There is a young autistic man about 18 or 19, I think, who sometimes comes into the store where I work, always with his parents. He is almost completely non-verbal. His mother told us that one day while he was outside their home, riding his bike on the sidewalk, he was suddenly confronted by the police. This was presumably because he was an adult wearing a cape and toy sword, not bothering anyone, but happily wrapped up in his own little world. All this made him very provocative to the Conformity Patrol. Of course, when confronted with unfamiliar, threatening authority figures, he took off running. And, of course, they chased him down.

Luckily, through the intervention of his mom & dad, who heard the commotion, he wasn’t harmed or dragged off to the police station (which would have been even more traumatic).

I believe in my firm opinion that even neurotypical adults those without a disability are not easily convinced that a disability associated with odd, quirky or sometimes behavior that causes the "general public" to be uncomfortable is reason to quickly assume an individual as "a risk to society" or a reason to label someone without knowledge of the condition and as such I also believe that through educating employers, citizens, town officials, and law enforcement agencies about Autism or Asperger's Syndrome they can work on ways to filter such behavior as part of the disability instead of assuming the individual as a risk

"The guilty go free and the innocent are punished without cause another reason the justice system is doomed for failure"