I'm old enough to remember a time when parents would've removed their child from that setting voluntarily.

That being said...the commissioner has the same right to be annoyed at the parent's insistence on inflicting their child on the public as anyone else, but he has no place using the authority of his position to enforce it.

I don't know how bad the screaming was, but it sometimes does get bad enough to create a public nuisance. Some people do need to be considerate of others.

Wait, so you're not allowed to lock up autistic kids and throw away the key? I'll ah, be right back.

How does the chief yelling across the room make the situation better? What a tool.

I'm torn on this one. I've witnessed a lot of children behaving badly, and the parents making no attempts to control them or stop their behavior, but instead telling everyone "he/she is autistic". Autism is not an excuse to stop parenting and controlling your child. Its not an excuse to let your child run wild and do whatever they want and disrupt other people. If this mother was doing absolutely nothing to change her child's behavior, then I see nothing wrong with what the officer did. Parents cannot use their child's disability as a reason to stop parenting.

I would have just told him to mind his business.

@Dobernala:

sometimes does get bad enough to create a public nuisance.

All kinds of things in public annoy me but I don't expect the weight of the law to serve my crankiness, much as that idea appeals to me.

WHile I dont support the way it was done (yelling across the restaurant) I DO support parents of out of control children removing themself & their child from the immediate area so that others are not bothered. How much are regular patrons supposed to put up with?

A crying child in a restaurant is like a cellphone ringing in a theater. BOTH should remedy the situation immediately as to not impose upon others.

Note: just this morning... I stopped in my local Ihop to find a large group of loud, obnoxious state patrolmen (must have been at least 13 of them). Cracking jokes & laughing loudly. Suprisingly worse than construstion workers (I've found construstion workers are the worst when it comes to obnoxios behavior in the local diner).

People need to pay more attention to their surroundings too. Nobody wants to listen to your kids screaming! Take them home. So your kid has autism or is just spoiled and he/she knows that screaming will get them what they want? I don't really care! I don't have to listen to your kid screaming no matter what.

Hm. I'm torn. I recognize that the child has a disability, but like all disabilities, you have to adjust the lifestyle you lead to accommodate. OBVS, the bebeh wasn't enjoying her night out on the town, and may have felt more comfortable/less angsty in her home environment perhaps with a special meal for herself, so why disrupt the people who have the potential to enjoy themselves without a kid screaming murder, for whatever reason? I do, however, acknowledge that it must be ridiculously tough for a parent of an autistic child and they *want* their kid to have every opportunity, but clearly this was a lose-lose situation - kid not enjoying night out, causing other patrons to not enjoy THEIR night out. and the mother can't have been enjoying herself with her screaming kid.

@Jubilance22:

Autism is not an excuse to stop parenting and controlling your child. Its not an excuse to let your child run wild and do whatever they want and disrupt other people.

Yay for Punday.

I understand that in this PC world we're supposed to be accepting of every handicap and 'disorder' but I find it ridiculous that people feel entitled to do whatever the hell they want only to just use it as an excuse.

If the child's handicap was that she constantly peed all over everything then it would not be acceptable to bring her to places where she will affect her surroundings negatively.

So where do we draw the line?

Parents need to be more considerate of others instead of just making excuses.

How long was the kid crying? The article says she "BEGAN crying", which doesn't sound like she was carrying on and on. An autistic kid does take some time to calm down.

To me it just sounds as if this is a case of a police chief who didn't want his dinner disturbed. The kid started crying and while it isn't stated it is implied (at least that is how I take it) that soon after is when the chief yelled across the room. And all I can say is wow to all those that are blaming the parent here. While I have had little to no experience with young Autistic kids I do know that each kid is different and how you react to them needs to be different too.

I'd think it depends on the length the child has been crying. If its continuous, yea, take your child outside and calm them down. I don't care if your child is autistic or perfectly healthy and just a whiny brat, I really don't enjoy the screams of children when eating out.

Also on a side note to this story, when did it become acceptable to start bringing babies to movie theaters again? If I'm paying $20 to see a new release in a theater that I've been waiting a few months to see and your infant starts screaming and crying and you DON'T take them out of the movie, you should be shot on sight.

everyone i personally know with children takes them outside when they act up. i only ever knew one autistic kid in my life and he was very well behaved and he was severely autistic. as long as you didn't touch him he'd be very quiet and just go on about whatever he was going on about. i think his mom was the only one that ever really interracted with him and she would still correct/deal with him if he threw tantrums or started screaming and rocking in like the middle of a grocery store or something (she used to babysit me and my brother so we spent a lot of time with her).

the cop was a dick about it. how long was it going on before he yelled at them from across the restaurant? which is of course just as rude. he could have at least walked over. he should've been more understanding of the kid, she should've been more understanding of all the other restaurant patrons.

and what's with the explosion of "they kicked out my autistic kid thing?" i swear if i hear anything about vaccines next i'm gonna nuke the world.

