(DNAINFO)  Rosa Goldensohn — Police officers threw a 17-year-old autistic boy onto the ground outside his Bronx home and punched him in the face — then hauled him to the precinct stationhouse where they questioned him before releasing him without charges, according to a lawsuit.

A lawyer for Troy Canales, now 18, said the NYPD violated the teen’s civil rights during the Nov. 12 incident, which began at 8 p.m. after a pair of officers drove up and saw Canales leaning against a car outside his family’s house on Bainbridge Avenue in The Bronx, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.

The lawsuit claims the officers clearly had no training in how to deal with people with special needs when they began haranguing Canales, who is verbally communicative but has a hard time making eye contact with strangers, about what he was doing there.

“The New York City Police Department’s practices, procedures, training and rules, including those in the NYPD Patrol Guide, do not account for, instruct on, delineate, or provide guidelines for Police Officer communication and interaction with people with developmental disabilities and autism in a constitutionally adequate manner,” lawyer Carmen Giordano wrote in the lawsuit, which calls on the NYPD to improve its training of its officers to work with people with disabilities including autism.

Source: NYPD Officers Beat Autistic Teen in Front of His Home, Lawsuit Says – Fordham – DNAinfo.com New York