Posted on 02/05/2020 6:10:28 PM PST by Morgana
A 16-year-old autistic boy is in a hospital recovering from a seizure he had while handcuffed by police, according to his family.
The teen’s mother, Lourdes Ponce, took her family to El Pollo Loco in Fresno, Calif., shortly after seeing a doctor about her son’s recent epileptic seizures, ABC 30 reported. He then experienced another seizure in the restaurant’s restroom, his mother told the local station.
She heard her son drop to the floor, she said, but couldn’t reach him because the door was locked.
Ponce asked restaurant employees to unlock the door, she told ABC 30. They found him lying on the tile. Her daughter called 911, and police were the first on the scene.
The Fresno Police Department said officers placed handcuffs on the teen to “prevent him from harming himself or others” until an ambulance arrived. In a news release Monday, Fresno Chief of Police Andrew Hall said the family member who called 911 said he was “combative and harming himself” and said audio of the call confirms he was threatening to kill his family.
In an interview that aired Saturday, Ponce said her son panicked and started vomiting. The responding officers seemingly didn’t acknowledge her when she insisted that her son was autistic with epilepsy, according to a video of the incident obtained by ABC 30 and reviewed by The Washington Post.
Ponce didn’t respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
“They saw that my son was throwing up and instead of helping him, so that he wouldn’t choke on his vomit, they had him on the ground in handcuffs,” she told an ABC reporter.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I have a hard time believing any sorry written in the Post.
“..... called 911 said he was “combative and harming himself” and said audio of the call confirms he was threatening to kill his family.”
————————
If true, then yeah. The boy need to be restrained.
well they shoot deaf people and people having diabetic comas.
its what they do, just part of the job.
Other places besides the Post are reporting this
Wasn’t this posted days ago..............
Yes, it depends on the call to 911.
Went thru a similar thing when my dad went into dementia. Out of his mind at 3am and I was there to try to calm things.
Cops showed up to protect us AND the 1st Responders.
Didn’t need them and they were non-intrusive. Stood on the porch until he was put into the ambulance.
Great guys.
Unless you were at the scene. Don’t beleive what you read. Being a cop for a quarter of a century, we dealt with all kinds of situation, this being one of them.
Yeah, get the police and the kid is lucky they did not work him over with the batons.
But it accusatory of the police, it has too be 100% accurate.
More often than not.
+1
There are some forms of epilepsy that include temporary psychosis or hallucinations. Vomiting is also common.
Handcuffs may or may not have been called for, but how they handled him after the vomiting began is critical since choking or aspiration of vomit can have fatal consequences.
Autistic and epileptic. What a double whammy.
Very sad.
Threatening to kill his own family would seem to warrant handcuffs.
MGunny - how often do we get the WHOLE STORY from what the media reports? 2% of the time?
Anyway, sounds like they mistook this kid for Nancy (mad-woman-of-Gadara) Pelosi.
The Post, like most msm, will take a few facts and rewrite the story to confirm what they want to present. Most likely, it is totally different that what actually happened. It saddens me that there is no journalistic ethics any longer. The NYT, The Post, The LAT and the rest, including the fake cable channels, have decided that their duty is to sway public opinion, not to inform. Therefore, they are no more legitimate than the National Inquirer. We would be better off if we never believed a word that they say. Instead, write an outline of each story and boil it down to the facts (which are usually manipulated), and start with the assumption 1) what are they trying to convince me of, 2) what are the confirmations of the actual facts (anonymous sources don’t count and are unverified). If someone tries to convince you, remain skeptical, and ask “can you prove this”?
If journalistic ethics are involved, it should be 100% accurate and verified or confirmed. Opinions should be left to the editorial pages, otherwise, don’t call yourself a reporter...
I’ll buy that problem is a lot of people with relatives with autism, mental illness and other related health issues are being warned not to call the police for their loved ones because of articles like this. I picked up this article on another blog where the author was doing just that. Stories like this is doing it’s job making people afraid of the police.
Do I think the police need more training? Yes. They are Police not EMS workers. However all this story does is make the families too afraid to call so in the future they won’t, then what will happen?
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