During Autism Acceptance month, advocates highlight importance of police autism awareness training

Orlando Sentinel - 4/29/2021

Two years ago, Dawn Turnage’s 18-year-old son Justin walked away from a local pool and into a Best Buy at the Waterford Lakes Town Center, dripping wet and wearing only his underwear.

Turnage called 911 after realizing Justin was missing and informed a dispatcher he has autism and is nonverbal. The dispatcher guided her to a nearby Best Buy, where another caller had reported someone matching his description.

When she showed up, she saw a dozen Orange County deputies in the parking lot, one of which was retrieving what looked like a bean bag rifle from his car, Turnage said. She ran up to the officer and explained that her son has autism.The dispatcher relayed the same information to other officers.

“They just walked through the store with him, nice and calm,” Turnage said. “And when I got there, they let me take over and get him safely into my car. So that’s an experience that could have gone horribly, horribly wrong.”

Turnage said all of her son’s experiences with local law enforcement have been positive, and she credits that to police autism awareness training conducted by advocacy organizations like the Autism Society of Greater Orlando.

Florida requires law enforcement agencies to have some autism-related training. Legislation passed in 2017 required the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to create standard courses on autism awareness training, but local agencies determine what training they require for officers, FDLE spokesperson Dana Kelly said.

The legislation was filed after a North Miami police officer shot a Black, unarmed behavioral therapist who was complying with orders while trying to help an autistic patient back to a group home. The officer later said he was aiming at the autistic Hispanic man Charles Kinsey was caring for, mistaking Arnaldo Rios-Sotos’ silver toy truck for a gun despite being told it was a toy.

Autism advocates maintain that extreme examples of negative police interaction are rare and hope that by providing training to officers — including curriculum focusing on the intersection of race and autism, some say — they can ensure officers receptively approach all encounters in a safer way for the entire community.

“I have more confidence in the police [after attending ASGO’s training],” Turnage said. “… These officers have been trained. They know how to interact with Justin.”

‘I knew as a cop that we were not properly trained’

All major Central Florida law enforcement agencies require autism-centric training and mandate or encourage refresher training every few years, a survey conducted by the Orlando Sentinel of the largest law enforcement agencies in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties found.

Some agencies, like Kissimmee and Sanford’s police departments and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, repeat autism-specific training annually.

Locally, organizations like ASGO and the University of Central Florida’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities provide free training year-round to ensure officers recognize the behaviors exhibited by people on the autism spectrum and learn how to respond to them.

UCF CARD has trained agencies from all seven counties in Central Florida, director Terri Daly said in an email, including the Mount Dora Police Department and the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.

The organization started conducting training in 2000 after realizing people with autism were “treated as mentally ill or dangerous by law enforcement” because they didn’t understand signs of autism, Daly wrote.

The organization’s goal was to help parents of children with autism feel comfortable calling law enforcement for support in critical situations, she said.

The day-long training includes an overview of common autism characteristics, scenario-based discussion and interactions with people with autism and their family members.

Though autism presents itself differently in everyone, people with autism may be nonverbal, or they may engage in self-stimulatory, or “stimming,” behaviors like flapping their hands, vocalizing or moving repetitively.

Amy Fritz-Ocock, a speech-language pathologist with UCF CARD before starting a private practice last year, said it encourages officers to keep a calm demeanor and allow extra time for language processing.

UCF CARD also educates people with autism how to respond to emergent situations and encourages families to interact with law enforcement to build familiarity and trust.

“It’s really about both teaching autistic individuals strategies to effectively communicate their needs and seek support, as well as training the officers themselves,” Fritz-Ocock said.

Donna Lorman, ASGO’s president, said she has helped train over 38,000 officers from 225 different agencies across Florida over the past decade, including most Central Florida agencies. She and Det. Hector Gonzalez of the Bal Harbour Police Department created a constantly evolving curriculum that runs eight hours and uses lectures, videos, scenarios and engagement with volunteers with autism, Lorman said.

“We talk a lot about, ‘How do you recognize someone with autism?’ because autism doesn’t look like anything, it behaves like something,” she said. “... If you don’t recognize it, you’ll never implement any of the other strategies.”

Lorman and Gonzalez are parents of autistic men and realized the need for large-scale autism awareness training through their experiences with their sons.

“I knew as a cop that we were not properly trained, and as a father, I was afraid because the cops weren’t properly trained,” Gonzalez said.

Lorman started looking into training resources when her son Drew was 5, after his principal threatened to have him arrested and charged with battery after a kindergarten incident, she said. Recently Drew, now 29, was using a swing in a local park when a neighbor called deputies on him for looking suspicious.

