Reporting people with Aspergers to the police?

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eric76
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17 Dec 2012, 3:42 pm

I couldn't believe it when I saw this comment at http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/12/17/expert-aspergers-syndrome-unfairly-scapegoated-for-newtown-school-massacre/:

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There's a really, really weird teenager who attends my church. He has Aspergers. Yesterday I reported his odd behavior, along with several examples of strange stuff he has done and said, to the police. It's worth reporting this kid to authorities now that I know how dangerous his disorder can be.



Fnord
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17 Dec 2012, 3:44 pm

Get used to it.

"Weirdness" may well soon become justifiable cause for the issuance of a search warrant.



Wandering_Stranger
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17 Dec 2012, 3:44 pm

But if he doing dangerous stuff, he should be reported. Regardless of whether he has Aspergers or not.



eric76
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17 Dec 2012, 3:46 pm

It might be a good reason not to seek a diagnosis.



aspi-rant
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17 Dec 2012, 3:46 pm

this is so sad, that it is getting funny… :lol:

these NTs are completely mad, dumb and ignorant.

how do they ever decide which side of the toilet-paper they should use to wipe their sad pathetic asses? :roll:



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17 Dec 2012, 3:49 pm

:wall: Great. The uneducated public will no doubt equate Aspies with Psychopaths.

I've seen similarly stupid associations. Back in the UK a few years ago there was public outrage over the actions of a paedophile and feelings were running high in the country. Some dumb members of the public heard that one of their neighbours worked at the hospital and was a paediatric doctor. They destroyed his car, smashed his windows and spray painted obscenities on his house thinking that the word paediatric meant paedophile.


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eric76
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17 Dec 2012, 3:50 pm

Wandering_Stranger wrote:
But if he doing dangerous stuff, he should be reported. Regardless of whether he has Aspergers or not.


The comment didn't claim he was doing anything dangerous. Just that it was odd.

To me, the comment reads that because he has Aspergers, the commenter reported his odd behavior to the police.

Odd behavior could be anything including singing out of key, staring at the ceiling, smiling at people, not making eye contact, and so on.

Well, maybe not singing out of key. As near as I can tell, that would make half the members of any church suspicious. In my own case, I don't sing church hymns quite like anyone else but I'm pretty much so quiet that I don't think anyone has ever noticed.



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17 Dec 2012, 3:51 pm

I can add this as a new reason to why I don't tell people I have autism. Excuse me, Asperger's. But AS is a form of autism.

But hey the person with it could have been doing inappropriate stuff like sexual harassment or stuff that is suspicious like going through recycling at an apartment complex and he doesn't even live there or doing it at the church.


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17 Dec 2012, 3:51 pm

Wandering_Stranger wrote:
But if he doing dangerous stuff, he should be reported. Regardless of whether he has Aspergers or not.

Agreed, but "acting weird" is not dangerous. Just because a person stutters, stammers, and misarticulates while failing to make eye contact (if that person doesn't avoid conversations altogether), that does not mean that he or she is going to commit a mass atrocity.

eric76 wrote:
It might be a good reason not to seek a diagnosis.

Or to seek a diagnosis "Off the Grid" (private funds, and not through an insurance carrier), and not reveal it to anyone.



eric76
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17 Dec 2012, 3:54 pm

TallyMan wrote:
:wall: Great. The uneducated public will no doubt equate Aspies with Psychopaths.

I've seen similarly stupid associations. Back in the UK a few years ago there was public outrage over the actions of a paedophile and feelings were running high in the country. Some dumb members of the public heard that one of their neighbours worked at the hospital and was a paediatric doctor. They destroyed his car, smashed his windows and spray painted obscenities on his house thinking that the word paediatric meant paedophile.


Years ago, I confused Pediatricians with Podiatrists. I wondered why people kept taking their kids to foot doctors.



aspi-rant
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17 Dec 2012, 3:58 pm

TallyMan wrote:
:wall: Great. The uneducated public will no doubt equate Aspies with Psychopaths.

I've seen similarly stupid associations. Back in the UK a few years ago there was public outrage over the actions of a paedophile and feelings were running high in the country. Some dumb members of the public heard that one of their neighbours worked at the hospital and was a paediatric doctor. They destroyed his car, smashed his windows and spray painted obscenities on his house thinking that the word paediatric meant paedophile.


after an incident of canibalism in sweden, we had here in denmark a psychiatrist named henrik day poulsen, proclaim that cannibals were either psychopaths or people with asperger syndrome…

he's a regular on the TV2 channel, showing of his "knowledge" about psychiatric matters to the general public. :roll:



Callista
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17 Dec 2012, 3:59 pm

It'll be okay. Just keep spreading the truth. Things get better with every person who knows that people with ASDs may be odd, but as human as the rest of us.


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MrXxx
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17 Dec 2012, 4:08 pm

The commenter is already getting negative replies. So that's good.

Why not, rather than call attention to stupid comments like that, call attention to the actual article on the page?

Seems to me a more constructive thing to do.

Quote:
Those who knew Lanza described him as a bright, but painfully awkward young man. Some even said he had Asperger’s syndrome.

“Whether or not that’s true, it has no bearing on the heinous crime that he committed,” Shery said.


At least the article itself is making it clear that, first, we don't even know if he had it, and second, even if he did, it has no bearing on what he did.

That's what we ought to be calling attention to. Not posting headlines ourselves that he DID have AS. The truth is we don't know, so we all ought to quit assuming that we do.


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17 Dec 2012, 4:10 pm

There's going to be sooooooooo many pissed off cops if more people start calling in innocent Autistic people. It's just wasting the cops time and using up taxpayer money. In fact, I'm sure it's illegal to misuse 9-1-1 like that.



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17 Dec 2012, 4:12 pm

Almost every famous person who has had genius-level intelligence, real skills or talents, or did things to make the world a better place (and right now that's saying a lot), has been "weird" in some way. I read in a book that Alexander Graham Bell, who not only invented the telephone but things that have benefited doctors as well, who spent his summers in Baddeck right here on Cape Breton Island, was a good man and loved by everyone he knew, but relatives say he would do "weird" things like run around in his swimsuit outdoors during a heavy rainstorm, or float on the Bra's Dor Lakes for hours on an inner tube. He'd often still be out there after dark and all you could see was the light coming from his cigar! Imagine what things would be like if he and others were reported to the police and locked up because they thought he and others like him were dangerous. This whole nightmare incident has made people almost as stupid and judgmental as they were with people with HIV back in the '80's! :(

Of course I don't need to tell people like YOU this, it's other people with such thick skulls that need to hear us and smarten up. But once someone absolutely believes something it's almost impossible to make them think otherwise. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh. :x



richardbenson
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17 Dec 2012, 4:14 pm

And so it begins. well you guys guess what? I'm not autistic anymore! :P