Would you want him Tased or hit by a car?
September 20, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
That’s what Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County (California) sheriff’s department said in defense of sheriff’s deputies use of a Taser stun gun on a 15-year-old Taylor Karras. Karras, who has autism, had fled from his parents during a visit to the Regional Center of Orange County in Westminster about 11:30 a.m. Monday. Karras had gone there for counseling, which he did not want. From today’s LA Times:
About nine hours later, his mother saw him about one block from their home — 16 miles from the center — on the ground and handcuffed by deputies.
Amormino said Tustin police called the Sheriff’s Department after a pedestrian reported a suspicious person. Taylor was pushing a shopping cart down Newport Avenue near La Loma Drive, near his home in North Tustin. With no money, he apparently had walked home.
Doris Karras said her son, who is 5 feet 10 and has a beard, looks older than 15.
Amormino said Taylor yelled something when approached by a deputy, then ran across Newport Avenue, causing two cars to swerve. It was then that a deputy shot him with a Taser gun.
The deputy handcuffed the youth to keep him out of traffic, Amormino said.
Taser guns use compressed nitrogen to propel two darts that attach to the body. The darts are connected to the gun by a wire and deliver a 50,000-volt shock at five-second intervals to incapacitate a suspect.
Doris Karras said that the police did not need to use the stun gun; she had alerted a number of police agencies regarding her son being missing: “‘This was a very aggressive response/…….. [Taylor] didn’t have any weapon on him. He didn’t even have a pencil.’” Karras noted that her son She said her son would have followed the deputies’ directions had he not felt threatened.
And he indeed must have.
Related story: On December 12, 2006, 18-year-old Kevin Colindres was restrained—”hogtied”—by Miami police. He suffered irreparable brain damage and died on January 5, 2007.
Working in emergency services is a thankless job. We need to avoid second guessing them when we can. Taylor being hit by a car and possible killed would have been far worse than what did happen. Unless we were present at the scene why should we assume that the police officer who spoke to him did so in a threatening manner? After nine hours “on the run” Taylor was no doubt hungry and disoriented at best and probably in no mood to be reasonable.
Amormino set up the old “false dichotomy” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma), reducing the situation to two choices – one bad, the other one (conveniently) what was done. As though those were the only options.
How does Amormino plan to get Taylor to ever trust anyone in uniform again? What happens the next time he runs/wanders off?
Given that choice, and that choice only- I would rather have my son tased than hit by a car (I work with Tramatic Brain Injuries).
However, nothing is just that cut and dry-
It’s a total false dichotomy.
And I have yet to meet a police department that ISN’T threatening right off the bat. Keep in mind that yelling, rushing at someone, making demands, often times even the uniforms (because parents threaten to call the police in an effort to produce ‘proper behavior’–when all it gets is, well, more of the same or your kid beaten up by people in uniform, even when said kid is pretty small) can be percieved as threats fairly easily.
I’m near 10 years older than Taylor and cops scare the shit out of me.
Kristina, again, I end up feeling that it’s less than helpful to see the world from a [disability]-centric POV, even when you have a disability. It lands you in a world of unrealistic shoulds. Not unrealistic because people can’t be trained to consider others (though it’s hard to do), but unrealistic because you can’t expect people to look at something with an ordinary explanation (high-as-kite/maybe-armed young man fleeing authority) and presume that they’re seeing something unusual (nice autistic teen).
We don’t want teachers and assorted other unqualified people making snap diagnoses. Unless people with autism are going to be clearly labeled as having autism, then even with good training, there’s no way for a cop to know that a man-sized kid is autistic and should be treated in some particular way. And how would you propose that work? Subcutaneous RFIDs that can be read from down the street?
Orange County is a huge place, populationwise, with a lot of crime. I wouldn’t expect police to recognize the problem on the basis of a phone call from the mother, or even a scanned photo sent to police laptops. My sleepy town has about 60K people and a police force of about 45 cops, and that’s about the very top of what I’d expect for timely recognition and kid-glove treatment stemming from a digital photo and phone call.
I sympathize tremendously with the family. In some respects it’s not much different from having a family member with Alzheimers. Fortunately for those families, old people are not generally a big threat to public safety. An old, wandering, erratic person is likely to be viewed as senile or suffering from Alzheimers. But young men make up a large proportion of real violent criminals, and the police reaction is going to be different.
