The Insidious Response from SC Officers Who Tased Autistic Man

It’s Christmas Eve…

The mostly non-verbal autistic man is doing what the neighborhood and cops have known 34-year-old Tario Anderson to do forever – walk. Walk up and down the sidewalks of Greenville’s Sullivan and Burns Sts. repeatedly. That’s what he was doing when an officer tased him and a swarm of officers made a drawn out arrest. They pretended not to hear the desperate cries of neighbors alerting the police to his condition. They are requiring him to face two charges, stemming from their incident, in court on January 9th.

But most insidious of all it is the callous response from the youthful officer who looks better poised to join a Reich. Following the video are a few points about the response.

He broke the law….

How? How was Anderson “interfering with police work” – the work of his getting arrested and tased by them? How could he resist arrest and what was the arrest for? The officer cannot explain how Anderson broke the law.

A YouTube commenter asked:

How can someone be charged with the sole crime of resisting arrest? They have to be arrested for something in order to resist it, right?

A good question that more people should follow up. Because “justice” has rapidly slipped on the slope of Americans being arrested for no reason and then facing the everyman’s charge of “resisting arrest.” The absurdity of that is – how can one even attempt to resist when they are being shocked, beaten and sometimes shot into submission before they even know what has happened?

We’re not deemed certified to declare anyone as mentally ill or with a disease

1) Autism is a disability.
2) If police cannot handle what amounts to 1 in 5 Americans – they need to find new employment.
3) This excuse is asinine if one considers that police are trained to detect body language. Sometimes they arrest and/or shoot because someone “looks” with their eyes a certain way… Excuse completely invalid.
4) Police are not deemed certified to tase or arrest innocent people.

How can someone with a disability be expected to respond to a command when said disability clearly prevents them from doing so? Deaf, blind, paralysis, Down’s, autism – these are not crimes. Why should a deaf woman be accountable for being mistaken for the crook she reported, beaten, tased and then face charges for that after sitting in jail for days without an interpreter? Anderson’s disability has allowed him to only progress to the state of a 5 year old – he responded to a terrifying situation as a 5 year old would.

So – How are we as a society trained to deal with mental illness in police ranks? When all reason and rationale is lost behind electric shocks and fists? Unfortunately, by getting barraged with stories and responses like this that condition the public to accept unfathomable and unwarranted abuse. By being commanded to circumvent all logic and empathy. (And the lack of empathy is a hallmark of psychopathy)

If we look away when bullies with badges abuse society’s most vulnerable – what happens next?

The family has filed a complaint – but where do such complaints end up?

Recently from Amanda Warren: