How Can This Happen?

Technology will never be a replacement or a substitute for sensitivity, professional attitude, and human respect. Even worse, technology can become the scapegoat for those horrible situations and distract our attention from "human" faults.

--Mark

I like this idea. I have a child, and know others, with special needs children. However, whenever something like this gets put in place, there is always some crook out there that will leverage this information and wear the tag themselves to exploit the system. Of course, those are exceptions - and these kids need some extra protections/precautionary measures in place. I'm interested to see if any other readers have ideas.

I am from Denmark so this might seem offending to you.

Americans seem awfully centered on effect rather than cause. Why should the police force be dependent on technology in such hilariously simple decisions?

1. Maybe the Police could rely on common sense in situations like this and not just shoot and beat up ANYONE who walks around without a shirt (eg. "horrible accident").

2. Before the first option becomes a valid solution to the problem - you must of course hire police officers who can think for themselves and have a repository of non-violent solutions to these kinds of problems. Neither seems to be the case here...

Or perhaps we can educate the police not to beat up and shoot on people just because they don't answer and act strange. I don't really like the idea of tagging people, you would start with autistic boys, but where would you stop? How about learning to care about people instead...

wait...so you're advocating "chipping" autistic individuals like animals...why stop there? why not tag everyone with AIDS? let's chip alcoholics, let's chip anyone allergic to peanuts, let's chip everyone with children!

wouldn't the easier solution be just to train police officers not to be brutal in their dealings with the public? A little human decency goes a long way.

Perhaps we should tag all black males between the age of 12 and 45. This tagging solution might have saved Rodney King a few problems.

Hang on....what am I talking about?
Why don't we just hire policemen with IQs of more than 80.

Olga, your posting makes me ill. Maybe tech can help, but the problem is with poor policing and a society that is not concerned with it. Our police have lost a sense of professionalism and service that would have prevented this. Nothing excuses their behavior. Technology is not the solution nor is a lack of it the problem.