There are times when adult children and spouses are forced to recognize that they cannot keep their relatives safe, can’t watch over them all the time. That’s when they go to nursing homes. I don’t know this young man’s history, I don’t know if he’s run away before, but if this is something he does repeatedly, then for his own safety it may be important for him to be in a residential facility. I don’t think it’s fair to ask the cops to put themselves at risk with real, fleeing, drug-addled young men in a high-crime area just because once in a long while, the young men might actually be autistic 15-year-olds. I guess another alternative would be to move to a small town where the police would all know Taylor, but there are tradeoffs.
Kassiane, I’m scared of cops, too. I came here from a much larger city where the cops are not necessarily your friend, and where I’d been threatened myself for complaining about the questioning I got after being attacked (questions about what I was wearing, etc.). Living here has taught me something I knew and forgot long ago: You need to go introduce yourself to local cops. Cops are people too. Most of the time they deal with ugly things, but in my experience they’re very protective of, and careful with, people they know. Something I didn’t know till recently is that plenty of cops would like to have old-fashioned neighborhood beats, where they can get to know people, but the budgets don’t allow it.
Interestingly, my 4-year-old came up with this on her own yesterday. We’re having a local debate about whether campus cops should have guns. I asked her opinion, and right away she said no, because they might shoot “someone who’s good on accident.” (Which is also my view, btw.) So I told her that, well, the police say sometimes they have to fight bad guys here with guns. “Oh,” she says, “then maybe they should have guns.” So I asked her how she’d solve the problem of their shooting good people accidentally. She said, “If they’re new people they have to go say hello so the policemans — the policemen, and the police ladies — know they’re good. That way they won’t shoot at them.” And apart from disquieting implications about registering with police, I think that’s not a bad idea.
Taylor got shot close to home. Imagine if the policemans had known him.
Re: RFIDs, where I live another parent told me there is an RFID program – it’s a bracelet rather than subcutaneous
Anyone who is autistic qualifies for the program at no cost. I’m not sure who else can participate.
This parent’s ASD daughter had one, and if she wandered off it could be used to help locate her. I’m not sure what the range is, but we live in a rural area so it would have to be fairly good to be useful here.
I haven’t checked into it yet, as I only just found out about it and haven’t had time to follow-up, but it is an interesting idea.
I’ve had both a Jersey City cop and, now, a senior who is planning on becoming one in my classes and it reminds that it’s always a good time to educate about disabilities and difference. As ever, the LA Times article does not provide enough information to make real judgments by; most of all, it’d be good to know more about Taylor from his family, and from Taylor himself.
What I would hope is that the OC sherriff’s department can learn from this case about pro-active measures such as the bracelets that Ian describes, or a Project Lifesaver program.
I want to draw you, and your readers’, attention to John Wills Lloyd’s post
http://ebdblog.com/2007/09/21/officer-training/
“Without additional information, it’s hard to make a reasoned determination of whether the officer should or should not have used the level of force represented by the stun gun. However, it is relatively easy to reiterate a point that I’ve stressed in earlier entries on this blog: Societies deserve to have law enforcement officers who are prepared—explicitly trained to mastery—to recognize and respond appropriately when they encounter our children and youths with disabilities.”
…if only the cops had something bright that flashes and makes a lot of noise to alert other drivers to stop before hitting the boy? Something that might’ve alerted drivers that something was going on?
Liz Ditz quoted:
“Societies deserve to have law enforcement officers who are prepared—explicitly trained to mastery—to recognize and respond appropriately when they encounter our children and youths with disabilities.”
…and adults too.
What, Rochelle, like the sirens and lights on their CARS????
Kassaine, I think you might be right. So, I guess the question *should* have been:
Would you want him Tased or us to turn on those flashy lights and loud sirens?
Hmmm, which do you think Taylor would’ve prefered?
I’m sorry, I think that’s wrongheaded.
In a county of 3 million people, the cops had no reasonable way of knowing that this was an autistic 15-year-old instead of someone more ordinary: A young man, behaving strangely and fleeing police, maybe high, maybe armed. In a relatively high-crime area, I don’t think you want cops to look routinely at people like that and say “Oh wait, can y’all just let him cross safely,” rather than saying, “Get him now.”
