KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Parents of an autistic 10-year-old in Florida are calling police out after an Kissimmee police officer allegedly manhandled their son and refused to let his father help to de-escalate the situation.

Police were called to Cypress Elementary School when the special needs student became unruly in class and threatened to hurt himself with a pair of scissors. Witnesses also allege the boy punched the teacher twice, according to media reports.

Moses Maldonado, the boy’s father, took a picture of his detained son after the officer hoisted the boy onto the trunk of a police cruiser, and posted the image to a social media site that tracks police activity, CBS reports.

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That image has since gone viral, causing a flood of critical comments about how the officer handled the situation.

“I kept telling the cops he’s autistic, let me deal with the situation, let me handle it because I’m his father and I can deal with it,” Maldonado told CBS. “They didn’t want to hear it. They just kept on and they picked him up on top of the cop car. That’s when I just lost it.”

Maldonado said he believes his son’s arrest was unnecessary.

“As a dad, you don’t want to see your son go through that,” he told KSBW.com. “As soon as they picked him up and put him on the cop car, they handcuffed him. I’m like ‘oh my God, please let me help him, let me take him home, let me deal with him, I’m his father, I know how to deal with him, I know how to handle him.’”

Instead, the officer hauled the boy off for a mental evaluation. A police spokeswoman told the media the officer opted to put the child on the trunk of the cruiser because it wasn’t as hot as the ground.

“This was emotionally charged, not just for the child who was acting out, but also with the father who understandably is going to be emotional because his child is being taken away to be evaluated,” Stacie Miller, spokeswoman for Kissimmee police. “But as the officers, they have to worry about everybody’s safety, not only the child, the father, the officer, they have to take that all into consideration and make that determination within a split second.”

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Police eventually returned the child to his parents, though Maldonado told NBC the boy is now scared to go back to class.

Manny commenters  on the NBC story thought the police action was over the top.

“I find it OUTRAGEOUS that a police officer after being told the child was autistic still treated him that way,” wrote Emma Madaras. “It’s DEPLORABLE that law enforcement in many areas have no formal training on dealing with people on the autism spectrum and also dealing with those who have mental illness.”

Other posters thought the school should have been prepared to handle the boy’s outburst, and proper training could have prevented the call to police in the first place.

“He was in a special needs classroom where they should know how to handle situations like this one. Anyone who actually works with children with autism would know how to deal with this but apparently not at this school. They need more training or better training. The way this was handled is insane! These children have terrible meltdowns from extreme anxiety we cannot understand,” wrote a guest at the ClickOrlando.com news site.

“These children hurt themselves out of frustration caused by the autism. There are ways to de-escalate and his father was there to help and they would not let him. He deals with his son every day and I am sure he could have stopped this from escalating to handcuffs. UNACCEPTABLE FOR THE SCHOOL AND POLICE!!! These children are not criminals and should be handled like children, HE IS 10 YEARS OLD!!!”