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Study - We are more likely to interact with police

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ASPartOfMe
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14 Jun 2017, 12:19 am

Police officers agitate people with autism, worsen situation in a third of encounters, study finds Ontario-wide study also found that people with autism are more likely to interact with police By Nick Boisvert, CBC News

Quote:
In an 18-month study involving 284 young people and adults with autism in Ontario, 16 per cent reported having an interaction with police — a number far higher than the general population, according to researchers.

In around a third of those incidents, police action was found to increase the person with autism's agitation, worsening the situation.

That escalation resulted in the use of physical restraint in around a fifth of the interactions looked at in the study.


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leejosepho
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14 Jun 2017, 10:38 am

When I first saw "more likely to interact with police" in the title of this thread, I heard that in a positive way. I do not in any way disagree with anything said in the article, but I have never had any trouble with police officers other than one who once kept telling me to stand back every time I tried to get a little closer so I could hear what he was saying. Three of them had pulled me over and were searching my car on the shoulder of a busy highway, but the one who was questioning me did not seem to care that I was quite uncomfortable in the hot sun and could not hear him well. But even then I had no problem with being cooperative because I understood how and why they had wrongly suspected me of something and that they still had to do what they were doing even though I had clearly -- quietly and with a smile -- told them a huge mistake had been made in their suspecting me of wrong-doing in the first place.


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lostonearth35
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14 Jun 2017, 1:36 pm

Just the fact that this article said "person with autism" several times made me anxious. And angry and disgusted by their belief this is the correct way to address autistic people.

I'm also left-handed, but no one calls me "person with left-handism". :roll:



Kitty4670
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14 Jun 2017, 1:37 pm

I never got in trouble with the police.



naturalplastic
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15 Jun 2017, 5:55 pm

That quote in the original post said that in survey of X number of young people and adults with autism there were Y number of interactions with the police: 16 times higher than the general population.

Autistics are majority male. And the survey was of autistics who were "young people and adults". So the sample group was mostly young and mostly male.

We all know that the young males get more attention from the police in proportion to their numbers than does "the general population". So right there the article appears to be flawed.