Arrest of two Philly cops accused of beating a man is a tribute to the work of this mother and autism advocate | Jenice Armstrong

I was incensed when I heard that two off-duty Philly police officers had been charged with attacking a man with Asperger syndrome whom they suspected of having broken into a car.

It had me flashing back to an case involving Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black male with autism who ended up dead after an ugly encounter with Colorado police in 2019.

As mad as I was, though, I was nowhere near as irate as Terri Matthews, the founder of Jaden’s Voice, which advocates for families with autistic children.

After the Society Hill resident watched video Thursday of Philly DA Larry Krasner detailing how the 27-year-old had been walking on Aug. 19 when the two off-duty officers allegedly accosted him, Matthews broke into tears.

She cried because, as an African American mother, she saw the video and thought of her son Jaden, who also is on the spectrum. Matthews keeps him close but worries about the time in the not-so-distant future when her 14-year-old becomes an adult and can’t be with her as much.

How will he be treated if stopped by law enforcement? What if the police pull her over while driving and Jaden reaches for an officer’s shiny badge? That’s one of the reason Matthews made a point of meeting with Krasner and members of his team a few times back in 2019.

So, I know it had to have been a proud moment for her on Thursday when Philly’s DA acknowledged her and Jaden’s Voice along with Autism Speaks, a national organization with a similar mission, during the news conference announcing the arrest of the two police officers.

“I was happy that Mr. Krasner was moving forward with the prosecution because often times when it’s the police force, no one goes after them,” Matthews told me afterward. “Nobody files charges. Nobody believes the autistic person.”

» READ MORE: Philadelphia police inspector is accused of beating a man and will be fired, commissioner says

Luckily for the alleged victim, that didn’t happen in this case.

The cops, who are brothers, had been off duty in August when they pursued the man with Asperger’s to the parking lot of a shopping center near Fairdale and Knights Roads where they allegedly roughed him up. During the encounter, the man managed to call his mother, who used an app to track his location. When his father arrived, the cops are said to have claimed to be members of a neighborhood town watch.

“[Philadelphia Police] Internal Affairs found he had not been involved in breaking into cars,” Krasner said Thursday. “In fact, this 27-year-old young man has no criminal record. The impetus for this activity appears to be that weeks prior, someone broke into one of their cars, an act that was recorded on a Ring camera video that in no way confirms the notion that the man who was attacked had anything to do with that break-in. Obviously, this is completely unacceptable.”

Inspector James Smith, 52, and Patrick Smith, 53, a former city police detective who retired shortly after the episode, face charges of simple assault, conspiracy, and reckless endangerment. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said that after a 30-day suspension, James Smith will be fired. (The head of the city’s police union said it supports the Smiths against what he called “baseless charges.”)

I have written about Matthews a few times, including about how in 2013 she had quit a six-figure job to launch her nonprofit to help less fortunate families struggling with autism get access to the kinds of resources her son was lucky to have.

“I do want to applaud Larry, who had multiple meetings with me,” Matthews told me. “He took me very seriously. He allowed me to train 300 of his new prosecutors. ... We did a whole presentation on autism. We talked about what happens when those with autism are arrested. We talked about how to adjudicate a case with individuals of autism.”

The fact that Krasner brought up Matthews and Jaden’s Voice indicated that her efforts with the DA’s Office had not been in vain. When I pointed that out to her, she burst into sobs again.