Sitting + black & autistic + bad cop = 10yrs prison sent
For those who remember from about a year ago, Reginald "Neli" Laston, who was guilty of "sitting while black and autistic" (if you want to argue that, please make another thread), has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. There is still a possibility of an appeal (I gather), and his mother has a petition to try to get some media attention about what has happened.
The petition is here http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/autism-and-racial-injustice/.
For those who don't know about this and want to know more, here are some articles:
http://avoiceforneli.com/
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=638
http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/1146
http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/1137
June 15th, 2010 · 9 Comments · Narrative
Reginald Latson loves to walk.
“He’ll walk five or ten miles, it’s nothing to him. Sometimes he walks five miles just to grab a bite to eat at Chili’s,” says his mother, Lisa, of Stafford, Virginia. “Walking is his release.”
Neli, as his family calls him, is 18 and has Asperger’s, a mild form of autism. Three Mondays ago, he rose early and left home without telling his mother. “When I entered his room at 6:30 am and didn’t see him, I assumed he had gone for another walk,” she says. It was a school day.
Four hours later Stafford authorities had ordered a lock down for eight schools, and Neli was in police custody, facing one count of malicious wounding of a law enforcement officer, one count of assault and battery of a law enforcement officer, and one count of knowingly disarming a police officer in performance of his official duties. The cascade of missteps that led to the arrest suggest a combination of public racial profiling and the over reaction of law enforcement officers who are unfamiliar with autistic behavior.
After Neli left home early that morning he walked two miles to Porter Library on Parkway Blvd. “He goes there frequently. There’s a teen room there, and he enjoys it,” says Lisa. The library was closed, so he sat under a tree, in the grass, at the front of the building. The parking lot at Park Ridge Elementary, about 400 feet to the west, was filling up.
According to officials reports, someone at the school called police at about 8:38 am to report a suspicious person sitting outside the library, “possibly in possession of a gun.” A bulletin went out with Neli’s description, and officials, concerned that a gunman was on the loose, ordered a school lockdown and set up a search perimeter.
When police arrived at the library, Neli was gone. Unaware of the report, and impatient for the library to open, he began walking in the direction of the high school. A forested green belt of trees some 500 feet-wide with a well-worn path separates the school from nearby homes. At about 9 am, a “school resources officer” who is also a Stafford County Sheriff deputy approached Neli. That’s when accounts begin to diverge.
Lisa said her son complied with a search, which failed to find a weapon. Police say Neli “attacked and assaulted the deputy for no apparent reason.”
Neli told his mother that the school officer threatened him, and that Neli said “You’re harassing me. You’re not allowed to do that. I know my rights,” then turned and walked away. According to Neli, the officer grabbed him from behind and choked him. Police reports say a scuffle ensued, during which the officer pepper sprayed Neli. The Sheriff Department version, which you can read here, says Neli then took the spray from the officer and turned it on him.
According to Lisa, Neli said he took the spray and ran into the woods. The deputy, Thomas Calverley, reportedly suffered a cut to the head and a broken ankle, and underwent surgery.
By this time sheriff deputies were combing the area with search dogs, and at least one TV news crew offered a breathless live report of the manhunt. Neli somehow eluded the dragnet for another 45 minutes before being spotted and arrested in the high school parking lot, shortly before 10 am.
No gun was found “and subsequent investigation has indicated that that a gun was not actually seen by the reporting parties,” according to the official report.
Lisa learned of the arrest at 10:30 am, when she called the police to report that her son was missing. “I was told that he was in custody and was currently being questioned but I was not told why,” she said. “They wouldn’t tell me anything, and wouldn’t allow me to visit him. I told the police that Neli has autism, but they didn’t seem to care.”
For the next 11 days, Neli was held without bail, and in isolation at the Rappahannock Regional Jail. Police allowed Neli’s school counselor to visit, and she relayed messages and information to Lisa, who was allowed only one visit. “He wasn’t able to speak or communicate with me. He appeared to be in a catatonic state”, Lisa says.
She is understandably frustrated and angry.
