that this mother is indeed guilty of obstruction, and assault and battery of an officer. The mitigating circumstances of her being upset over the type of treatment her autistic son was receiving may or may not be accepted by the court. That remains to be seen in followup reporting.
Even if the cops are clearly wrong, anything less than 100% cooperation with them when they are responding to a situation is obstruction. Even if the cops are completely wrong and all you are doing is running your mouth, even using civil tones... They can and very often will run you in so they can keep control of the situation, and especially so they can maintain their absolute authority in future situations. You can pursue civil and criminal proceedings later, at your leisure, based upon the evidence you can provide that the cops were in the wrong, but during the heat of the moment 100% cooperation with them is the only safe bet.
Assault is the attempt at making some form of contact. Battery is when you make contact. Even if all you do is touch a cops arm to get his attention as you try to defuse a situation, that is battery.
Few cops are trained in proper ways of de-escalating situations involving ASD persons, or MR persons, or persons with mental illnesses. Most of that training comes much later, at the cops own initiative. Young cops, and cops in small towns tend to only get gestapo-type crowd control training.
One would think that the threat of huge lawsuits from unnecessarry injuries would push more precints into getting their men (and women) better trained. Of course, one would also think that the schools would WANT to comply with federal Laws and best practices, or that the CDC would WANT to get to the root of the autism epidemic and find a way to reverse it or at least slow it down... Wish with one hand and crap in the other, which one gets filled, yes?
Let us hope that none of us ever have to chose between the threat of getting arrested as we try to protect our children, or watching our child oradult on Spectrum get the snot beat out of him/her by cops or other security personnel because a situation gets out of hand.
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