15 year old teen with Autism shot and killed by police.

Source

Just before 8:30 a.m., Calumet City police responded to a call at the home on the 500 block of Forsythe. Police say 15-year-old Stephon Watts was in the basement and apparently had been fighting with his father. When two officers went downstairs, police say the boy lunged at the officers with a knife. The boy's father, who witnessed it, says it was only a butter knife. Both officers fired one shot each at the boy. He was pronounced dead the hospital a short while later.

Do you think the shooting was justifiable.? The police department had knowledge of the boys handicap, and previously have dealt with the same situation, using tasers to subdue him. The article also says the lead officer did not have a taser on him, Why.?

Police say they knew the boy suffered from Asperger's syndrome. They had previously responded to the home 10 times and say the boy had attacked officers before

A loaded weapon on a kid with autism .? I just don't understand that with all the training and ways to subdue a person NON-lethaly, you still fire two rounds into a kid who allegedly had a butter knife.?

How many of these stories are going to have to pop up before the Police Department looks at their recruitment process! A 15 year old kid with a butter knife can be disarmed, this was murder.

Originally posted by CaptainNemo

Source

Just before 8:30 a.m., Calumet City police responded to a call at the home on the 500 block of Forsythe. Police say 15-year-old Stephon Watts was in the basement and apparently had been fighting with his father. When two officers went downstairs, police say the boy lunged at the officers with a knife. The boy's father, who witnessed it, says it was only a butter knife. Both officers fired one shot each at the boy. He was pronounced dead the hospital a short while later.

Do you think the shooting was justifiable.? The police department had knowledge of the boys handicap, and previously have dealt with the same situation, using tasers to subdue him. The article also says the lead officer did not have a taser on him, Why.?

Police say they knew the boy suffered from Asperger's syndrome. They had previously responded to the home 10 times and say the boy had attacked officers before

A loaded weapon on a kid with autism .? I just don't understand that with all the training and ways to subdue a person NON-lethaly, you still fire two rounds into a kid who allegedly had a butter knife.?

Having someone in my family with autism this story hits home and is incredibly sad. My heart goes out to the parents of the boy.

Having said that, why would the father be fighting with his autistic child to the point where the boy had a knife in his hands? Having been around a 5 year old with autism and seeing the fits that he can go through, the best thing to do in that situation is to try to talk him down or isolate him in a room where you know that he cant hurt himself. For the father to be having an extended fight with his handicapped son to the point where the police have to be called is IMHO irresponsible.

That still doesn't excuse the trigger happy police officers to put two slugs in a handicapped boy. These cops knew the situation they were going into and should've made an effort to keep they're weapons holstered, or at least come prepared with a taser/pepper spray.

Nothing like protecting and serving.

Sigh...

reply to post by olliemc84

Having said that, why would the father be fighting with his autistic child to the point where the boy had a knife in his hands? Having been around a 5 year old with autism and seeing the fits that he can go through, the best thing to do in that situation is to try to talk him down or isolate him in a room where you know that he cant hurt himself. For the father to be having an extended fight with his handicapped son to the point where the police have to be called is IMHO irresponsible.

you know there are lots of different types of Autism right?
each demanding their own approach.

a whole lot of things could've spraked this situation.
seen it happen quite a few times at my internship.

(i work with autistic (young) adults)

I agree, i'm sorry, but you do not raise a gun to a child unless you have justifiable cause.
A butter knife is not justifiable cost.
Police wear bulletproof armor, guns should only be used against other guns. Otherwise they have other methods of detaining people.

........

ignorance brought forth from a corrupt system that favours ignorance... Can we hurry up and defeat the Khazarian scum that has taken hold of the whole world faster please?!?!?!

Dont allow them to have power still! Screw that. they get life in jail or exodus to another planet!

Seriously we can all be sad about bad things happening here and there or we can wise up and realise a majority of this is because of the "New World Order" incursion thats upon humanity. This is a majority factor is bad things in our world is just plane is. These scum have fuxd with soooo much crap. I dont like living in such a retarded void of logic society anymore!

Please let us hurry along with the mass arrests of all khazarian banking scum and new world order affiliates so we can fix the many many issues in lower levels of society that lead to police acting so ignorantly :/

This issue really is a direct relation to this article and millions of other events that casually flow my. Our poverty is their fault. This childs death whilst yes the police officers ignorant fault. They would have been less ignorant if serving under a non corrupt system. Majority factor!!!

This is, if I'm not mistaken, basically one of the types of scenarios that the use of Tazers was implemented for.

Non-criminal but potential danger to self and others given circumstances. Until we hold cops responsible in cases like these specifically, they will continue to not even bother trying to hold back.

reply to post by CaptainNemo


I dont know why they just did let the kid just cool of before they engaged him. He was no threat to any one as long as he was down there all alone.

This incident would have resolved by it self. Unnecessary use of force if you ask me.

Its unfortunate but if you pull a knife and lunge toward a cop, they have the right to shoot you, autism or not. When situations happen like this the cops are trained to react. I doubt that they were able to see that the kid had a butterknife and to them it seemed that someone was coming at at them with a weapon.

Wow.

