Police taser and arrest severely autistic man for walking down the street

© WYFF4.com

Greenville, SC - An innocent 34-year-old autistic man was tasered and arrested by police on Christmas eve because he walking down the street at night.

Greenville City Police were in the area responding to reports of gunshots when they came across Tario Anderson and shined a spotlight in the innocent man's face. Anderson reacted by walking away from this stressful sensory overload.

"When they put their spotlight on him, he immediately put his head down, put his hands in his pockets and began to walk away from him," Officer Johnathan Bragg with Greenville Police said. "They then got out of the vehicle and approached him and ordered him to stop at which point he did flee from the officers and they pursued him."

Anderson had committed no crime but since he did not immediately bow down to the police, he was tasered and cops piled on top of him.

His mother, Carolyn Anderson, said he has severe autism, does not understand much and did not need to be arrested or shocked with a Taser.

"Tario can say yes or no, he might ask for a thing or two, but just verbal, no," Carolyn Anderson said.

According to WYFF, Carolyn Anderson said the family has lived on Sullivan St. her entire life and he often walks most nights to other relatives' homes on the street. When neighbors saw Tario shocked with the Taser, Carolyn Anderson said they called her to come outside, but officers would not let her near her son.

"If you had seen my baby was out there, laying on that sidewalk and every time he reached for me, I reached for him- [they'd say] 'Get back, we gonna Tase you,'" Carolyn Anderson said. "I was trying to make them take me to jail. I curse everything, 'Take me! I'm the one causing trouble! Take me. He's not doing nothing.' No matter what I said, it didn't make no difference to them."

Bragg callously stated that Tario Anderson deserved the force he received from officers. He said the officers were not aware that Anderson has a mental handicap, and because he broke the law by running and resisting arrest, they arrested him.

"From what he did, he did break the law so in any case like that, we do go ahead and arrest them and make the charges and we're not deemed certified to declare anyone as mentally ill or with a disease or anything like that so we don't technically know if he is," Bragg said.

After the arrest, Anderson was treated on scene by paramedics and then he was taken to jail. He was charged with interfering with police work and resisting arrest.

Tario Anderson was simply walking down the street. Because of that he was assaulted, kidnapped, and charged with a crime and the Greenville police department doesn't see anything wrong with it.

This is the first time Anderson has been arrested and his poor mother has no idea why he is being charged.

"Interfering? Resisting? It's against the law to take off running? I still don't understand. I really don't," she said."I say if you hear gunshots, are you going to stand there and wait to see if the bullet hit you or are you getting out the way?"

Instead of admitting they made a mistake and used excessive force on a mentally disabled man, the Greenville police department released the following statement reminding the citizens of Greenville to obey their rulers.

"Officers used a Taser to secure Anderson. We are conducting an investigation into the claim of excessive force by Anderson's mother, and it would not be appropriate to address all of her claims at this time. I also think that we should reinforce the need for members of the public to be cooperative with police when stopped and ask to see or speak with a supervisor if they feel mistreated in any way. It is our goal to effectively police our city with the full cooperation of the public we serve and we regret all incidents where force must be used to faithfully perform our duties."

Below is the local report from WYFF.

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