What is a "meltdown"?

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Yeah. According to which fairy tale?

Robert Booth
Tuesday December 18, 2007
The Guardian

Police fired a 50,000-volt Taser into the head of a 45-year-old company director who later proved to be unarmed and innocent. Daniel Sylvester, the owner of an east London security firm employing 65 staff to guard council offices, pubs and nightclubs, was driving home on October 20 when he was stopped by armed police because of "firearms related intelligence".

According to Sylvester, he got out of his car and was surrounded by officers, at least two of whom were carrying automatic weapons. Without warning, one officer fired a Taser into the back of his head which made him drop to his knees, he said. A second shock caused him to fall on his face, breaking a front tooth. A further six shocks made him wet himself and left him lying in the road in pain while the officers and sniffer dogs searched the car and found nothing.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has started an investigation and David Lammy, Sylvester's MP in Tottenham, north London, has written to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to say he is "deeply concerned".

The incident was part of Operation Neon, a crackdown on guns on London's streets by using armed response units to stop and search cars. Sylvester said the incident had left him traumatised and he now suffered from short-term memory loss. He doubts the police would have stopped him had he not been black. A spokesman for the Met said: "Just after midnight, officers on an intelligence-led operation stopped a car in Bounces Road, N9. The driver got out of the vehicle and was subsequently Tasered. Our information is the Taser was deployed once."

Sylvester had been followed by police cars for about three miles through Tottenham before they boxed him in.

"Armed police jumped out and opened my car door," he said. "I said OK, I'm coming. I asked what was going on and as soon as I stepped out of the car I felt something touch me on the back of the head and then I was on my knees. Then it happened again and I was on my face and I felt somebody pressing my head down with their foot. By the fifth time I realised officers were pinning my arms together. It was like they were trying to break my arms and I was in pain, screaming out.

"I was shocked eight times altogether and I had urinated on the floor. It was like being tortured. It went on and on and I felt they were going to kill me."

According to guidelines set by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, Tasers should be deployed "where officers are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject(s) of their action". Tasers have been used 47 times in London this year, with black people accounting for almost two-thirds of those stunned.

The government extended the right to use Tasers for all firearms officers in England and Wales this summer.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article ... 41,00.html

I think I was pretty specific about someplace where nobody will call the cops, therefore examples involving cops don't actually apply to what I was talking about.

And really, when the cops are the people being the danger to someone, it's not exactly the meltdown that poses a danger, is it? That's like saying that being autistic itself poses the danger when, for instance, a friend of mine was hassled by the cops for "public intoxication" just for sitting on a park bench while being autistic.

You can have a gut-wrenching, all out screaming meltdown in the middle of an abandoned woods and still somebody within ear shot'll call the authorities thinking someone's getting murdered.

There are no guarantees that you won't get arrested for causing a disturbance and there are no guarantees that you will.

I'm just saying if you do plan on having a public or private meltdown - just make sure you have a good lawyer.

Ok, admittedly saying that ALL meltdowns are dangerous was a generalization (sorry).

I guess I'm saying;

Meltdown near others - often dangerous because they'll interfere (especially NTs) and aspies aren't responsible for their behaviour in those situations.

Meltdown alone - reasonably rare I think - except with things like computers when they eat your work - this can be at least dangerous for the object (computer) which may find itself exiting via the window.

Meltdown near police - major issues.

It's possible to have a "safe" meltdown around people who know you and who know what to do - basically leave you alone until you calm down but I'd consider safety in those situations to be borderline.

So, my situation with my mother sounds from some of this almost like a "mini-meltdown", but I get the impression that it really refers to a complete loss of control.

It wasn't as if I had become completely non-responsive to the other person, and not completely out of control, just very upset, and it was one of those remarks that "was the last straw". The only overall similarity I see is that "last straw" trigger, and the desire to smash something because of the extreme feeling of conflict and frustration.

Oh, yeah, I guess if most of your overload is from people, then that'd make sense.

Most of my overload is not from people, it's from various aspects of my environment, or also my attempts to do things that strain my ability to process information and comprehend information and stuff to the limit. (And this can include something like trying to juggle microwaving dinner and walking the dog and going to the bathroom, or simpler things like just one or two of those sometimes. Or, as the other person just before me described, a last straw situation where one little thing on a mountain of other little overloading things finally triggers it.)

So most of the time I am doing it alone, and most of the time that I am not alone, I am around people who are either trained in how to handle it, or who are my friends or family and know how to handle it because either they know me well or they're autistic themselves or both. But most of my meltdowns don't actually involve people, I can see if they did that would be a problem.

Agreed,some WPers have referred to their tantrums as meltdowns before-there is a big difference between conciously voluntarily doing something for the manipulation of another,and the overloading agony/onslaught of a meltdown.
Some people refer to 'normal' things as being a meltdown as well.

It is very likely it's the brains' fight or flight chemicals that fuel meltdowns,have read articles about this before,and think it was Griff? who wrote about it to.

Thanks for clarifying. It's ideal really to have people around who can help you get through it. Though maybe sometimes it's too embarrassing to be around other people when you're at that place.

I wasn't aware that people could plan to have meltdowns, nor choose between public and private ones.