To think an autistic child should not be treated like this by the police?

[Immoralplant]

I don’t know the background to this video, but at no point is there any suggestion by the police that this autistic teenager has done anything other than say words the police didn’t like.

I am absolutely shocked that this is happening in Britain.

IABU - that’s an appropriate police response to homophobic words
IANBU - those police officers should be sacked

Warning: the video shows scenes of an autistic teenager being hurt.

twitter.com/SineadKelly113/status/1689176155562143744?s=20

An update: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-Mother-autistic-daughter-16-dragged-home-police-saying-female-officer-lesbian-like-nana-set-SUE-force.html

West Yorkshire Police could sensibly try to settle this. Or they could turn this into a nasty fight and use their resources to cause further damage to the family.

I all fairness. The only thing the video showed was the mother aggravating matters and shouting. I hope this gets looked into properly and I think it’s a pity that an edited video went viral and caused outrage before facts could be established.

Did you watch a different video?

Clearly you've never had a poor interaction with the police.

They fucked up. Royally. Stop defending the indefensible.

I don't think anyone, child or adult, NT or ND, should have been treated that way.

I habe definitely fucked up badly before, and I can guarantee you that you will not have this number of police officers at your property without reason. There is more to the story

There really isn't. The police don't dispute any part of the mother's account of what happened.

If you really want to think along those lines, consider the fact that a police force doesn't delete its original statement from all social media, then restrict all commenting on their second statement and get referred to the national professional standards body...without reason.

I have been in a MH crisis... had 6 police cars turn up... a minimum of 9 cops at least. No need for it.

I’ll rather wait for a proper statement once things were checked, rather seeing more emotive social media fodder

Then you haven't been reading their statements very closely. They examined the evidence - all of the bodycam footage and the officers' statements - and found that there was no reason to keep the girl on bail and released her from it.

Yes but that doesn’t mean that there had been no reason to investigate in the first place.

Think about it logically. She was arrested for making a homophobic statement as a public order offence - that was categorically stated in the first statement. There was nothing prior to the comment made by the girl which is relevant, because that comment was given by the police as the only reason for the arrest.

There was exactly one officer involved in making that call, who was also the "victim", and it was determined that no law was broken.

The only possible legitimate reason for that arrest and subsequent release is that the officer didn't know the law (or the law about entering a property to effect an arrest - she never had consent to enter, and she had no warrant).

That being the case, there was nothing to investigate in the first place given an officer of reasonable competence, unless she was actively trying to find a reason to arrest the girl from the outset. "Let's arrest her and figure out if a law was broken later, and while we're at it let's just check whether we broke the law arresting her" is explicitly a prohibited course of action for the police (unless you happen to live in Russia or China).

So what if a police officer looks like a girl's lesbian nana? If you saw a police officer who looked like Alan Carr or Elton John would it be homophobic to point it out? This is just another example of the police's own homophobia.

I recall from back in 2005 a student asked a mounted officer "Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?". As the (homophobic) police thought being gay was worse than being straight, the student spent the night in the cells and was fined £80. The student refused to pay the fine and the ridiculous prosecution was dropped. In 2013 this was one of the cases highlighted when the government amended Section 5 of the Public Order Act to make it clearer that this was not illegal and the amendment was even publicised with "You May Now Call a Police Horse ‘Gay’ in the UK"

Blackbelt barrister has made a few vids about this, some interesting points.

I totally agree that the reason for the arrest seems ludicrous which is why I would like to know why so many police officers were at the property in the first place.
What happened before the recording started and why is the sound edited out towards the end? Surely the girl’s screams would have ensured a lot more sympathy from viewers. The only logical reason to edit out the sound is that there was something that would have cost the family sympathy points.
I’m not trying to be difficult here but I am very cynical about the way social media is used to promote events in the most dramatic fashion too cause outrage. In this case I have quite a few questions.

The video had been deleted by TikTok several times - she edited the audio out progressively each time it was uploaded because the audio was the reason.