Originally posted by kn0wh0w
reply to post by olliemc84

 

Having said that, why would the father be fighting with his autistic child to the point where the boy had a knife in his hands? Having been around a 5 year old with autism and seeing the fits that he can go through, the best thing to do in that situation is to try to talk him down or isolate him in a room where you know that he cant hurt himself. For the father to be having an extended fight with his handicapped son to the point where the police have to be called is IMHO irresponsible.

you know there are lots of different types of Autism right?
each demanding their own approach.

a whole lot of things could've spraked this situation.
seen it happen quite a few times at my internship.

(i work with autistic (young) adults)

Yes, I do understand.

Maybe the parents of this kid are not responsible enough human beings to be taking care of a special needs child. For the police to have to be called 10 times is pretty ridiculous. Maybe this kid should have been taken from his parents and put in a safer environment where educated people could attempt to help him, not fight with him. Who knows? He may still be alive.

When you use the police at a parenting tool, something is wrong. Terribly wrong.

Originally posted by joyride0187
Its unfortunate but if you pull a knife and lunge toward a cop and they have the right to shoot you, autism or not. When situations happen like this the cops are trained to react. I doubt that they were able to see that the kid had a butterknife and to them it seemed that someone was coming at at them with a weapon.

edit on 2-2-2012 by joyride0187 because: (no reason given)

But they'd responsed to similar situations almost a dozen times. They came grossly underprepared in my mind

Originally posted by joyride0187
Its unfortunate but if you pull a knife and lunge toward a cop and they have the right to shoot you, autism or not. When situations happen like this the cops are trained to react. I doubt that they were able to see that the kid had a butterknife and to them it seemed that someone was coming at at them with a weapon.

edit on 2-2-2012 by joyride0187 because: (no reason given)

But they'd responsed to similar situations almost a dozen times. They came grossly unprepared in my mind

reply to post by olliemc84

Maybe this kid should have been taken from his parents and put in a safer environment where educated people could attempt to help him, not fight with him.

absolutely true.

but with all the current cutbacks on healthcare etc.
pharma being big bussines.

this kid probably get doped up to ´even him out´.
i´ve seen it happen here in the Netherlands and i´m sure it happens in the US as well.

reply to post by CaptainNemo

When two officers went downstairs, police say the boy lunged at the officers with a knife. The boy's father, who witnessed it, says it was only a butter knife.

we should define "lunged" , regardless if it was a butter knife or not . Butter knife still does damage.

Do you think the shooting was justifiable.? The police department had knowledge of the boys handicap, and previously have dealt with the same situation, using tasers to subdue him.

previous knowledge ! can't justify it then . it was murder . Excessive force . Im curious though at the lunged part still , how heat of the moment it really was , or there was plenty of room to pull something else off.


Yea no taser on the officer either , many fails resulting from bad prep , bad communication , bad trainiing , series of bad events

resulting in the death of someone , without knowing what really happened hard to call it murder. But def, wrong.

“The lead officer did not have a taser. As he came down the stairs he was immediately confronted by the offender , who slashed his arm.”

consistently going off his meds , abusing his parents , what a bad history!

whats the procedure of locking up tools , objects that a special needs child should be kept away from ?

I understand how this could happen, because autistic kids can be out of control angry, but this is really the ultimate low, killing a mentally ill individual a child even. If these police officers dont at least feel bad then they have no soul.

I never thought id say this but what ever happened to the taser? Cant we exhaust a few non lethal means before we jump to the gun?

Im sure if someone was lunging at you with a knife in basement that you would have time to stop identify the knife to see how sharp it is, find out if they are autistic or not and then taze them.
We all know if the cops tazed or pepper sprayed there would be the same people complaining about how the cops tazed a 15 year old autistic kid.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Some people think that anything cops do is bad.

Originally posted by CaptainNemo

Originally posted by joyride0187
Its unfortunate but if you pull a knife and lunge toward a cop and they have the right to shoot you, autism or not. When situations happen like this the cops are trained to react. I doubt that they were able to see that the kid had a butterknife and to them it seemed that someone was coming at at them with a weapon.

edit on 2-2-2012 by joyride0187 because: (no reason given)

But they'd responsed to similar situations almost a dozen times. They came grossly unprepared in my mind

reply to post by CaptainNemo


They should have come prepared with tazers I agree. But the kid had the police cornered and stabbed a police officer in the arm with the knife. If you were a cop and had no where to retreat to and someone stabbed you in the arm and lunged at you again with a knife, would you not use deadly force? They have a family too that they want to come home to.


According to the Chicago Tribune:

Five officers were consequently sent to the home, Gilmore told a news conference. When they arrived, the boy was in the basement, holding a kitchen knife, Gilmore said. Two of the officers went to the basement and the boy "lashed out" with the knife and struck one of them in the forearm, Gilmore said.

"At that time, cornered and having no way to retreat back up the stairs, the officers fired one shot each, striking the (boy) twice," Gilmore said. "Unfortunately, the officer thought that his life was in jeopardy."

articles.chicagotribune.com... 1_gilmore-knife-and-officers-autism

According to the article the lead police did not have a taser. Why not? Did this police department issue him one? Maybe this is a conspiracy to buy more tasers. Everyone hates tasers, but all it takes is one autistic kid killed and suddenly the shep bleat for more tasers. Its satanic so it must be true.

I wonder how many cops a year grab the knife or the kids arm. I'm not saying cops are required to be heroes but I don't see alot of stories like that on the news.