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A Salt Lake City police officer shot a 13-year-old boy with autism Friday night after his mother called police for help.
The incident sparked an investigation and raised concerns about the use of force by officers in Utah’s most populous city, which has taken into account protests and police accountability.
The officer shot the boy while responding to a call about a “violent psychological problem,” Sgt. Keith Horrocks of the Salt Lake City Police Department said Saturday morning.
“In this case, it was a minor who was having a mental episode, a psychological episode and had threatened some people with a gun,” Sergeant Horrocks said, adding that the officer had fired his gun “during a foot chase. short distance”. .
The boy’s mother, Golda Barton, identified her son to local reporters as Linden Cameron. She said that he did not have a weapon and that she had called the police for help and possibly take him to a hospital.
“I said, ‘Look, he’s unarmed; he’s got nothing, ‘”he told KUTV in Salt Lake City. “He just gets mad and starts yelling and yelling. It’s a boy. He’s trying to get attention. He does not know how to regulate ”.
She said that as her son fled, she heard a series of blows and did not immediately know if Linden had been killed. “They are supposed to go out and be able to ease the situation using the least force possible,” said Ms Barton, who did not immediately respond to a request for an interview Tuesday.
Sergeant Horrocks said the boy was in “serious condition” when he was taken to the hospital on Friday. He said there was “no indication” that Linden had a weapon, but added that an investigation was still underway. The shooting is being investigated by officers in Utah who are not members of the Salt Lake City Police Department. Salt Lake City police are expected to release body camera footage from the episode before September 21.
“I know these things are very difficult for the community as a whole, and there is a process in terms of looking at what happened and investigating it,” said Detective Greg Wilking, a spokesman for the police department. He refused to name the officer who fired a gun.
“Good, bad or in-between, that process will take place, and we will make the body camera available and hold our officers accountable if that is what should happen,” he said.
The episode raised concerns about how the police handle interactions with people with autism or who are dealing with mental illness. According to a 2017 study from the Autism Institute at Drexel University, an estimated one in five teens with autism are apprehended and questioned by the police when they turn 21. And according to research from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, people with disabilities, including those on the autism spectrum, are disproportionately injured in interactions with the police and are five times more likely to be incarcerated than people in the general population.
“There is a lot of systemic bias against autistic and mentally ill people” in Utah, said Whitney Lee Geertsen, founding director of Neurodiverse Utah, a group that promotes autism acceptance and self-advocacy. She called for more police training on neurodiversity and said officers involved in Friday’s shooting should be fired.
Last month, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall signed an executive order that aimed to restrict the use of force by police and promote de-escalation tactics. It was due to take effect no later than Saturday, the day after Linden was shot. On Tuesday, Wilking, the police department spokesman, said adoption of those changes was still ongoing. She added that all department officials had been trained in crisis intervention, which focuses on interactions with people who have disabilities or are experiencing mental health emergencies. – New York Times
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