Video of a police officer assaulting an unarmed teen with autism has the boy’s father calling for justice.
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Footage captured by a neighbor’s doorbell camera in Vacaville, California, shows an officer tell 17-year-old Preston Wolf to sit down on the sidewalk. The boy immediately complies, but the officer continues to act aggressively and erratically, throwing his scooter, hovering over him, and yelling.
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Preston, who has autism and ADHD, reportedly got nervous after the officer continued trying to intimidate him, and can be seen getting up in an attempt to flee. The officer throws him to the ground in the street and punches him in the face, screaming at the boy: “Don’t make me hurt you more.”
The teen’s father, Adam, shared the video on Facebook, noting that he believes this incident will cause his son to have a permanent distrust of the police.
“I am pro police, but I am not pro ABUSE!” Adam wrote. “This individual and department must be held accountable for their actions. NO child, disability or not, deserves to be treated like this.”
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According to Adam, the police were initially called after another teenager tried to pick a fight with Preston not far from where they live. Preston reportedly picked up a “piece of metal or a metal pole off of the ground to defend himself,” and an adult stepped in to stop things from escalating.
The altercation was diffused, and Preston left to go play with a neighbor, but someone, at some point, called 911.
The Vacaville Police Department claims they were responding to reports of “someone actively ‘being stabbed,’” despite the other teen involved suffering minor injuries that did not require treatment. Police also reportedly found and spoke with the other teen prior to catching up to Preston.
An initial investigation by VPD also insists that the officer who threw and hit Preston didn’t know he had autism, though Josh Bartholomew, whose Ring captured the interaction and who witnessed part of it firsthand, said he repeatedly tried to tell the officer that Preston had special needs.
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“The officer at that time had the opportunity to deescalate the situation and he chose to escalate the situation in a manner that resulted in Preston, in my opinion, being assaulted,” Bartholomew told FOX40.
Regardless of Preston’s autism, it is unclear why an adult police officer felt that utilizing violence to subdue an unarmed teenager whose identity was known, who was no longer at the scene of the initial incident, and who was not posing an immediate threat to anyone was the appropriate response.
“Yeah, it was the most horrendous thing I’ve ever witnessed from a police officer in my city,” Bartholomew said.
Initial reports said the officer was still on duty as the investigation into the incident continued, but after the videos went viral, he appears to have been put on administrative leave.
*First Published: April 26, 2021, 7:46 am
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