltdown requiring that the head of the program to be summoned to the college to calm him down and get him back under control. It was a rather frightening situation for all concerned.
There was also a female program participant who wasn't autisic, but most definitely didn't have age-appropriate IQ. This became very apparent in her attempts to complete the assigned task. And it seemed so shocking as based solely on her looks, you would never guess that her intelligence was so compromised. Sad to say, this impairment contributed to her having a baby that her mother was primarily taking care of.
I had one more exposure to an autistic grown child situation - this time at the supermarket. The mother was desperately attempting to check out a rather large amount of groceries using the automatic self-checkout that had a small item limit. Consequently, the electronic apparatus would stall indicating there was a problem w/ the weight limit and thus, adding to this woman's frustration. The hold up was causing a longer and longer line of waiting checkout customers to accumulate. Meanwhile, her fully grown, very tall autistic son was moving around in a very disconcerting manner. He came right up to me w/ his face a mere inches away from mine. Having a male of that size suddenly thrust his face in front of yours and knowing he's not 'normal', and thus unpredictable, was quite unnerving. The waiting customers had to yell at the store employee working that section to override the electronic checkout so that the woman could finish processing her items. It made me wonder if this was a typical aspect of her everyday life or if she was simply w/o her usual help that day or that the usual accomodation for her son was unavailable.
As to the autistic man in the referenced news article, I was somewhat surprised that he was a licensed driver who could drive himself. Wouldn't it make sense for his license to indicate he was autistic much in the same way that the wearing of glasses as a condition to driving is noted? Did his license plate indicate a handicapped driver? It could be that the situation went wrong from the get-go and the autistic man was too flummoxed and/or agitated to even be able to produce his license for the officer. Although it can be imagined how badly such a situation could go, shooting him down could not possibly be warranted except that now disobeying an officer's command in any way at any time has become official justification to do just that. I can only hope the citizens of this town take action to succesfully confront such an authoritarian mindset.
I worked at a college that had a work opportunity collaboration w/ the branch of the local public schools that dealt w/ mentally handicapped youth. The program had the young people bagging up the sorted campus mail into color-coded delivery pouches and then delivering the pouches to the various offices and bringing back the empty return pouches.
Although it was obvious that some of these youth had deficiencies, others looked every bit like regular college students in their physical appearance. It was only after some observation that it would become apparent that they were mentally impaired. This included a very tall (6 ft or more) well-built (not lean or overweight) good-looking young man that any parent would have been more than proud to claim as a son based solely on his physical attributes. But he was in fact quite autistic. One day when he arrived to begin his job, it was discovered that the small plastic pull-cart that he used for delivering the mail was broken. This one thing set off a meltdown requiring that the head of the program to be summoned to the college to calm him down and get him back under control. It was a rather frightening situation for all concerned.
There was also a female program participant who wasn't autisic, but most definitely didn't have age-appropriate IQ. This became very apparent in her attempts to complete the assigned task. And it seemed so shocking as based solely on her looks, you would never guess that her intelligence was so compromised. Sad to say, this impairment contributed to her having a baby that her mother was primarily taking care of.
I had one more exposure to an autistic grown child situation - this time at the supermarket. The mother was desperately attempting to check out a rather large amount of groceries using the automatic self-checkout that had a small item limit. Consequently, the electronic apparatus would stall indicating there was a problem w/ the weight limit and thus, adding to this woman's frustration. The hold up was causing a longer and longer line of waiting checkout customers to accumulate. Meanwhile, her fully grown, very tall autistic son was moving around in a very disconcerting manner. He came right up to me w/ his face a mere inches away from mine. Having a male of that size suddenly thrust his face in front of yours and knowing he's not 'normal', and thus unpredictable, was quite unnerving. The waiting customers had to yell at the store employee working that section to override the electronic checkout so that the woman could finish processing her items. It made me wonder if this was a typical aspect of her everyday life or if she was simply w/o her usual help that day or that the usual accomodation for her son was unavailable.
As to the autistic man in the referenced news article, I was somewhat surprised that he was a licensed driver who could drive himself. Wouldn't it make sense for his license to indicate he was autistic much in the same way that the wearing of glasses as a condition to driving is noted? Did his license plate indicate a handicapped driver? It could be that the situation went wrong from the get-go and the autistic man was too flummoxed and/or agitated to even be able to produce his license for the officer. Although it can be imagined how badly such a situation could go, shooting him down could not possibly be warranted except that now disobeying an officer's command in any way at any time has become official justification to do just that. I can only hope the citizens of this town take action to succesfully confront such an authoritarian mindset.
