I think it was Graham who linked to an talk by Tony Attwood about autism in girls and women. 26 minutes in Dr Attwood mentions a distressing incident.
He's talking the fatal shooting of a much-loved 22-year-old woman with a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome who was having a meltdown in a car park in Sydney, while carrying the family's cake knife. Courtney Topic was reported by people as a woman in mental distress, but the police turned up sirens wailing with a Taser, pepper spray and a firearm. She had been sprayed with the 'capsicum' and apparently was trying to run away when a male police officer fatally shot her. Unbelievably, the man testified that even with the benefit of hindsight he 'would have acted exactly as [he] did'.
The inquest has now reported, three years after the killing. Psychiatrists suggested Ms Topic may have been psychotic, although the family seem to disagree and Tony Attwood's brief summary as a meltdown seems more likely in context. There was good coverage of the full story at the time of the hearing in the Sydney Morning Herald, concerned but not sensationalist, marred only by possibly confusing autism with mental illness:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/courtney-had-a-knife-out-in-public-but-she-didn-t-deserve-to-die-20180612-p4zkwy.html
The coroner has made some recommendations, but they seem too weak in some respects:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/30/police-tactics-entirely-inappropriate-in-shooting-death-of-courtney-topic-says-coroner
The attentiveness of the shooter and the handling of the calls are mentioned. They should never have arrived armed, at least with anything lethal. The SMH article compares Britain favourably to Australia's handling of mentally distressed people in public, particularly around of weapons policy.
The usual call for more training seems somehow inadequate and thinking of other well-publicised and less extreme cases like Connor Leibel makes one wonder if influences on behaviour and understanding go wider that a day or two passively attending in a room that may not even mention autism or meltdowns or stimming. It may seem trivial but I think the perception of police roles in popular TV is significant as it affects who is recruited and how an unexpected situation is interpreted. The police have always almost invariably been seen as the 'good guys' if not practically faultless, but nowadays there's much more emphasis on them dealing with serial killers, terrorism and other 'random' violence. Is there any TV showing police in a pastoral or community role? I recall Juliet Bravo and Cagney & Lacey and in some ways that's a more realistic view of people being called out to domestic violence incidents or people who are suicidal or hypomanic or just going though some personal drama. To me, people seem to accept and understand individual behaviour less than they did a few decades ago.
It's so horrible for the family.