octopus_ink , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Here’s a hypothetical for you, if your son had an episode and took someone hostage with a knife, you wouldn’t call the police?

Sure, OK, you have found a corner case. Bravo, I guess? We can pretend I was using the modern definition of the word “literally.” 😉

It doesn’t change the overall point.

Here’s a hypothetical for you, which is far more likely than your own for an autistic kid. My son doesn’t even have the concept of holding someone hostage, and I venture to guess this is true for lots of others on the spectrum.

Let’s say he has a knife in his hand because that’s what he happened to have in his hand (somehow) when his fight or flight mechanism was triggered, and now he’s massively overstimulated, and in a meltdown. He’s not trying to hurt anyone (I’m not convinced he knows stabbing someone is an option a knife provides), but he’s waving it around because he is very active with his arms when he’s overstimulated, and he might even try to grapple with someone while holding it, again not really recognizing the potential for great harm. It’s going to be a real challenge to get it from him safely, and someone could get badly injured.

Do I call the cops in that circumstance? Not if I want to see him sans-bulletholes again. (Not a direct example of what I described, but close enough for these purposes.)

Edited to add - I read the story in OP, or I read about Linden Cameron, or I read about Elijah McClain (and others) and that’s my son there, or may as well be. Elijah McClain especially - heartbreaking. Nothing about any of those circumstances seems like an outcome I couldn’t imagine with any given group of police. I have no faith that more than a vanishingly small percentage would even see the problem with how these situations were handled, let alone try to do it differently.