Woman with Aspergers shot by Police

Post Reply New Topic

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.

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.

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.

yahoo link

I think this is tragic, but wielding a weapon in public is likely to get you shot. They tried to subdue her with spray first and they performed CPR after. I don't think their action was out of order. But sad nonetheless.

Sydney's not all Harbour Bridges and Opera Houses - the western suburbs are and have always been a very violent part of town.

Love the net idea!

The murder rate in Sydney is about 2 in 100,000 people (close to the Oz average). Compare that to a whopping 45 per 100,000 of Detroit (very far from the US average).

Interesting to compare international rates in countries that share a history of relativele recent pioneer cultures and generally similar cultural values:

http://www.justice.govt.nz/publications ... ared-to-us

NZ rates of killing are (sadly) about twice as high as Australia's, though hugely lower on a per capita basis than the USA.

All of this, forever.

if you use a gun and aim in the direction of a person you sentence them to death, there is always the possibility of killing them , totally unimportant where you aim.

also no reaction on a taser or spray? when it is at that point the person porobably wouldnt even notice losing a leg and continue to close in on you.

no reaction to anything the police did , is getting you killed if you are armed. they are humans too.

do you favor a dead police officer, who tried multiple things to stop the person or a dead person who was armed and not reacting to anything?

Probably because it was a young female adult with AS being gunned down. There's a lot of...what you'd call propaganda on the mind there, hitting little empathy buttons.

It's the same when it's a poor black male being gunned down.

Certain facts of the case mean little when compared to the feelings involved. People like to think they're rational beings, but as soon as the neurotransmitters light up, it's hard to look past them.

Okay, maybe it wasn't suicide-by-cop, alternative explanation: http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com/60303.html

The one thing I don't get is why should would have had a knife in the first place. Regardless, it's seems to be clear she likely wasn't an actual threat to the cops, but appeared as such at the time. I don't blame the police for their response though, she appeared as a threat and they followed protocol perfectly, while the end result was undesirable, they did everything right. Problem is there isn't a working protocol for dealing with autistic people so that someone trapped and going into meltdown can cooldown, even people without knives end up getting killed in this manner, but I can't think of solution that can't be exploited and lead to a serious threat if the person is in fact a typical violent threat. These is something we need to find a solution to, rather than just accepting status quo where we might be killed on a bad day, and saying autistic people should not be allowed in public is NOT an acceptable solution.

Oh hell no, police should NEVER, EVER, be called in the event of a meltdown. That's essentially calling the executioner for someone guilty of being upset. We need to educate people about this.




I have no words for this, it just makes me sad that you'd say such a thing. I'm going to blunt and say I *really* dislike your attitude towards other autistic people, this is by no means the first post or thread I've seen from you which expressed a victim blaming, anti-autistic attitude. Anyway, she worked as a teacher's aide, so she wouldn't have had carers, she WAS the carer.



If she had a meltdown, it would have been when the police surrounded her, not when she got the knife. Who knows why she had the knife, the most likely explanation I have is that she was attempting suicide by cop.