Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

In Chicago, a 16-year old autistic boy was beaten by police, despite his family’s attempts to communicate to the officers that they were dealing with someone with special needs. While the story clearly shows why it is so important for people (especially those with power) to understand that some people respond to stimuli in unusual ways and that that doesn’t make them dangerous, it seems that there are overlapping oppressions in play in this case.

Why did the police confront Oscar Guzman in the first place? Why was someone watching cars on his break from work regarded as a suspect? I doubt they would have approached a young white man in quite the same way. Going through any sort of special training on working with autistic people (which the Chicago PD has, though we don’t know if the particular officers in question attended) isn’t going to help people like Guzman unless officers can get past viewing them as suspect-by-default.

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