Am I not correct in assuming that unless a crime is being committed, the police chief (or any cop) has no more right to order her out than, say, I would?

People being inconsiderate of others (screaming child, ringing cellphone, etc) is irritating. Policemen using their authority inappropriately is much worse than irritating.

Does a parent really have the right to impose a crying child on us?
Must we all be forced to share in the parental experience?

I don't want to be a jerk about this, and I wouldn't hold it against a parent who was on a train, and couldn't easily get off.
But there is no reason for parents to take their screaming hellspawn into movie theaters, restaurants, and libraries.

I don't care if her child was autistic, it's the mothers responsibility.
The mother should have taken the child outside to calm her down or something.
But then why should she when no one ever confronts her about it.
Perhaps she should have also started changing diapers in front of everyone too -- it's a mother's right!

Kudos to that officer for kicking them out.

I remember my folks would threaten to take us home if we misbehaved in public. When my younger sister cried, one of my parents would leave with her until she calmed down, and if she didn't, they would take her home.

I do understand that the child in this story is Autistic, but for me, that changes nothing about what is acceptable of parents with children in public places. Take the child outside or to the bathroom (regardless of whether they're handicapped or not) to try and calm them down so that they don't interrupt everyone else's outing

Judge not lest ye be judged. Or something like that. I feel for the mother..she probably just wanted a break. The office could have handled it a little more discreatly or offered to help.

The police chief protected the child's right to be taken to a quiet, safe place and soothed by her mother. Autistic or not, a crying child is a child in need who has a right to be attended to. The fact that the mother was too ignorant and selfish to quit stuffing her face long enough to pay attention to her screaming child is probably why the cop spoke up.

Who are the adults here, anyway?

@dequeued:

"Does a parent really have the right to impose a crying child on us? Must we all be forced to share in the parental experience?"

Depends on the circumstance. In a public park or other public area, yes, they do have that right. But in a private establishment, they most certainly do not. Technically, the officer was within his rights to evict them - they were trespassing, and he's allowed to toss them out (or arrest them, in a real pinch). It probably shouldn't have gone that far, though.

i should not be forced to deal with your genetic abnormality on the rare occasion that my lady and i get to enjoy dinner out. frankly we are not the ones that inbred and made a tard baby. if you want to take you children in public, control them, if not next time you have that voice in your head, go ahead and put them face down in the tub.

@lusnia: I'm referring this comment to the moderators for abuse.

@Erwos: How were they trespassing? Were they asked to leave by the Manager? If not, then they were not trespassing. You could argue for disturbing the peace, but then again, was there a complaint?

I think most of the posters here fail to see a large issue. That is the A.D.A. (Americans with Disability Act). Autism is considered a disability. That being the case, it is incumbent upon the owners of the restaurant to make reasonable accomodations for that child. The police chief was dead wrong. Under the law, it was a civil rights violation. And, while the restaurant is a "private" place, it is a business that serves the public, and may not violate state and/or federal law in operation of that business.

@opsomath:

There are so many laws on the books... that a cop could conceivably FIND one to use agaisnt you if he so choose to. Disturbing the peace, public nusiance etc. etc..

I remember one video clip of a man who was videotaping a traffic stop & the cop basically threatened him with tresspassing (because he was standing in the alley of an apartment complex) unless he moved on. He started to move on & then asked for the cop's name & the cop arrested him. (the cop was later found in the wrong for arresting him after he asked for the cop's name).

As a person with 2 young kids, I've always hated listening to children scream in restaurants. Especially when my wife and I get a sitter. If my kids scream in a public place it's straight outside until they get it together.

That being said, this police chief was way out of line. The manager of the restaurant should be the person to ask her to leave if customers are complaining.

im sure it posed a threat to national security. the chief must read consumerist to know its ok to discrimate against handicap children.

@lusnia:
Nice knowing ya. It is banhammer monday after all.

@CityGuySailing: What's a reasonable accommodation for autistic people? Sound proof booths? Ear plugs or sound blocking headsets for other patrons?

And here we have the problem I've been seeing come up again and again.

Idiot parents who use a child's disability as an excuse for bad behavior have, in essence, destroyed any sympathy responsible parents might have received for legitimate disability issues. I suspect any time we have a story like this, the blame will be placed on the parent.

And in a lot of cases, I'm sure it's deserved. But damn, how would you like to be a responsible parent whose special needs kid acted up just this once? It's why I get so damn mad at parents like that woman on the Southwest flight.

