Aspies For Freedom

Florida Officer Uses Taser On Autistic 15-Year-Old

wftv.com
30 11 05

A school resource officer is being accused of excessive force after using a taser on an autistic student. Now, that boy's mother says a misunderstanding has left her child confused and bruised.

Dennis Caliguri, 15, has bruises to show for what happened when he encountered a school resource officer and his taser. Investigators said Dennis was so violent and out of control that it took five faculty members to restrain him and the taser was used to calm him down.

Dennis is autistic and functions at the level of a six-year-old. But at 5'8" tall and 220 pounds, his mother, Susan Caliguri, said he is big but harmless. So she was shocked to get a call from Cypress Lake High School saying he was acting out. When she got to the school, she was horrified.

"It was a nightmare. They had him handcuffed, his legs were tied, he was on the ground. They had four sheriffs on top of him. I mean, he is bruised down his back, they were stunning him and he was already down. He couldn't do anything," she said.

Susan calls it excessive force, but the Lee County Sheriff's Office said the taser was the only way to calm him down.

"The matter is that the deputy, if he is that tired out and he has a fear of being overpowered, his weapon being taken away from him, he has to be able to overpower and be able to take control of the situation," said Charles Ferrante, Lee County Sheriff's Office

School administrators said Dennis got upset after being told not to come to school one day last week. He misunderstood and thought he was in trouble and started throwing papers.

Despite his mother's concerns, Dennis was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest.

Source: wftv.com.

http://officer.com/article/article.jsp?s...1&id=27184

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Why the hell did they think that a taser would 'calm him down'?  I'd have thought it was logical that the more they tased him, the further he would have resisted.

:cry:

How on earth can they charge him with anything if he (truly) functions at the level of a six year old?!

If he functions at the level of a six-year-old then why is he in a high school? Unless he functions at the level of a profoundly gifted six-year-old.

"It was a nightmare. They had him handcuffed, his legs were tied, he was on the ground. They had four sheriffs on top of him. I mean, he is bruised down his back, they were stunning him and he was already down. He couldn't do anything," she said."


Lucky this story was not about how he was suffocated and killed in the struggle.

"School administrators said Dennis got upset after being told not to come to school one day last week. He misunderstood and thought he was in trouble and started throwing papers."


For that he was severely punished and physically attacked.  For throwing papers-    Why did they not let him calm down a bit and then ask him to pick up the papers?  

"A school resource officer is being accused of excessive force after using a taser"    This makes me question why a school employee has to have a weapon.  If there is a problem why doesn't the school just call the police?

Florida is a pretty screwed up place anyway.  I visited there once.  When we were not receiving insults and poor service because my husband is a non-white, I witnessed some extreme social injustices.   We had parked at a store and there was a coconut on a overhanging branch over our car.  We were trying to jump up and knock the coconut off so we could eat it.  Someone called the police saying "a black man was trying to break into someone's yard."  One of friends with us warned us not to go up to someone's house and knock on the door to ask for directions or help just for standing on their front porch.  

Florida just is a fucked up place.  I do not think I would go back.  Employees in Disney World were even mistreated.  So is it any wonder that events like this are happening in their schools?

Talk about lack of education, restraining an autistic is not how to calm them down.

I'm usually very peaceful, never harm anybody, but I have a reflex acion that if you try and restain me (ie handcuffs, pin me down). I feel, well it's a funny sense, but a horrid one, and instinctivly react with maximum force to break free. (ie. I've overpowered several other kids my age at school).

Pinning down that lad was only going to make it worse, all these people touching him and... ugh.

This makes me ashamed to have owned Taser stock and profiting from it at one time.

I spent a lot of the time from when I was ten years old to fifteen years old at a facility where their philosophy was "hold them in pretzel-like positions and ask questions later". In typical normie style, they wondered why even after letting me go, I would hit them in the kind of dramatic manner they thought was only seen in films.

If there is any justice in this world...

