Therapist trying to help autistic client shot by police

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Looks like it's safer to be a gangster there in the States these days if you are black. At least you would be armed. Now we know which is the favoured target when given the choice between black or disabled.

confirmeddude wrote:

Psychological evaluations are worthless. Consider the MMPI. "Do you like Popular Mechanics magazine?" is one of the questions. If the average person answers yes, it means that you're a potential axe murderer. If you're applying for certain jobs it can be a positive, though: e.g., a potentially aggressive go-getter CEO. In neither case does the question bear any relation to reality. I'm surprised Popular Mechanics never sued them.

The MMPI also has truth-telling questions that are fraudulent. I don't remember the specific questions anymore (I knew about this from working with probation & parole over a third of a century ago), but I remember the problem with them. They asked similar questions at different points in the test. Your answers were themselves unimportant as long as they matched. A mismatch meant you were a liar. That's potentially devastating for someone with Aspergers (unknown at the time), because we tend to take things literally. So one question asked whether something was "frequently" true and another whether it was "usually" true. It is entirely possible to honestly answer these questions differently. Case in point: Is it frequently true that the digit 0 is part of any whole number from 0 to 1000? Yes, obviously. But is it usually true? No, also obviously. A mismatch doesn't make you a liar.

I'm sure they've updated the MMPI by now. Maybe these days they ask whether you like some TV show instead. But it doesn't really matter. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe, shrinks had perfected their techniques such that they could accurately detect or even produce any reaction whenever they wanted. That's just not the case in the real world.

Moreover, these tests don't actually make determinations. It depends on what the test administrator is looking for and therefore what he/she picks. As I mentioned earlier, you can be either a potential axe murderer or be a highly placed candidate for a CEO based on your answer to the Popular Mechanics question, and the choice is with whoever is giving the test. You can be sure that any psych test administered to police will favor whatever it is that the police department really wants. Maybe they even select people who like Popular Mechanics to be cops.

Some articles are saying the officer was shooting at the autistic man, for "failure to comply".
Despite being told that the person was autistic, and despite the man not being aggressive in any way.
Would it be okay to shoot a deaf person who can't hear commands, or a person in a wheelchair for not lying on the ground?

Failure to comply is not legitimate reason for lethal force, the only excuse I think they can give is that they thought he had a weapon which doesn't make a lot of sense given that the guy appears to be obviously autistic and there was a guy saying he was a therapist and went out of his way to appear nonthreatening and told officers that it was only a toy car. Not that this shooting is in anyway justifiable but the climate is so tense now with law enforcement that I'm not surprised to see these guys become more paranoid and trigger happy, I just hope for peace on the streets since violence will do none of us good.

We used to be called 'citizens'. Now law enforcement refers to us as 'civilians'. Perhaps it's a mistake to give preferential hiring to war vets? Especially given that we do practically nothing to help our Iraq/Afghanistan veterans stand down and reintegrate fully into civilian life. Instead, we hire them on as law enforcement after training them that civilians - usually darker skinned, other-ethnicity ones, especially (since that's who they saw) - are all potential radicalized deadly threats.

Layer on top of that the very disturbing trend of law enforcement shooting anyone who isn't perceived as complying, such as people with mental illnesses, deaf people, developmentally disabled people...something is *seriously* wrong with law enforcement. Especially when it seems they are more concerned with covering up and denial than actually fixing the problem.

Also, what's with using a variant of the slur, "ret*d" (ie "guntard") as a derogatory term on this thread? It's rather disappointing, given how often "autistic" is used the same way against us by NT people. And how there are people here on WP who are themselves developmentally disabled, you know?

That is what the police union is saying
Florida Cop Who Shot Therapist Was Aiming for Autistic Patient and Missed, Officials Say

QFT.

YippySkippy wrote:

Been there, done that (PDF)

edit:

also

Police beat, tasered innocent deaf man until he became unconscious

Makes me sick.
"Whoops, we didn't mean to shoot the innocent black guy. We meant to shoot the innocent autistic guy."
"Oh, well then. Carry on."

I have a minor actual hearing problem: can't hear certain high-pitched sounds. I'm not too worried about that one. For a year, I had an ear blockage due to allergies that kept me from hearing, but that's long gone since I moved from that area.

But I do have an Aspergers difficulty with understanding sounds when there is surrounding noise. Once I almost got into trouble with a cop in a large city with loud background traffic when I walked against a "Don't Walk" sign and didn't hear or understand him when he apparently told me to stop (someone pointed him out to me and that he wanted me to stop, so I did then). Traffic encounters I've had have all been in places without significant background noise, so no problem there. If something did ever happen, I wouldn't have any evidence of deafness, because I don't have any. I'm not sure how my claim of not hearing or understanding a cop against background noise would hold up (assuming I even survived the encounter to offer an explanation), but from all the available cases it's not hard to guess.

I find this video really upsetting, because the person who was shot was just trying to do a good deed, and appeared to comply with everything that was asked of him.

Even if that statement was completely true, and even if the patient was holding the therapist at gunpoint, I don't see how the officer could have reasonably fired. They were less than a foot away from one another, and if his statement is true, then obviously his aim wasn't good enough to hit a target accurately from his range (especially since he fired three shots). In my opinion firing under those conditions would only put the therapist in even greater danger, since he could either hit the wrong person (like what happened), or hit the patient non-lethally and cause him to react violently towards his hostage. I'm no police officer, but I would think the protocol in those types of hostage situations would be to attempt to negotiate, and only fire if there is a significant separation between the hostage/assailant, and even then only if someone's life appears to be in imminent danger. I think that they sometimes bring in highly trained snipers as a last resort, but if they did that in this case, they'd clearly see that neither man posed any danger through their scopes.

Ok so presumably if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he felt the Autistic patient was a threat, either to himself, or to Mr Kinsey.
So what part of shooting the innocent man, suddenly made the threat go away?

The officers story makes no sense to me.



Either I'm overlooking something or that story makes no sense at all.

I wonder how they're going to spin this to blame Black Lives Matter.

tyr·an·ny
ˈtirənē/
noun
noun: tyranny; plural noun: tyrannies

cruel and oppressive government or rule.
"people who survive war and escape tyranny"
synonyms: despotism, absolute power, autocracy, dictatorship, totalitarianism, Fascism; More
oppression, repression, subjugation, enslavement;
authoritarianism, bullying, severity, cruelty, brutality, ruthlessness
"they will not soon forget his brutal tyranny"
a nation under cruel and oppressive government.
cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.

Source Link:
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It's hard to escape the definition, no matter where we turn for excuses.

I suppose we could say this is just hunting for humans, but I'm not sure that helps.

If it's any consolation, then... lying-unarmed-on-your-back-with-your-hands-in-the-air-while-black may not be a crime, after all.

... unless the police officer has crappy aim, of course...

The cop will probably fired for not shooting the autistic guy. No demonstrations or riots involved for shooting him. Public would accept that autistics stims are threat the the therapist's life.