LOS ANGELES — It started as a routine police encounter after officers spotted a shadowy figure lying under a balcony behind a Hollywood apartment building.
Mohammad Usman Chaudhry, 21, was cordial at first. He handed over his ID and chatted with officers about his shoes, other cops he knew and how he stayed dry when it rained.
Moments later, he was dead.
Officer Joseph Cruz said he shot Chaudhry after he lunged at him with a knife. What Cruz and his partner apparently did not know was that the Pakistani-American man was autistic.
Three years later, as a jury weighs a lawsuit against police by Chaudhry's family, the killing highlights a challenge law enforcement increasingly faces: How to approach people with developmental disorders.
Autism is the world's fastest growing developmental disability, currently affecting about one in 110 children. In the U.S., police today are better trained to recognize autism than in the past. Officers frequently make contact with autistic people, often when they are victims of crimes or return them home after they have wandered off.
Still, encounters sometimes turn deadly, leading to an outcry from advocates who say the law enforcement community needs more training.
After Cruz was largely cleared of wrongdoing in the March 2008 shooting, Chaudhry's family sued him for wrongful death and other violations in the case, which a jury was hearing this week.
The dead man's relatives contend that Cruz, who was fired from the force on an unrelated matter, planted the knife.
"He didn't do it," Chaudhry's mother, Rukhsana Chaudhry, told The Associated Press.
An autistic person may not look an officer in the eye and will sometimes repeat commands without following them.
"Officers can think they are being mocked," Detective Gilbert Escontrias of the LAPD's mental health evaluation unit said.
Other autistic people get upset when they are touched or put in handcuffs.
Autism Society spokeswoman Marguerite Colston noted that the law enforcement community also saves the lives of many people with autism, who are prone to wander away for no apparent reason and often can't find their way home.
Across the state, lawmakers have recognized the problem. A 2008 law mandated the creation of a DVD and online video law enforcement personnel are supposed to watch.
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