And yeah, even IF the parent wasn't doing their job, anyone yelling across the restaurant is obnoxious. I wouldn't want to live in this guy's town. If he feels he can throw his authorit-ay around in this circumstance, what happens when he pulls you over? Yikes.

Having a disability doesn't exempt you from common courtesy. If your child is screaming that badly, take them outside to calm them down and then return to your seat.

I keep seeing people comment about a screaming child - the article says the child was crying, not screaming, and there is a huge difference. Believe me, I'm not a big fan of kids and especially kids making noise, but exaggerating things to make the situation seem worse than it probably was is lame. I'm assuming this wasn't a fine dining establishment - and in most "family" restaurants there are going to be children making some sort of noise. If you can't take the disruption for the least amount of time (article didn't seem to say how long the cop waited to yell at the mom) then perhaps you should be the one not going out to eat.

Also, the article says that the cop "thought Alyssa was being loud and bothering other customers". Well - was she? Were other people complaining? Did anyone ask him to do something about it? Or did he pompously assume that what HE thought was obviously what everyone else thought and he would come to their rescue? I cannot stand parents who don't properly care for and manage their children, but we don't know if that was the case here - and I certainly also can't stand people who think they know what's best for everyone and act like assholes because of it.

@CityGuySailing: I don't think that's the purpose of the ADA. Yes, you need to make reasonable accommodations, but that's more for things like handicap bathrooms and not out and out denying a handicapped person access to the establishment. It doesn't really apply when the person is causing a disturbance to that level (there's a difference between "I'm disturbed because that child acts and looks a bit strange" and "I'm disturbed because that child is screaming his head off").

I agree - kids crying in restaurants is annoying to most patrons, and they should be dealt with. Then again, I find people talking about George Bush in restaurants annoying, and it ruins my dinner, so they ought to be removed, as well.

Oh, and religion. Talk about religion ruins my dinner out. Remove those people.

Let's not forget all those people who got the patio tables when I went out to dinner this weekend. I had to sit inside. Totally bummed me out. They should have kicked those people out of the restaurant for annoying me.

And then there was that annoying police chief, yelling at the kid, letting the power go to his head...

"We can't just lock them up, they have every right to be out in public like everyone else," Gail said.

Fail.

Being in a restaurant is not "in public", it's private property, unless it's a government owned cafeteria. The owner likely wants a quiet ambiance because it's business that sells food and a dining experience.

Autism or not, the parent has a responsibility to ensure the kid is behaving.

Most parents take their kid outside when it cries in a restaurant, or to the bathroom, waiting area in the front, etc.

This is just a selfish parent who got caught being lazy and eating rather than attending to her child.

It really sounds like the police chief over reacted. There are no third person accounts to back either story up, but "began crying" seems to say a lot. Cause guess what, sometimes kids burst out and get upset for reasons that are far beyond a parents control. Even a normal 4 year old is unwittingly loud and obnoxious. Is this parent supposed to abandon lunch and leave in a situation where it takes a few moments to calm the kid back down? Should a parent starve because one of the kids is a little more excited than the jerks at Consumerist can handle? There are parents that have on controllable and unruly devils. But, this doesn't seem like one of those cases. Personally, I would have ignored him and calmed my kid down.

If you really want to get away from children when you're in PUBLIC, stop being cheap and eat some place a little more upscale.

Obviously, nobody wants to hear a screaming child while they are dining out, but has society become so intolerant that when a child cries we should expect the police to order them out of the building?

Society is only "tolerant" when it's convienent and it doesn't bother them...which, if you think about it, is actually quite ignorant and intolerant.

Autistic children are challenging. Parents deal with it everyday and sometimes, they want to try to do something nice, only to have it ruined by their child. I have several friends that have autistic kids and it's not easy.

I agree that the parents have the responsibility to control their children, no matter what. If a kid goes into the kitchen and starts playing with knives because he's a "curious boy", it's unacceptable! But if a kid goes into the kitchen adn starts playing with knives because he's autistic, it's STILL unacceptable!

Now the police officer, he's a jerk. No question about it. Going through autistic training is a good thing and hopefully, will be required training for other higher ups.

I do agree with the OP; more awareness is needed for autism.

To me it boils down to these two points:

Autistic or not, you have to keep your kids under control. If you can't then you shouldn't take them out in public.

The police chief should not have asked her to leave using his authority. The kid wasn't breaking any laws.

The parent was reprimanded by the chief so she is covered. He should be reprimanded by the department.

Is it me or does it seem like there's a lot of people here who assume one has the 'right' to a good time in public? Because there is no such right or law that says your 'good time' has to be strictly defended by anyone.