What happened was extremely unfortunate, no doubt. But much of the responsibility rests with the parents. Appearances count, as Kristina well knows. They live in a place where police must be aggressive. Their boy looks much older than he is. There is nothing about his appearance that unequivocably broadcasts disability. If he appears to be a young man who’s trouble, that’s how police will treat him. That’s the problem the parents have to deal with. Police are not social workers, not therapists, not diagnosticians.
I still don’t buy it.
An ounce of compassion, whether the boy looked 50 years-old and wasn’t autistic.
There’s nothing wrong with expecting police to use tasers as a *last resort,* whether the intended target is me, you, Taylor, or my son. Just because they have the capacity to use extreme measures doesn’t give them the right to.
I know that police officers often have mistaken autistic children for children under influence of drugs or generally violent, and the circumstances behind this just don’t surprise me.
Perhaps rather than placing blame or arguing against it we should be talking about educating officers about autistic children and the violent outbursts and the like?
Cliff
Police in a lot of areas HAVE been educated. THere’s at least one guy who makes a living doing such (Dennis Debbaudt. He’s pretty good).
But the thing is, they don’t WANT to learn so much of the time. At least none of the ones in 4 states I’ve come across. Hell, getting first responders to read a medic alert bracelet is pulling teeth. You’d think I was asking them to read Hamlet.
We have trouble getting psychologists and neurologists to diagnose correctly, and for some of them, it’s about all they do. We’ve just had a conversation about the impossibility of making insta-diagnoses. I do not think it reasonable to expect a cop to make snap diagnoses of (check one) autism, schizophrenia, dissociative disorders, etc. when people are behaving strangely.
Let’s step back and look at this in a somewhat more pragmatic way. Assume that the cops will not be doing instant diagnoses at 200 feet. Assume you have a boy who’s likely to act strangely and run away from cops, or even attack cops. I don’t think some sort of general police sensitivity campaign about [neuro condition] is what you want to spend your time on. A [your boy] sensitivity campaign, though, could save his life. Taking him to the police station, to police events, to the police car parked at the curb…you know, this is how the cops learn that not all kids want to hear the siren. And how they get to know him as a good kid. Or, I don’t know, maybe there’s another solution that doesn’t involve unrealistic expectations of what the cops will or can do (and then getting upset when they fail to meet those expectations).
I keep hearing a strain of “the world should meet us on our terms” that I think is simply unrealistic unless you’re a large or very powerful part of the population. I deal with this myself. I’m a single mother with an ex who’s got a serious mental illness, but is otherwise generally kind and decent, and is part of our daily life. This is an unusual situation. I’ve learned over the last five years that in any new situation, I need to let the people in charge know our situation, and I keep in touch, keep them aware that we have an odd setup. It’ll be meaningless to them, or will just trigger their own stereotypes, but it means that when problems arise, they already know our setup, and with any luck I have some idea of their limitations. Then I can go to them, briefly lay out the problem, and propose an easy solution. They don’t have to try to digest everything at once.
Often the authorities respond well and offer much more help than I’d asked for; other times we take what we can get, and are patient. It took a few tries to get ex some county aid, because I wasn’t working at the time. I had to go show them that managing an ill man’s care and taking care of a baby was indeed working. My synagogue is definitely not set up for single-parent, low-income families; I’ve raised the issue of barriers to participation, and the people in charge don’t get it, but are OK with my developing an informal network so that we can come up with practical solutions that are easy to implement. And yes, I’m sensitive to the institution’s norms when I do these things. They’re not likely to go far out of their way for us, it’s not human nature. They also have what the engineers call operating limits. They’re set up to run a certain way. Force them beyond their limits routinely, or try to jerry-rig the machine to change the limits, and the institution isn’t going to last very long. That’s fine if you’re willing and able to build and run new institutions yourself, but if you’re not, you really may want to reconsider.
I’m reading an assumption that autism is an extreme minority. 1 in 150 does not make for an extreme minority. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some recognition, simply because it’s becoming more and more common.
I wouldn’t expect them to be trained to do a spot-on diagnosis, though, so don’t get me wrong there. Medic-alert bracelets are one way to go, for example, and I’m sure that there are other means of accomplishing that.
You’ve seem to have good luck regarding approaching police, where often in Reno I haven’t had the same experience even roughly consistently (on the other hand, I really was impressed with officers I met in Las Vegas). But I’m not sure how consistently everyone with an AS kid would register their kid with every police officer in the area.
