Steven Harper Piziks

I am speechless with anger over this:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/helping-autistic-man-black-therapist-shot-florida-police-044231095.html

The short version is, an autistic man with a truck was sitting in a Miami street, and his aid worker was trying to convince him to come inside.  The autistic man was white.  The aid worker was black.  Someone called the police and reported that an armed man was threatening suicde.  Two white police officers arrived.  They started shouting at the aid worker to lay face-down on the ground while his patient continued to play with the toy truck in the street. The aid worker, who was sitting down, lay on his back with his arms up and shouted that he was a medical technician at a group home, that the man next to him had a toy truck, that he was trying to help, that no one was armed.

So the police officers shot the aid worker.

It "only" hit his leg.  He's expected to be out of the hospital soon.  The officer is on administrative (read, "paid") leave.  When asked why he shot the worker, the officer replied, "I don't know."

Actually, we do know.  The officer is white, the aid worker is black, and the officer is racist.  Oh, if asked, he'd deny it six ways to Saturn, but it's true nonetheless.  Let me put it this way: if the aid worker had been white, does anyone honestly think the officer would have fired?

Obviously not.

I also wonder--the officer shot at the aid worker WHEN THE AUTISTIC MAN WAS RIGHT THERE.  The officer shot at one civilian when a second civilian was in the area.  If the officer had missed, the autistic man could have been injured or killed as well.

But it goes on.  Someone else caught more vidoe here:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article90905442.html

The cops have the autistic man flat on his face in handcuffs while they frisk him.  I'm trying to imagine the awful trauma.  If this happened to Aran, I can't imagine how long it would take him to recover.

When you put your loved one into group living, you do it with the hope that they'll be safe, and that the police will protect them, not terrorize them and shoot the staff hired to help them.  The police in this country howl that they're being miscast as monsters, but over and over and over we see stuff like this.  What else are we to think?

If the cops want the public's good will, the officer who pulled the trigger will be fired, with malice, and never allowed to enter law enforcement again, and it will happen with great fanfare so everyone hears about it while the officer in question slinks away in disgrace while his fellow officers turn their backs on him.

But that won't happen, will it?  He was a white officer who shot a black man.  He'll be back on the beat within a week.