In early March, a white autistic man in his 20s got in trouble for eating a cookie. He was shopping at Cub Foods in Roseville, Minnesota, a typical big grocery store, and took a cookie from a "free cookie" display in the bakery section. Then he finished shopping, paid for his groceries, and went back to get another cookie. That's when Timothy Knutsen—another shopper, but one whose livelihood happened to involve training security guards in the proper use of pepper spray—stepped in, holding a can of mace and demanding that the man stop eating the cookie. Thirty seconds later, the autistic man had been sprayed in the face. After Knutsen was accused of assault, according to the charging document, he said that he'd thought the man was on drugs, so stepped in to intervene. (The man Knutsen sprayed has not been named because of his classification as a "vulnerable adult.")
[For more of this story, written by David M. Perry, go to https://psmag.com/social-justi...ve-themselves-to-you]
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