Cliff
Gee, MY experience with disclosing to people in authority has gotten me:
-treated as though I lost 100 IQ points
-beaten to hell by police on hearsay
-nearly arrested for driving on a CLEAN RECORD because I had a medicalert on (that said, at the time, autism, PTSD, no restraints-I didn’t know I’m epileptic at the time)
-what normally counts as sexual assault at a hospital (involuntary catheterization)
-AND. My foot mangled.
Us meeting them halfway doesn’t mean us doing all the work. THEY need to do some too.
Cliff, when it comes to social changes, 1 in 150 is a vanishingly small minority. Consider the difficulty people with respiratory ailments have had in getting cigarettes out of restaurants and workplaces. About 1 in 12 people has some sort of respiratory condition. Consider how long it’s taken for women to get full property rights in the US. Over half the population is women.
And yes, that’s right, I live in a very broadminded, tolerant town, in a part of the world where hurry is viewed with some suspicion. I’m here on purpose. Even so, I’m careful not to push the limits unless I’m willing to do the work of creating and running some new institution or part of an institution.
It’s really easy to fall into that sense of “people should help, people should do more”. But really, people have their own problems, their own pressures. Even family has trouble meeting family’s needs. So while it’s just terrific when people step up out of the clear blue to work and help — and it happens a lot — I really don’t think you can expect people to go very far out of their way for you and yours. And you can’t expect it permanently. If you can build what you need into the system so it’s not a huge drain, then that’s great, but otherwise….I just don’t think it’s going to work.
In some ways it’s easy for me to see people’s limits because I live in a small city and I’ve been here a long time. There are only so many people to do the work, and often they’d love to do more to help but are just maxed. The thing is, though, that it’s really the same story everywhere. Big cities are just big, interconnected conglomerations of small cities and communities. I think in general people wish they could do more. But on the whole they already have trouble getting everything done that they’re supposed to do. What’s the average amount of sleep adults get now, six hours?
So maybe a more helpful question is: What is it reasonable and useful to ask for? How can parents and autistic people work with a majority which is not, when it comes down to it, likely to understand the world of autism — or devote a lot of time and money to it?
Kassiane, if your local authorities are as violent and insensitive as you say, have you looked into moving? If that’s not possible, do you have letters you can carry from social services people whom the police trust? Is there a mentor or protector who can intercede for you?
Amy, are you volunteering for any or all of those positions? Moving costs money. Something autistics don’t typically have. I don’t have family either. And they’re EXACTLY that violent anywhere. Ask someone, but only if you like watching people have violent flashbacks.
Kassiane, are there county service people? A disability services office? A women’s center? Any public agency — and if not public, do you have a counselor or therapist who might be connected to someone who could serve as an advocate? A state representative?
Moving is expensive when you’re poor, but it’s much less expensive than it used to be. There’s a lot more information available now, and it’s easier to make connections ahead of time. Easier to find out what places are like, where jobs are, what disability services are available, and what the gap is between advertised services and real services.
Police are violent anywhere when they believe they have to be. The definition of “when is force necessary” varies widely from place to place. So is public response to unnecessary violence.
We had an incident several years ago where a cop accidentally shot a young man who’d gone into his parents shop late at night. The cop was on a hair trigger and went over the edge. The community outcry was overwhelming, I believe the cop was either retired or left voluntarily, the police had to do an investigation and make changes, and a community-volunteer-staffed police oversight board was established. It exists to this day and is taken seriously, and reports annually on police use of force. We don’t have much of it, and what there is tends to be connected to narcotics. Places are not all alike.
I understand that social change is something hard to come by, and that, like anything, it’s not easy. And 1 in 150 isn’t the greatest population numbers, but it’s not a vanishing minority on the other hand. It’s generated a good deal of attention already. I’ve personally talked to officers about autism in general, so I know it’s on the radar.
But going up to police officers where I am (funny enough, I was talking to officers out of my area) would be… difficult. It seems that where you are that is possible and easy, and I’m glad that you’ve had that kind of relationship. But officers, in my experience, usually don’t have the time or energy to do that. They’d virtually need a PR section to add to their regular duties.
