Thursday, February 2, 2012

Police Killed a 15 Year old Autistic Kid in Chicago!

So I was on Twitter this morning and I have @earlyautism on my twitter and they give news and info on a lot of Autism things that are going on. And today I saw something that totally worried me and I thought it was so badly handled.

BTW here is the link to the actual article. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-calumet-city-shooting-20120202,0,6999817.story

An autistic 15 year old was killed by Police, he was diagnosed with Asperger's when he was 9. Now this is not the first time that the police has been called in regards to Stephon Watts. Steven Watts (his father) mentioned in the article that I read that he was advised by the child's doctors and social workers to call police every time Stephon would become agitated, because Stephon was 5'10 and 220 pounds (at 15) and he has punched his mother in the face before, and the cops have been called at least 10 times sense 2010.
So the Chicago police knew that that house was a red flag because there was an autistic child living in that house with past insidents.
The situation was, Stephon did not want to go to school and so his father took away his computer and took it to the basement, Stephon was at the moment of the incident in the basement with his father when the police came, Stephon was holding a butter knife (yes, I said a BUTTER knife) and so the cops felt threaten and so they shot him twice and Stephon was killed.

So there is a few things that I would like to point out, the Chicago police had no idea how to deal with a child with autism (NONE WHATSOEVER) so obviously they are not trained to deal with the mentally disabled nor with autistic children, that's sad, and something that especially police officers SHOULD know, and know how to handle.
Another, if the police knew that the child had Autism and that he became violent and that that property had a red flag because of past incidents.. why not handle the situation better?? why not disarmed the kid and calm him down by holding him down on the floor? why was that not an option?
Another thing that worries me from a parent point of view, this kid was 15 years old, and he was 5'10 and 220 pounds... my son is 4 about to be 5 and he is 3'1/2 feet tall and 58 pounds and extremely strong... what the hell am I going to do? and am like 5' ft.. well my driver license says 5'2.. what am I going to do when his older and bigger??

2 comments:

  1. This is terrible that a 15 yr old autistic young man was shot in the head and leg and killed by the Calumet city police that knew excatly what they were going into.
    I have a thirteen year old autistic son and i don't think i would call police after this

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  2. I totally agree, I think that either they are not being trained to deal with special needs kids or adults, or they just ignore the training. And it shows them in a horrible light because they knew what they were getting into. Very true.

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