If you hate children that much you should stay at home. It will be your only protection from these mild annoyances that seem to take such a huge toll on you. Just because you feel proper parenting involves locking your kids up and away from society doesn't mean the rest of us have to sign up for such silly, selfish attitudes. If parents can't bring their kids out then the kids will never begin to learn proper social behavior anyway.

Remember if it's too much YOU can always leave the restaurant.

@mbouchard: The implication here is that the restaurant owners asked him to do so. If they didn't, and he just evicted the family because _he_ felt like it, that's a serious problem.

Then again, there's no evidence that he threatened them with arrest, either. There's no law against me yelling at you and telling you to get out, to be fair.

Autistic or not a child screaming in a restaurant cannot be tolerated. The problem I have is I suspect the police chief abused his position to get the family to leave.

Yes, it is a private establishment. But, more important, it's open to the public, and it serves the general public. Last I checked, children were members of the general public. If you want to eat in a "Private place" stay home.

@Dobernala: Some people do need to be considerate of others.

Starting with the POLICE CHIEF... and probably followed up with a good chunk of the folks posting comments to this thread.

@Erwos: Technically the officer was NOT within his rights to evict them. A charge of trespassing can ONLY be brought by the property owner (or his employee etc...). Some random jerk with a badge can't arbitrarily decide that you're trespassing without somehow being informed by the property owner that you are not welcome there.

@All the anti-anything-that-remotely-annoys-you folks: Wow, you people need to realize that you do plenty of things that could annoy someone, somewhere. Have we really become so whiny that the mere prospect that a child could be crying is automatically met with whinging about how horrible a mother she has and how they should have gone home and let everyone else eat in peace? All we know is that the kid BEGAN to cry. We don't know how long she was crying or why (did she trip and fall? get scared? bite her tongue? etc..) but based purely on the fact that some people are just to delicate to deal with a crying child the comments instantly side with the cop who was abusing his authority (because he abused it in a way that you approve of, this time).

Come on, seriously, if you were in her shoes, and some random schmuck told you to leave you'd probably tell him to either f*** off or you might be more diplomatic and increase your efforts to soothe your child (what if you can't leave because you've already ordered and you don't want to leave the restaurant stuck with your meals, you'd at least have to be there long enough to get them done and wrapped up, easily 15-20 min) if the CHIEF OF POLICE tells you to leave or else, well you can't really tell him anything, can you? Even if you're right, he has the law on his side and if you don't want to end up arrested or worse you do what he says (even if you file a complaint later). It doesn't have to be legal, it doesn't have to be right, he has the authority to make you comply with his orders so he shouldn't be giving orders to a mom making her leave a restaurant because her daughter is annoying him during his dinner.

Jeez.

@lusnia: Completely inappropriate. Banned.

If I'm not mistaken, the police chief took the initiative and asked the kid to leave. Being that it's private property (as has been so eloquently pointed out), doesn't a complaint have to be made first? If the restaurant manager didn't request his help then what was he doing?

I dunno, there's a lot of douchebaggery about kids in this thread.

I spent 8 years working with the autistic population, in group homes, trying to help them integrate into their community and raise awareness of the issue. I had to deal with plenty of inappropriate behavior in social settings. But I'm appalled to think that so many people are of the opinion that the child should simply have been removed from the restaurant at the first sign of trouble. Restaurants are places of public accommodation -- when you enter them, you are not guaranteed that they will be free of distractions, discord, or interruption. You have no right to expect that your local eatery will be as quiet as a church.

Parents do the best they can with children in general; when the child is autistic, the problem is compounded by a lack of social identification and comfort in the environment. This leads to behaviors which are often socially disruptive, but can be controlled through the application of appropriate learning techniques.

Given the noise level of your average restaurant nowadays, I seriously doubt that the child's crying was so loud as to drive patrons away. The police chief's shouting across a restaurant was probably an even greater disruption. I'm pretty sure the patrons would have made their displeasure felt more appropriately if the child's crying were that disruptive. His actions show not only a lack of critical reasoning but a contempt for social norms which makes me doubt his effectiveness as a chief of police, a position which requires taking into account the situations of all parties involved in any problem, not just making snap judgments.

A reasonable accomodation means doing something that would enable the person with the disability to utilize your services. It does NOT mean doing nothing and tossing the patron out to the curb. Clear violation. The manager should have intervened, told the police chief to back off, and offered a private room. Like it or not, it is the law. There isn't a sitting judge who would rule ANY other way. A person with Cerebral-Palsy, in a motorized wheel chair, might cause annoyance moving around a restaraunt, but, so what? He has a right, the SAME as the autistic child. As long as he wasn't hitting anyone, his rights were clearly violated. Everyone else could easily leave if they didn't want to be there with a crying child. the law says the owners are REQUIRED to make reasonable accomodations, even if it causes them to lose money in doing so. Check the court decisions.