I wonder if what's needed is for people in West Yorks to spend the next couple of weeks making a police report every time they think they may have overheard someone saying something they perceive as potentially insulting, offensive, or discriminatory. I mean, if it's an arrestable crime when a police officer happens to be there, surely it's reasonable for the public to assume it's an arrestable crime the rest of the time, right? A few weeks combing through tens of thousands of reports of trivial everyday shit might make them think twice about their double standards.

The thing is, it is an arrestable crime if somebody is offended (or somebody believes that somebody else is offended) by something said in public, if there is intent and awareness on the part of the speaker.

That could actually get a lot of people arrested.

I know… people would have to be careful, and also have lots of them doing it. And TBH my post was kinda flippant anyway, I don't expect the W Yorks population to actually do it.

It was more an oblique way to say that a crime which is only really expected to be treated as a crime in certain circumstances or with certain types of victims is likely to be unjust or even discriminatory, and needs looking at.

I mean, basically, it's pragmatically acknowledged that these crimes aren't usually treated as crime crimes because if everybody reported it to the police, every time something that could possibly be construed as maybe being a public order offence or as hate speech happened that might requires an investigatory arrest if you said it in earshot of a W Yorks police officer, the police wouldn't even have the capacity to give each reporter a crime number. So in practice, we all know that because the law is written in an encompassing kind of way, there's a level of thing that you ignore or just deal with. Unless of course either the supposed perpetrator or the supposed victim is part of a group that's treated differently, in which case the threshold can sometimes fall a lot, down to the actual legal threshold or even well below. That's the objectionable bit.

It’s laughable that someone could arrest a child for calling someone a lesbian.

@Sheog

I totally agree that the reason for the arrest seems ludicrous which is why I would like to know why so many police officers were at the property in the first place.

They were returning her home after her family reported her as being in the town centre intoxicated.

Re the amount of officers - you are coming from a (fair) assumption that the police always act reasonably. They don’t. The other day in London FOUR officers attended to (wrongfully) arrest a woman who they thought evaded a £1.75 bus fare. We do know the female officer called for back up - when this happens police just descend because they trust their colleagues have made a fair request, they don’t ask question because so often there isn’t time and they ARE needed ie when someone is being violent.

What happened before the recording started and why is the sound edited out towards the end?

The above posted has answered this.

Surely the girl’s screams would have ensured a lot more sympathy from viewers.

There’s a bit of discussion upthread about how sadly disabilities unless they’re obvious or inspirational to the opposite of eliciting sympathy. It’s a good discussion I recommend you have a look!

I’m not trying to be difficult here but I am very cynical about the way social media is used to promote events in the most dramatic fashion too cause outrage. In this case I have quite a few questions.

What questions? Most have been clarified

And she didn't even directly call her a lesbian, she said she "looked like a lesbian like Nana Julie". It was an observation made by a child with ND, hence no filter. I know from my teens they don't speak like I would, it's very 2d to them and both have nearly got grief for speaking as is. DD for instance said that a boy looked Chinese, at school, his parents complained (🙄) and school had to intervene and said there was no malice it was purely an observation. Meanwhile, his parents contacted edu welfare as they suggested she was being racist. Luckily school spoke to them and it went no further.

It's why I firmly believe we need to begin to teach children about ND and other such invisible illnesses. People sadly see ND, especially using autism, as a method of excusing bad behaviour in kids whose parents are crap at teaching right from wrong. Which of course does happen. However, we teach about so many other characteristics that make us all different, so why not ass this to the mix too?

why so many police officers were at the property in the first place.

Lesbian Nanna police woman called for back up at some point to arrest the teen for commenting that she looked like her lesbian nana. That’s why there were so many of them.

I don’t think it matters in that it would be equally ridiculous in a NT child. As a point of information, having autism DOESN’T mean you have no filter, can’t lie, or can’t be rude on purpose. It’s just totally ridiculous to suggest being called a lesbian is a reason to barge into someone’s house and drag them out, and arrest them.