What happened next that evening in May 2021 is the basis for a lawsuit by the mother alleging that Burlington police used excessive force and discriminated against her unarmed son, who is Black and has behavioral and intellectual disabilities.
After he failed to hand over the last of the stolen e-cigarettes, two officers physically forced him to do so, then Cathy Austrian’s son was handcuffed and pinned to the ground as he screamed and struggled, according to a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday and police body-camera video shared with The Associated Press by the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.
The teen eventually was injected with a ketamine, a sedative, then taken to a hospital, according to the lawsuit and video.
Say it with me, All Cops Are Bastards
Always.
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards. - Defund the dealerships.
All Firemen Are Drunks.
Edit: I know who the downvotes are from!
Obviously the police are the criminals here, but that mom…
They clearly didn’t grow up being told what I was always told: “if you’ve got a problem and you call the police, now you’ve got two problems.”
Yeah this is some abusive, privileged bullshit and I really hope this idiot learned a lesson. I also hope her child reminds her of this shit anytime she starts mounting her high horse in the future.
Yes, the elderly woman that adopted an at-needs child of color is the one being abusive and privileged.
The abusive, privileged bullshit is your comment.
She called the cops on her own kid
She mistakenly thought that calling the cops to talk to her child about not stealing would help him understand why it’s wrong and what the stakes are. She’s an old white woman. She didn’t realize that cops wouldn’t treat her large, black child as subhuman.
She was stupid and ignorant, but the cops are the monsters here. Don’t get it twisted with your own relationships with your parents. This isn’t that.
Insanely weird to project your parental issues on a lady calling the cops on her adopted black child, but being old is not an excuse for not being aware of the century long issue of cops treating black people poorly.
there was a time where media portrayed that as a reasonable thing to do, the police would come and talk to their kid. I’ve heard stories about it happening. Hell when i kid we got caught being destructive and the cops who caught us took us on tour of where we could end up. We got brought in the truck straight to the cells. It is a foolish thought but a person who holds some idyllic model in their heads sometimes are blinded by it.
She has a black lives matter sign in front of her house.
She isnt senile, and she is aware of a movement dedicated to dealing with police aggression.
Her age isnt an excuse. She clearly should have known better. Its insane to excuse her behavior.
When I was in cubs as a child, they took us to a police station and the cops talked to us about various things, we got our fingerprints taken (for us to keep, not their system) and we got to check out the jail cells.
Cops have definitely been used for educational purposes in the past. I don’t remember much of it specifically, but i remember it being a great experience.
Love that your best retort is “no u”.
???
There was no “no u” here.
Are you whiny about the fact that they projected their parental issues onto anyone who correctly judged the idiot for calling the cops? Thats their projection, that they said.
Correctly noting the idiot should have known better about the older-than-her issue of cops beating black folk for the sin of being black has nothing to do with anyones parents.
Telling someone not to project their problems isnt a “no u,” but its cute your best retort was to brag about how poorly you read.
What kind of idiot calls the cops on their black son expecting any kind of positive interaction?
Oh… right…
The white kind…
(grrr!)
My mom was this stupid
I was actually wondering about that. Like as a white person, I don’t want to over step boundaries, but even I’m not surprised.
But this makes a whole lot more sense.
People like her only love the system, not their own kids
She has been lied to her whole life that the police are there to help. She learned a quick, painful lesson that it isn’t true.
She is not the victim, her son is, and she abused her son.
It’s a plainly obvious fact to anyone with internet access and insight that the police are very obviously NOT there to help you, and instead of accepting the truth, she chose her delusions of a safe and just world, and her son paid the price.
We have the responsibility to know and act on the truth.
Ignorance is NEVER an excuse.
Damn… That was pretty retarded dawg.
Defending child abuse is pretty retarded. Dawg.
That is such a short sighted and dumb response. Really, you can’t just see beyond your own prejudices? Oh, she is white so she must be the devil, she must love the system and hate her own child. Really now? Where you there? Were you watching her every move for the past ten years to draw that conclusion, or are you just writing down some dumb “hurr-durr evil white is bad” comment?
You’re right. She was probably just stupid.
Holy shit, I think we found her Lemmy account
This is a minor problem compared to the fucking forced ketamin injections but can we please use more words to describe these types of issues. Like, specific ones. “Behavioral issues and intellectual disabilities” has also been used to describe the kid that almost beat a teacher to death for saying he shouldn’t have his Nintendo in school and the flying guy that tried to kill the judge. If there is no difference between how we describe them and this kid, we are just reinventing calling people retarded in increasingly elaborate ways.
