Woman with Aspergers shot by Police

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12 Feb 2015, 12:08 am

I never had a meltdown where I walked around brandishing a knife at random people or the police powering thru pepper spray and tasers all the while. Either this woman had some severe psychotic break, was doing something like PCP, or was committing suicide by cop. If you can't be reasoned with, if pepper spray and taser have no effect on you, and you continue advancing on police with a deadly weapon then this will be the result 100% of the time. You can't expect the police to try to physically restrain somebody given that situation, it's kill or be killed.

People really need to understand that it is pretty much impossible to shoot to injure and that's why police or anybody else that is trained to handle a gun are trained to shoot center mass. Shooting somebody in the leg is often times lethal and does not disarm the threat, these cops are not such great shots that they can shoot a weapon out of somebody's hands. This is not the movies, you risk missing and hitting a bystander which is not all too uncommon for police to do already.

League_Girl
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12 Feb 2015, 12:25 am

B19 wrote:

People in extreme mental distress/illness typically have a greatly impaired ability to make rational choices based on rational thinking. That is why the rest of us have to create safer systems for them, and for us. And any of us can potentially become one of them.

And that's why they shouldn't be alone in public.

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r84shi37
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12 Feb 2015, 12:42 am

progaspie wrote:

Whatever the media is trying to convey on this one, watch the video of the girl outside Hungry Jacks. She is sipping on a drink cup in one hand and has a carving knife dangling out of the other hand. She doesn't look threatening to me. The next photo of her, you see five cops with their weapons drawn over a dead body lying on the ground. This is just ridiculous. It doesn't take much imagination to see that the girl is out of it. So why do the police just focus on the weapon rather than the person holding the weapon, before they draw their guns and shoot the poor girl dead. Now I hear the cop who shot the girl dead is receiving counselling. Well, if the cop hadn't shot the girl dead, he wouldn't now be receiving counselling and the dead girls family wouldn't now be suffering.
So is it too much to ask that the police get proper training to deal with situations like this. It seems the first resort is to taser the culprit. When that doesn't work the police resort to pepper spray. When that doesn't work they appear to have an open licence to shoot the culprit dead. Why not talk to the culprit in a non-threatening manner in the first instance. If that doesn't work and the culprit lunges at them use all their physical training to fend off the lunge and then attempt to disarm the person. After all the police have batons don't they? Isn't it worth the risk of injury to the police officer to attempt to disarm the girl with the knife, rather than have her death on his conscience for the rest of his life?

With all due respect, I agree with the cops on this one.

We don't know what was going through her head. Regardless, If someone ran towards me with a knife, then I wouldn't hesitate to shoot them.

Try to remove emotion from the situation. You are biased because you have AS and the person who died had AS. If you remove the fact that she had AS and the fact that she was a woman then the headline would be something like...

Person wielding knife shot and killed by police officers in UK

Now lets look at it from the cops' point of view...

You're walking around thinking about donuts or whatever they do and then this woman with a Mike Myers style kitchen knife starts moving (probably running) toward you. You have been trained to draw your gun and shoot at things that threaten innocent lives. It was probably instinctive.

Heavens knows what was in the woman's mind... I would guess it was a suicide... but who knows?

The point is that you and many others in this thread are letting details that really aren't significant to the then and there of the situation cloud your judgement. Should the cops have asked for her driver's license so they could look her up for mental illness? Should they have asked her why she was approaching (probably running) at them with a knife? They didn't have time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

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12 Feb 2015, 1:57 am

Dillogic wrote:

B19 wrote:

I have ASD and am quite capable of going out in public by myself. If I should have a meltdown, do I deserve to be shot FFS?

How not to get shot in this instance, 101:

-Don't wield a weapon in public
-drop it if you are when ordered to
-don't walk towards the police with it in hand when you're constantly ordered to stop and drop it

If you're incapable of following this, you probably shouldn't be out in public by yourself.

I agree completely with what Dillogic is saying here. She brought it entirely on herself with her behavior. It's irrelevant if she was having a meltdown. If she can't behave like a sane person in public, then she shouldn't be out on her own.

I also find Attwood's statement disturbing, that we have "difficulty reading social cues and social conditions". Anyone, aspie or not, who don't get that they shouldn't walk around with a big knife, or who don't obey orders from police to drop said weapon, have other problems that AS. This isn't hard to get.
Whatever problems she had, is not the problem of the police. Safety first.

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Dillogic
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12 Feb 2015, 2:39 am

B19 wrote:

If you get to the point where you're disturbed enough to think and act irrationally, you're then potentially a danger to others and yourself.

When this happens, it's usually not an extremely rare event for the person (a history of meltdowns in other words). Again, this person shouldn't be out by herself if she experienced these things.