I think it's: He functions emotionally at the level of a six-year-old and intellectual might be his biological age or above.

At least, that's what my son is like. He is 8 years old, acts like a toddler sometimes, but can argument like a 12 year old and has knowledge in some fields (?) that are far above his biological age. (For example at age 6 he was tested and it was stated that his language and use of it was like a 10 year old - except for, and that wasn't tested, he does not "read between the lines", takes things literally and can't understand social talk)

Sibylle

That's what I thought, too, Sibylle. But I didn't want to say anything that other members of the forum might think of as offensive.

Parents sound off on Taser use
Student's mother, children's advocates say police need training

The News-Press
4 December 2005

By Melanie Payne, mpayne@news-press.com & Brian P. Watson, bwatson@news-press.com

The mother of an autistic teen who was shocked with a Taser at Cypress Lake High School expressed dismay and anger Saturday over what happened to her son.

"The teacher said she had him under control," said Sue Caliguri of the Nov. 23 incident. And it was not until a Lee County sheriff's deputy intervened that the situation escalated, she said.



Caliguri's son Dennis has autism, a developmental disability that affects brain functioning and often results in poor social skills and difficulty communicating.

Dennis, who was 15 at the time but has since turned 16, became distressed when he learned he could not come to school on Thanksgiving and the day after, Caliguri said.

According to the sheriff's office, the boy became violent, kicking several teachers and an assistant principal.

The resource officer at the school could not restrain him and used a Taser to deliver a 50,000-volt shock, officials said.

The teen is 5-foot-10 and weighs 220 pounds, but the Taser was excessive, his mother said.

"He was already handcuffed and held down," she said. "It's terrible."

Sheriff's spokesman Larry King said Saturday that school officials asked the resource officer to help them restrain the boy and that the officer engaged in a "long period of dialogue" with the boy before using the Taser.

"It resolved the situation, and no further injury was reported to the child, the administrator or the officer," he said.

The teen was charged with disturbing the peace, interfering with a school function and resisting an officer without violence.

"He's a good kid," Caliguri said. But he has become fixated with the police. When school was dismissed on Monday he refused to take the bus.

"He wanted the sheriff to take him home," she said.

"Children with autism have a high tolerance to pain," said Jackie Ruble, a parent of two autistic children. "This (using a Taser) could have killed him. They need to consider that."

Parents and other advocates of children with disabilities were attending a workshop at Gateway Trinity Church on legislative proposals that would affect them.

They agreed that police need training in dealing with people with disabilities.

"Right now (law enforcement officers) look at teenage students and they don't see a wheelchair so they don't see a disability. They need training," Paul Liles told the group attending the workshop.

Liles, an attorney, plans to meet with Caliguri to discuss her legal options.

King said deputies receive extensive training — from early basic training to more advanced, specialized education—in dealing with mentally handicapped people. They are taught how to talk to them and advised about what precautions and actions to take in different situations.

Sometimes deputies have to use Tasers to prevent incidents from escalating and to protect the person and others, he said.

Margaret Determann, a lobbyist for the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council Inc., who was leading the workshop of about 35 people, told the group that that the council is considering adding law enforcement's Taser use to its legislative agenda.

"We may want to make an additional stand on the Taser issue," she said.

Taser use has come under local scrutiny recently. In June a sheriff's deputy used a stun gun on a 13-year-old San Carlos Park girl who scuffled with staff at Lee Memorial Hospital.

Last month, a 35-year-old Lehigh Acres woman who had a violent outburst at a card shop in south Fort Myers died after deputies shocked her with a Taser.

And in October, a man died after Fort Myers police shot him with a Taser outside of the Ruth Cooper Center for Behavioral Health.

Sounce: The News Press

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...40485/1075

Oh yeah, all well and fine, King, except there is something you are not taking into account: autism is not a mental handicap.

I swear, when a normie actually gets up and says "we are sorry, we screwed up" in public, that will improve my opinion of them immeasurably.