“The responding officer got out of his car and goes, ‘Hey, Drew!’ He knew him because he took the training,” Lorman said.

Turnage said her son Justin’s experience participating in the training was eye-opening. She and her husband noted how several officers initially thought Justinwas being “difficult” when not responding to questions before realizing he does not talk, she said.

ASGO has continued conducting training during the pandemic with smaller groups, more safety measures and fewer volunteers. And feedback from officers remains overwhelmingly positive.

“We don’t get any poor feedback at all,” Lorman said. “Most say, ‘We wish we had it earlier in our career. This should be in the academy,’ best training they’ve ever had.”

Beyond training, several agencies — like the sheriff’s offices in Orange and Seminole counties and the police departments in Ocoee and Altamonte Springs— provide registration programs for residents with special needs. Families can register relatives with autism so their address or loved one is flagged within agency databases ahead of police contact. Some agencies also offer medical ID bracelets or tracking devices to people with special needs. Orange Sheriff John Mina on Friday announced a program to provide families with an “Occupant with Autism” sticker, which can be placed on windows of vehicles or homes to help inform emergency responders .

Advocates and parents of people with autism say such voluntary registration programs are largely beneficial, and many have already registered with them.

“Allowing law enforcement to have all the facts handy, I feel, would help them assess the situation better and utilize alternative de-escalation methods,” wrote Diana Ocasio, of Lakeland, whose 12-year-old son Jaylen has autism.

But databases could also raise confidentiality and trust concerns for families, said Maria Davis-Pierre, president and CEO of Autism in Black in Lake Worth. These systems could be misused, she said, and she would not personally sign her children up for it.

“We wouldn’t be sure of how this data would be used against them,” she wrote in an email. “... Law enforcement agencies need biases training, community-based public safety models, anti-racism training, and trainings on interacting with the disability community. Until these root issues are addressed[,] a database will not solve much.”

Calls for racial justice underscore need for intersectional training

Neither UCF CARD nor ASGO have seen an increased demand for training over the past year amid calls for police reform and racial justice, Daly and Lorman said.

Gonzalez, with ASGO, said the training has “exploded” in popularity this year due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in autism acceptance rather than police reform.

“I don’t think what’s happened in the world, or in the country … has increased the interest for autism [training] at all,” he said.

The role race plays in interactions with police is not addressed in ASGO’s training, Gonzalez said.

UCF CARD’s training has always addressed the intersection of race and autism, including that autism spectrum disorder is often under-identified in communities of color, but its curriculum has not changed recently, Daly wrote.

Davis-Pierre trains organizations about the intersection of race and disability and said agencies should first receive culturally responsive instruction on Black communities and then discus race and disability in their autism training.

“You have to be trained on how to deal with Black people first,” Davis-Pierre said. “That’s what you see first, especially when we’re talking about autism because it’s not so visible.”

Calls for police reform and racial justice have renewed interest in police autism awareness training in her experience, she said,but she has seen little follow-through.

“In some instances, it’s performative of putting on the act that you want to change, but not really wanting to do that type of work because it is quite transformative,” she said. “... In the wake of all of this uprising, this is the time to actually put footwork behind that talk.”

Parents of Black children with autism also have to explain to their children their behaviors may be automatically labeled suspicious, she said.

“We can’t quite give tools to say, ‘This is what you do to not look suspicious’ because we know that our skin tone alone heightens police officers,” she said. “... People automatically don’t associate autism with the Black community. It’s always going to be [seen as] a behavior issue.”

Two of Davis-Pierre’s three young children have autism, and she and her husband have already discussed safe police interactions with them.

“[We tell them,] ‘Community helpers may not always help us, and it’s because of our skin tone,’” she said. “So trying to navigate those conversations with two 5-year-olds and an 8-year-old and bringing it to their level is quite difficult. But we also are put in tough spots as Black parents.”

Ocasio, said she is relieved local law enforcement receives autism-centric training but wants to know officers are trained on the intersection of race and autism. She worries how her Black and Hispanic son’s racial background might affect future encounters with police.

Jaylen has received resources on police interaction through UCF CARD, but Ocasio is unsure how he would respond in a stressful situation.

“He does not really talk to strangers,” Ocasio said. “So our concern was always, if he was in a situation where a law enforcement officer approached him, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t speak to them or he’d kind of just shut down. … We don’t want them to misconstrue that as something else when he’s just not comfortable.”

krice@orlandosentinel.com