I see your point, but that is a bigger can of worms than I think you are expecting. There are dozens of genetic or congenital disorders that can lead to intellectual disabilities and hundreds of acquired ones; all of which result in a range of severity. Also, “intellectual disabilities” and “behavioral problems” are very large buckets of different manifestations. In order to differentiate in the way that you are asking for, they would need to report exact diagnoses and give a detailed description of the individual to differentiate them, and even then, there would need to be a lot of context and clarification if they are to avoid misinterpretation or misunderstanding of any terms or descriptions used.
I’m not saying it’s easy. When I say specific I just mean more specific than the huge bucket we currently have. Maybe 5 buckets so that this kid doesn’t need to share a bucket with the Nintendo kid i mentioned.
Describing specific issues would violate their right to privacy.
I’m sure there is some middle ground we can find. His mother is named in the article and his actions were explained in depth so I don’t see a problem with being a bit more specific with what caused the behaviour. Especially when the phrase is also used to describe quite violent people.
I have to wonder why you want a clearer picture of what the boy was suffering from, 'cause from my vantage point it seems it’s only to satisfy your own curiosity rather than solve a larger issue.
Imo it’s none of our business what his diagnoses was as he was the victim here.
If it’s not relevant they dont need to bring it up. If it is relevant I would like to know what way it is relevant. I am fine with either but not both.
Don’t forget that the reason I want there to be more detail is because they used the expression as an excuse for that guy that jumped the judge. A guy that was articulate and friendly right up until he turned feral. I think it is doing this kid a disservice to put these two very different people under the same vague header. It’s what they did with the r-slur and it’s why it’s considered a slur today.
Again, in this particular instance he was the victim.
Blanket rules in revealing diagnoses do not take into account individual’s right to privacy. I prefer to respect that right vs your request to know.
I don’t know why “a bit more specific” is being read as reveal his medical history.
Because being specific is a breach of privacy. It’s really none of our business unless ofc one is a busybody.
Meh, not criminalizing children is usually a good thing, and language is an important part of that.
Absolute definition of white privilege to think that calling the police to lecture her black son would yield positive outcomes.
I say this as a white person.
What do you say to the armed, violent, unstable nutcase with a gun?
Good morning, Officer.What sound does a cow make? Moo. What sound does a dog make? Woof. What sound does a cat make? Meow. What sound does a pig make? UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHER FUCKER.
Police are not an education service. They’re armed men who have been trained to be aggressive.
Police are not an education service.
They like to pretend they are. Schools used to invite them into classrooms in the before times.
I hear they’re allergic to classrooms now
Right in the first part, but for the second: police come in more than one gender and the training is the same.
(Afaik on the training part - I welcome being proven wrong!)
I’m on mobile but didn’t see anything having to do with gender differences in training, only country based, which was not my point at all.
Ah, thought you were saying the training hours in the US are the same as the rest of the world.
In most civilised countries, the police is trained to de-escalate conflicts and when the do nedd to be agressive, they are trained for it to not be excessive and certainly not letha…
Also in most civilised countries, this takes several years not just 6 months.
That said, I hope that excessive aggression is not taught in the US police and that it is down to bad culture or single bad apples or regions.
I don’t think police in other countries are much better. I’m in Canada and our cops can be every bit as bad as American cops.
Let’s have police reform and additional training or more services!
Also…
PARENT YOUR OWN KIDS. Don’t call the cops on your underage children to “teach a lesson” you’re the parent, YOU do it. That call doesn’t come with a lesson, it comes with a pretty larceny charge to help with your kid’s “bad week”.
This. Honestly this is the one comment in this cesspool that makes sense. The thing that failed here is parenting.
And parenting a disabled kid for crying out loud. What a shit show.
When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
And when all you have is ketamine …
Everything looks like a horse?
Yeah god bless the woman I’m sure she had good intentions - but she’s not living in some 1990s public service announcement where the nice policeman gives valuable lessons to children.
Police are like… an absolute last resort “I need someone shot” measure. The fact that we also have them (for no particular reason) also authorize things like reports for insurance related incidents is a pretty colossal failure of “the system” as a whole
Exactly this. I can’t imagine how sheltered I’d have to be to still believe calling the police to “teach someone a lesson” is anything but a catastrophically bad idea. And I’m pretty sheltered already!
In almost any other county, calling the police won’t get anyone hurt.
In my country the dispatcher would probably even just send a social worker instead of police.
Can we start IQ testing for cop hiring?
They do already. Average intelligence or higher? Rejected.
They filter out those who score too high.
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Is having the cops beat your black son the new falling down at walmart
Mom fucked around and found out! Reminds me of this story https://youtu.be/OvPJGW1yqkw?si=BJwfD1bCykog2wrQ
I feel the struggle, my little brother has been in and out of prison for years. He just has to be cool for a while, catch rides to work and the store, and he could pay off his fines and go back to normal life, but it always gets out of hand.
Cops have no mercy in their soul.
