Black boy, 12, with autism is cuffed and CONCUSSED by police officers in police outreach program

A Virginia woman is speaking out after claiming her 12-year-old autistic son was shocked by a police officer at a local tennis program aimed at fostering a positive relationship with police.

Shelia Jackson enrolled her young son, Curtis Hayes, in an after-school tennis program run by the Richmond Police Athletic League.

Her uncle was a police officer and she wanted her son, who lives with autism, “to have a positive view of police officers and not all the negativity you see on TV,” as she put it.

However, on November 3, Jackson showed up at the Virginia Commonwealth University tennis courts to see Curtis on the ground in handcuffs.

She said they ended up having to go to the university emergency room, where her son was diagnosed with a concussion.

She said staff told her Curtis was getting frustrated with his tennis serves and asked her to practice next to everyone else.

Jackson said Curtis told him that an officer raised her voice at him and he started to walk away.

She thinks the officer may have seen this behavior as defiant, but Jackson says her son “knows how to try to self-regulate” and that walking away was his way of doing it.

However, as Jackson says, the officer may not have realized that and instead grabbed the 12-year-old boy.

She said: ‘When I got here, my son was handcuffed on the ground just behind where the fence opened. There was an officer holding his head, there was an officer on his left leg, someone on his right leg, there was an officer on his right side kneeling holding his shoulders down, and then there was another officer standing.

Richmond police told Jackson that Curtis head-butted an officer while in their custody and handcuffed him thinking he would run away, according to CBS6.

It was the handcuffs that made Jackson apoplectic, not understanding why a 12-year-old boy with special needs was treated that way.

“This is not how you should deal with him, not just with my son, with anyone,” she said. ‘Where’s the training? You just go to training and don’t sink in?’

You have spoken to police officers and paid for a police report, but the report did not contain a description of the incident and no one has given you a satisfactory response.

University police said they responded to a call related to the incident, but neither the boy nor his mother were there when they arrived.

Jackson says that the incident took a toll on Curtis’s well-being, as he went from getting straight A’s in school to not being able to make it through a few days of school.

‘As soon as the concussion is like bam bam bam. I’m like ‘oh my gosh,’ it’s something every day,” Jackson said.

Richmond police said there is an internal investigation into the incident, but did not provide further details.