A 13-Year-Old With Autism Got Arrested After His Backpack Sparked Fear. Only His Stuffed Bunny Was Inside.
A 13-Year-Old With Autism Got Arrested After His Backpack Sparked Fear. Only His Stuffed Bunny Was Inside.
Disability rights advocates said kids like Ty should not be getting arrested under Tennessee’s school threats law. And they tried to push for a broader exception for kids with other kinds of disabilities. It didn’t work.
When Ty’s mom got the phone call that her son was going to be arrested, she said it was her worst fear come true: Her son’s autism was mistaken for a threat. “Once you looked at his backpack, if there was nothing in there to hurt anyone, then why did you handcuff my 13-year-old autistic son who didn’t understand what was going on and take him down to juvenile?” she said.
Why indeed.
I call that kidnapping
Things like this won’t happen when Trump dissolves the Dept. of Education and the thousands of IEP’s (Individualized Education Program’s) lose funding.
Just to clarify IEP is individual education plan. The programs are not usually separate from the schools. The DoE does provide funding based on the number of kids with IEPs to schools and districts.
In other words kids will still be arrested for being autistic. They just won’t have as good of an education.
“we’re trying to stop the people who should know better from doing this, and if they do it, they should have more than a slap on the wrist.”
They're 13 years old ffs, they can't be expected to not say stupid things.
“I don’t know whose level of trauma is going to be the greatest: the kids in the classroom wondering if there’s an active shooter roaming their halls or a kid that didn’t know better and says something like that and gets arrested,
Or the trauma of the kids who saw a classmate arrested for having a bunny plushie in his bag.
In the first six weeks of the school year, 18 kids were arrested for making threats of mass violence.
Sweet Jesus! What the fuck are you doing Tennessee?? This is madness!
Better not say you're going to beat everyone at the sack race in P.E. class, Billy. That's a threat of mass violence.
I remember going to a daycare center where not only were toy guns not allowed to be brought, not even for action figures, you couldn't pick up a stick and use it as a gun and they would even put you in time out for a finger gun.
This is far stupider than that.
teaching respect for firearms at a young age is not stupid in the hellscape of a nation you live in.
We have threat assessments at our elementary school but we go through MANY channels before police are involved. Like, is the threat credible? Is anyone fearful? Does the child have the means? Is there motive? Someone making a comment that says “because they’ll blow up” would be a freaking conversation about school appropriate language not arrest and suspensions, for ANYBODY but especially kids with documented disabilities.
Reporting it makes sense. Investigating if the threat was credible makes sense. If it is credible, a felony then makes sense. But if it isn't, a fine or misdemeanor is enough. Because I do agree that there should be some consequences to discourage how casually death threats and the like are thrown out these days.
But the idea that no tolerance rules that turn kids having outbursts (disability or not) into felons makes anyone safer is laughable. Making troubled kids unnecessarily lives harder is more likely to create more danger than prevent it.
Reactive idiots should not be allowed to be in positions of responsibility.
USA police have to be the most unprofessional on the planet, right? How do any of them have jobs...?
A 13-year-old with autism was arrested after his autism sparked fear.
Back in school we used to play pumped up kicks and make jokes about school shootings. Thats the sort of privilege that people in 3rd world countries dont have.
In the third world, they would not arrest this child and instead have a conversation with the parent.
My school experience was pretty much bookended by Columbine and Sandy Hook. We fogured shootings were something that could be solved, rather than the inevitable fact of life they are now.
Yeah u really do live in a 3rd world nation
I graduated HS just before the Paducah, KY shooting. Was in college at the time in KY. Managed to get out of college before the first major university shooting too. The entire premise seems bizarre that kids have to have shooter drills the way we had tornado drills.
This is absolutely inexcusable, but I'm not sure where the blame lies here. I think it's with the state and in part with the cops, but not with the school, because it sounds like when the kid said "because the whole school will blow up" (I'm guessing this is a bit of hyperbole he picked up from his mom to say when there's going to be a big uproar) they were required by law to report it.
The article could be getting that part wrong, but Pro Publica is usually pretty thorough at these sorts of things.
Obviously, I have a huge amount of sympathy and empathy for Ty, but if I'm right, I also have sympathy for the teacher and school officials. It's like doctors in the South who have to choose between letting a woman die from a miscarriage or give her an abortion and go to prison.
A simple "what do you mean by blow up?" Would have avoided all of this. Especially when you know it's coming from someone who is autistic.
To be fair, and I say this as someone whose life is impacted by autism in multiple ways, I can think of at least one very smart autistic teenager whose communication challenges are such that they would struggle with "what do you mean by" as the opening to a question, but I get your point and agree with it.
Lots of things could have been said or done before assuming a 13 year old autistic kid with no other red flags has not only brought a bomb to school, but brought such a sophisticated bomb that the teacher couldn't at least peek inside the bag to see what was in there.
I'm willing to put a pretty big dollop of blame on the cops. An autistic kid says something without awareness of some of the context which is shown to have NO nefarious intent behind it, and nothing to show for it but a stuffed animal - and yet they slap the cuffs on anyhow.
But we'll find out they were at the next school shooters house 5 times and concluded that he wasn't a threat without any more investigation than talking to him.
Oh for sure. The cops could "arrest" the kid by doing something like saying, "I'm really sorry I have to do this, Ty, but you're under arrest." And then say, "I have investigated and found there was no cause for arrest" immediately afterward. Maybe they couldn't make it that quick and easy, maybe they have to get some sort of permission or do paperwork or something, but I can't believe they have to handcuff the poor kid and take him to juvie by law.
The teacher had also known Ty for a single day. I really can't put too much blame on them, given the law and potential risks that are sadly too real in modern times.
The administration, however, were likely to know of his autism and probably could have handled things in a way that would have deescalated the situation with the cops (that they were required to call).
Not to say they are necessarily to blame (they don't want to lose their jobs or see jail time), and I wasn't there, but it seems like the whole thing could have been handled better from top to bottom.
It's their job to understand the conditions that kids have who are under their care. If they're too stupid to do that, they should be fired.
If they are required to report it to the law regardless, which is what the article sure implies, I'm not sure what difference understanding their conditions makes.
Like I said, it sounds like it's similar to the choice doctors are having to make. In this case it's do you report this kid or do you risk putting food on your own kids' table?
Looks like teacher did the right thing by getting someone from the office to handle it. Everyone after that is to blame
In class that morning, he told his teacher he didn’t want anyone to look in his backpack, worried they would confiscate his toy, according to Ty and his mom. When the teacher asked why, Ty responded, “Because the whole school will blow up,” he and his mom recalled.
And?
US added disabled people to the list a long time ago
only people the US authorities do not want in prison are Blue and Red MAGAs who don't mind playing ball