Despite Alberta’s police watchdog concluding charges could be laid against Mounties who arrested a teen with autism under the belief he was a drug user, no charges will be laid.
The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (ACPS) is the authority that decided charges would not be laid against three RCMP Members who arrested Ryley Bauman in St. Albert on Oct. 2, 2022.
“The (affected person) was not intoxicated. He was a non-verbal autistic youth. Three of the four civilian witnesses who observed the (affected person) recognized that he could be or was likely neurodivergent,” wrote Matthew Block, an assistant executive director at the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), in a report released on Wednesday.
“The subject officers all seem to have thought they were dealing with specific known drug users… This appears to have affected how they treated the (affected person).
“There were therefore reasonable grounds to believe that an …