Standing On the Street Is Not a Crime

A friend told me that she used to live next door to a family who had a teenager on the autism spectrum. Often, she remembered, he liked just to stand in the front yard and watch the cars and passersby go by. I noted that Charlie likes to do the same. We don't have a front yard with our condo and Charlie would probably stand by the mailboxes just off the main road for long periods of time if we let him (we don't). He's usually quiet and just stands with his eyes on the street and, sometimes, his hands tucked under his chin until we direct him to cross the street.

In this, Charlie's doing pretty much what an autistic teenager was doing, when he was beaten by Chicago police.

According to yesterday's Chicago Tribune, on Wednesday night, 16-year-old Oscar Guzman was taking a break from working at his family's fast-food restaurant in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

He was watching cars go by when a police cruiser pulled up and two officers began asking him questions, his family says.

Guzman didn't understand the questions, said his sister Nubia, 25, and looked down, away and eventually began walking away. Diagnosed with moderate autism at age 4, he doesn't like confrontation, his sister said.

The officers went after him, his family said, prompting the frightened boy to run into the family restaurant, yelling "I'm a special boy!" as he fled, his sister said.

Despite Guzman's parents yelling to the officers that he was a "special boy" with "special needs," one of the officers struck Guzman in the head with a baton, cutting a gash that would require eight staples, his sister said. The parents witnessed the blow being struck, she said.

On the ground, blood pouring from his head, Guzman, who has the mental capacity of a 5th grader, mumbled again and again, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I submit. I submit," his family said.

Guzman's family is considering filing a lawsuit against the officers and believes that they should be fired. The Chicago Police Department says that the incident is under investigation.

What's more, this incident occurred in the same week that the police were promoting their "award-winning Crisis Intervention Team, a program to train officers to recognize the needs of citizens with mental illness or disabilities." A member of the team has an 18-year-old son on the spectrum. Further, the police had held their first "Autism Safety Awareness" with Easter Seals on Monday night.

Clearly there's a desire to educate first responders about autism. But what happened to Oscar Guzman reminds us all that telling people about autism and making them "aware" is definitely not enough. Hopefully the police department can use this incident as a starting point for discussion about what not to do, and what to do. Reading about how Guzman responded, I immediately thought of my own son and realized that he would probably respond in the same way---he'd be confused, terrified out of his senses, and run (Jim and I would be running too). Why in the world did the officers strike Guzman with a baton?

Dora and I have written more than a few posts about safety in general and about the police in particular. The amount of education that needs to be done here is daunting, as evidenced by the recent incident in Newfoundland in which police thought a young man on the spectrum was drunk. We know that the criminal justice system is not prepared to deal with individuals with disabilities; we need to go beyond bemoaning and bewailing this and get to work.

It was 80 degrees in New Jersey yesterday (warmer today) and Charlie spent a lot of time out, watching the road, just doing as he likes to do---standing on the street is not a crime.