more fuckery from the police!

Autistic boy, mom expect apology for arrest

Updated Thu. Apr. 23 2009 7:51 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

An autistic boy and his mother are expecting an apology from the head of Newfoundland policing on Thursday after the young man was mistakenly arrested for being intoxicated, and kept in jail overnight.

Dane Spurrell, 18, was taken into police custody on Saturday night when officers failed to recognize the signs of his disorder. He wasn't released until Sunday morning.

Dane's mother Diane Spurrell told CTV's Canada AM she has filed a complaint against the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary over the incident.

Dane was arrested while walking home from a video store at about midnight on Saturday in his hometown of Mount Pearl, N.L.

His mother said police told him to walk on the sidewalk, and when the autistic boy failed to co-operate he was taken into custody on the assumption he was intoxicated.

Diane told CTV's Canada AM her son wasn't given a breathalyzer test and wasn't allowed to make a phone call when he was first arrested, or when officers brought him to the police station.

"They actively denied him," she told Canada AM.

"He was asking from the time he was in the police cruiser throughout the night at the lockup and they kept saying he only had the right to call a lawyer, or the other answer was that he should have called instantly."

She also said police turned off his cellphone, preventing her from reaching her son.

Dane had phoned his mother at about midnight to say he was on his way home from the video store. By 1:30 a.m. he hadn't arrived and she began to worry and went searching for her son.

"I was scared to death. I didn't know where he was," she said.

"He's a very reliable person as that phone call indicates. ...He has a fairly normal life and of all the hundreds of times he has walked home alone there has never been an incident."

At about 5 a.m. she filed a missing persons report and was told Dane had been arrested for public drunkenness -- an allegation she found shocking, since her son doesn't drink.

She informed police that her son is autistic, and he was eventually released.

RNC Chief Joe Browne has indicated he plans to apologize for the incident on Thursday, and a full investigation is underway into what may have gone wrong.

Spurrell said the apology is a "gesture of good will" but doesn't go far enough to make amends.

"I know they are doing two investigations and I trust they will do the right thing by Dane but...the real apology we need to hear is from the officers who hurt my son."