And we don't know what the cause was anyway, so Attwood is just speculating. She could have been psychotic, suicidal and/or homicidal. Just because she has/had AS doesn't mean that has anything to do with it.

B19
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12 Feb 2015, 2:42 am

I agree, we can't know that - it may be one way or the other.

Dillogic
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12 Feb 2015, 2:53 am

progaspie wrote:

The girl is having a meltdown. How could she be expected to respond rationally to an order to drop her knife? Also, how is pepper spraying and tassering her going to make her behave more rationally? If someone pepper sprayed me or tassered me I don't think I would be behaving more rationally. Another point is, if you watch the video, the girl looked to be aged about 16 rather than her stated age of 22. How then does the girl appear to be such a threat to five police officers that one deems it necessary to shoot her dead? As an earlier poster stated, police are equipped with body amour, thick shoes and batons to protect themselves.

Assuming she was having one (no one knows).

Does meltdown = unable to control oneself? If so, then she shouldn't be outside in the public by herself. It's not on other people and the police to allow themselves to be exposed to potentially dangerous people.

The non-lethal weapons having little effect do show something was amiss, but how we would act based on it being used on us during a meltdown doesn't need to apply here.

As I mentioned previously, 5 people can rush and attempt to disarm someone with a knife (which may end up being lethal anyway depending on many factors), but it only takes one quick stab to the neck to inflict a fatal injury (which isn't covered in armor). Any female adult of normal physical ability can inflict such a wound. You can think the police should take risks just in case the individual is psychotic, autistic or something, but that's really criminal enabling and apologizing; it doesn't matter if it's autism or just wanting to kill some people, the act ends up being the same.

The only thing that can be done is to have police better equipped and trained against melee armed individuals (riot gear), but other areas will suffer when you do this, so you'd have to weigh it all up. I'd rather the mobile officers primarily armed and trained with sidearms, as it can deal with melee and firearm equipped individuals.

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12 Feb 2015, 3:12 am

Around the world there's a huge problem with police-functioning; recrutement, training and armement.

Simultaneously we see a huge power-enforcement of the lower functioning NTs everywhere, or am I getting old ?

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12 Feb 2015, 3:30 am

Jacoby wrote:

Thank you.

I have had bear mace in the face. You wish the cops would kill you, it hurts that bad.

Very few people can shake off a tazer.

Less cops, more people doing whatever the hell they want. Come to Detroit. We are living it now. That woman wouldn't have gotten a raised eye brow by police on the East Side. Why waste a bullet. The 25F weather with the -20F wind chill will do the job.

Who has meltdowns that you just pick up a blade or weapon and wander around? My husband doesn't remember his meltdowns at all. I wouldn't feel really secure seeing him arm himself in the middle of it.

Dillogic
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12 Feb 2015, 3:36 am

Tawaki wrote:

Come to Detroit.

That's pretty much a [constant] low intensity war zone compared to Sydney.

heavenlyabyss
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12 Feb 2015, 3:41 am

This makes me so angry.

Let's consider the possibility that she was high first: NEVER walk around in public high. The police will shoot you.

Let's consider the second possibility: She was in meltdown mode. Police could have done better.

This is so sad. ALWAYS suck up to the police and do exactly what they want. Your life depends on it.

cyberdad
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12 Feb 2015, 4:28 am

Just an update
http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act ... 7217562712

She has a rather harmless and friendly face. Quite tragic.

progaspie
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12 Feb 2015, 6:16 am

I have trouble accepting the world I live in. When I look at her photo I just want to cry.

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12 Feb 2015, 6:20 am

I'm not in a big hurry to agree that she couldn't comply with police because of asperger's. I can understand why it would be difficult but I don't know any logical reason to carry a knife openly in broad daylight like she was. But she was having a "meltdown" why was she carrying a damn knife in broad daylight? Even if she was, why couldn't she just drop the knife or run away, not run at police carrying a god damn knife? I think the media is just sensationalizing the heck out of asperger's on this one. I bet there is a lot of misinformation both on the woman and the events that actually unfolded. But I still want to know why she had a knife.

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The_Walrus
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12 Feb 2015, 9:11 am

Point of information: there are non-American English-speaking countries that are not the UK.

New South Wales is in Australia.
Sydney is in Australia
The Daily Telegraph of Australia printed in Australia.

darkphantomx1
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12 Feb 2015, 9:46 am

Society has taught us to never hit woman. So lets just say ur in battle and a woman with a gun or knife is running at you, you would probably hesitate for a second because of the fact shes a woman. Then you'd come to your senses and realize this woman is trying to kill me.

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