“The actions that were taken by the police that day were excessive in the least and grossly mishandled,” Lisa wrote on a website that she started to counter inaccurate local media reports. “Someone says ‘I see a suspicious black male’ and he ‘could’ have a gun, while all my son was doing was sitting in the grass at the library. And you shut down six schools and go out on a manhunt for this dangerous black man who was sitting in the grass. Anyone can read between the lines and see that this just doesn’t add up.”
[url=http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/1137](ARTICLE CONTINUES)
“Barack Obama is going to turn the White House into a strip club and call it the n****r house. He’s going to paint the White House black and put strippers on top of it. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a black b***h every now and then. But that’s not what the White House is about. Oh, I forget, it’s called the n****r house. How’s a baboon going to know how to run the White House? That’s why it’s called the White House, not the baboon house. Boy, I remember the good old days when we were cracking the whips on your backs.”
[url=http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/1146](ARTICLE CONTINUES)
LuxoJr
Deinonychus
Joined: 2 Dec 2009
Age: 29
Gender: Female
Posts: 391
Location: a dance party on the moon
When I was 16 I was doing stop-motion on super-8 film but I did not have a tripod so borrowed my buddy's father's. I wrapped it in a beach towel so it would not get messed up durring the walk to their house when I returned it. A cop pulled me over because someone called the police saying I had a pellet rifle wrapped up in a towel so the cop snatched it from without asking what it was or giving me a chance to unravel it. He grabbed the towel and just let it unroll causing the tripod to smack on the sidewalk breaking it so it could not lock in place. The cop looks at me and says oh boy. sorry kid. He gave me a card with his name on it and tells me to have my friend's dad call him. He was cool until he found out how much the tripod cost so he tried to say I broke it and was blaming him for the damage it took my friend's dad 8 months to get his money after he threatened to get a lawyer involved.
All it takes is one as*hole to exaggerate while on a phone to the police to get you hasseled by the police. The cop shows up thinking they are dealing with an armed suspect due to bad information. They should make the 911 caller liable for everything that happened for giving false info.
_________________
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die -Hunter S. Thompson
Do most people in the USA think the right to bear lethal weapons in public is a good thing? Just because it is inscribed in the constitution doesn't mean it is actually relevant to modern day.
As far as I know there are no longer wild bears roaming around the US..I could be misinformed
Molecular_Biologist
Deinonychus
Joined: 18 May 2010
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 329
Location: My own world
As far as I know there are no longer wild bears roaming around the US..I could be misinformed
The 2nd amendment ain't about hunting.
The main problem in all of this(besides the blatant racism of the cops) is the fact that the American public is so ingrained with fear from the sensationalized local news reports they quickly assume the absolute worse case scenario when they see something out of the ordinary. Hell in my area if you are walking around past 7pm and a cop drives past you 9/10 you'll be stopped, searched and questioned like your doing something illegal.
Written by his mother (on the petition site):
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/autism ... injustice/
I'm assuming she's trying to get publicity to get help with an appeal (that maybe the ACLU or someone will help with legal stuff if there's enough publicity in it for them -- she doesn't sound wealthy.)
As far as I know there are no longer wild bears roaming around the US..I could be misinformed
The 2nd amendment ain't about hunting.
I meant as protection from bears.
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,740
Location: the island of defective toy santas
As far as I know there are no longer wild bears roaming around the US..I could be misinformed
The 2nd amendment ain't about hunting.
I meant as protection from bears.
Most people recognize the correct term. Slang can get confusing.
As far as I know there are no longer wild bears roaming around the US..I could be misinformed
My ex co-worker's cousin's 5 year old was attacked by a boar in their fenced in backyard he almost had to have his leg removed. This was in Georgia.
My father's 84 acres of land in Western New York near the PA boarder has black bears, moutain lions, and coyotes.
Its not uncommon for mountain lions to attack hikers and bicyclists in some California suburbs and rural areas.
We are having bear sightings in the suburbs here. We also have coyotes roaming behind a K-mart and a cemetary and this New York state.
_________________
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die -Hunter S. Thompson
Last edited by Todesking on 14 Mar 2011, 6:16 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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