Generality protocol, to be honest, in the long run would probably be easier to handle than on an individual basis. Is it even vaguely practical to register one in every twelve person with every restaurant they go to so that when they come on premise that smoking just happens to go away, as opposed to modifying the current system to eliminate smoking in restaurants? I think, honestly, things have to be done in generalities because people can only make time for one person or so, not populations, and we shouldn’t need to balance for those who happen to know the relevant people.
Cliff
Cliff, unfortunately, the point’s that the generality protocol isn’t likely to happen. The individual protocol is a “save yourself” measure. Along the way it may do some good in general education, but I wouldn’t count that as the main reason to do it. The main reason is to increase the number of cops who’ll say, “Oh, it’s just Cliff, he’s all right.”
Police often have a PRish person, and sometimes community outreach, usually related to safety/schools. I’d actually started with this with the idea that the mother would be taking the boy around to police to introduce the boy; I think it’d be a harder thing to do on your own, unless you were willing to commit to some volunteer work.
And my point was that general protocol is going to have to happen, though not easily, simply because of the increasing need, and usually with need it does.
And though I understand that you could manipulate a niche and use the time of the officer, not everyone can and will do that, and we’re now making choices of us above others. I’m not particularly interested in the police in regards to myself, but I think this is a problem that we as a society needs to address, and I think it is addressable, though not necessarily easy.
Cliff
OK, Cliff. We just disagree. I really don’t think that 1 in 150, or even 1 in 75, is going to be a high enough threshhold to prompt social change unless that group is highly disproportionately powerful. I think it has to be on the order of 1 in 10 before people really take notice, and even then it’s tremendous work.
Much of that, I think, is just because so many people aren’t directly affected by it. Yes, you can point out the connections, but they don’t feel it and find themselves forced to deal with it daily. I wouldn’t be reading this blog if I hadn’t noticed things in myself, and wondered for decades, really, about that one-letter difference between artist and autist. That’s the only daily contact I have with it. There’s a boy down the street I see in passing once every few weeks. If I know other people who are autistic, I’m blind to it, and I don’t see that they have any particular autism-related trouble getting by.
Contrast that with the trouble people have at work and school when they have childcare and eldercare responsibilities. Those are far more visible problems, and tens of millions of people are directly interested in solving them. Similar numbers have direct trouble with lack of medical insurance. In both cases, solving the problems is still tremendously difficult work and it takes a long, long time.
I’m not saying “it’ll never happen”, but I just don’t think that, say, “get cops competent at recognizing and dealing with autism in people they’ve never seen before” is likely to happen in any kind of timeframe that’s useful to people here today. So given that, it makes sense to go for the possible. I don’t think that working on both personal and social goals is impossible, but if you have energy right now for only one, then it seems to me personal is the one to go for.
I agree we aren’t going to come to a conclusion about this. And that’s fine for me.
Do I think we’re going to have a completely functional general protocol established quickly? Hardly. But do I think that we can get basics that would help both sides? I don’t really think that’s impossible. For much of it, it’s not accurate to compare it to childcare or medical insurance.
I mean, is it really impossible for medic-alert bracelets to be put in place? We’re already talking about it in Nevada. I do think some other similar basic protocol can be established.
What I don’t think can happen is that every autistic establishes himself in a personal relationship with with every police officer or official he might have to know at a certain time. Could an individual? Yes, probably. But that’s so unimportant for me (since I really don’t need anything of that kind). More important for me is that we don’t naturally select for those who happen to be connected to their local police officers.
Cliff
You read the part about I’m poor, right? That generally precludes affording a counselor.
And in case you havent noticed, everyone stops giving a shit about autism once you turn 18. Even if you’re barely 100 pounds and look 14. That description has fit me to a T my whole life, except when I was UNDER 100 pounds and looked even younger.
They. Just. Don’t. Care. Anywhere. I’ve lived enough places to know that to be nothing but truth.
Kassiane, it depends on where you live. What you say isn’t true in several places where I’ve lived. I’ve been food-stamp poor and had counselors. Many places have sliding-scale and community mental health centers, women’s centers, liberal or understanding religious communities, etc. I’m guessing that if you found one of these places — a hospital social worker or psychiatrist might be helpful — that would hook you up with people and/or institutions that can be good for some protection.
Of course, if you are going to stick your fingers in your ears and say la la la, none of that is true, then there’s nothing helpful I can say. And yes, of course it’s true that they’re not going to look after you like family. But some help can be considerably better than none.