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In Honor of ‘Autism Awareness Month’ Saratoga County Cops Slam Autistic Teen to the Floor in Target
Heads up, White Folks! Time to get up off the couch and set it off. Again.
‘I didn’t know what to do because I wanted to call for help. But who do you call for help when it’s the police harming the people.’ ~Chante Ware
Yesterday my partner showed me this video, taken by another customer present at the incident on April 18th, of this law enforcement outrage that took place in a Clifton Park, New York Target this past week. It is not possible to express the convergence of fury and terror this has triggered in me: my partner is black and my stepson is a beautiful young man, brilliant and kind with a big, big heart. And he has Aspergers. If it’s that hard for me to watch this without wanting to beat an old, fat, white bully’s ass, imagine how his father feels. Imagine how this young man’s mother feels right now.
I am doing what I can here to help make sure these beasts with badges are held accountable for what they’ve done here. And don’t pretend for a moment that anyone believes these men would have subjected a young white man to this insanity.
‘What the (expletive) are you doing? Get the (expletive) off my brother…He has autism, he has autism,’ the teen’s seventeen year-old sister screamed at police attacking her brother.
She is now charged with assaulting police, but the video clearly shows that she was only responding to the much larger, heavier cop slamming her brother to the floor and laying on top of him. A prosecutor will be pressed for palatable ‘probable cause’ here.
‘…a crowd gathering outside includes two additional white people who ask for officers’ badge numbers and are refused. They ask if the air conditioning is on in the back of the car and are not given an answer.’
It’s also important, I think, to identify the shopper who took this video — Tracy Sangare — at one point another older man, apparently the store manager, puts a camera in her face. She simply says, ‘You’re going to report me?’ He says ‘Yeah,’ and she replies…
