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| 6/1/2010 2:25:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Law enforcement braces for wave of autistic young adults
Autistic individuals seven times more likely to encounter police
It is a horrifying circumstance to be placed in, but it is happening with increasing frequency these days: An autistic teen or young adult, who thinks he or she is doing absolutely nothing wrong, suddenly finds himself or herself in a "situation" with police.
Just last week, on Friday, May 21, it happened again, this time in Georgia.
According to the Tybee Island Police Department incident report, a police officer tasered Clifford Grevemberg, a local 18-year-old with autism and a heart condition, after observing him "staggering back and forth" outside a restaurant and failing to gain any cooperation from him.
To the police, Grevemberg appeared to be "either intoxicated or on something."
The officers approached and asked for identification. Grevemberg began to back up and trip over himself, the incident report states, and police say Grevemberg eventually began to walk away without producing any identification.
In the report, the officers say Grevemberg was repeatedly asked to produce identification, and then ignored the officer's command to stop.
One officer then grabbed the teen's arm to stop him, the report indicates, and Grevemberg began "swinging his arms wildly." The two proceeded to wrestle, or scuffle, the report states, with the officer telling Grevemberg to stop resisting. When he did not do so, the officer's partner approached and tasered him.
In the incident, Grevemberg suffered a broken tooth, was bleeding from the mouth, and had mild abrasions to his knees and hands, the report states. Police arrested him for disorderly conduct. At least one witness has disputed the police report, saying Grevemberg was not resisting officers or swinging wildly.
According to the Associated Press, Grevemberg's brother says he arrived after the tasering and told police Grevemberg was "a special needs child" and had never had alcohol in his life. He said he also reported his brother's severe heart condition.
Grevemberg himself saw everything in a far different light. He told the Savannah Morning News he was stopped by police as he waited near a restaurant for his brother, who had stepped inside to order cheeseburgers.
"I just wanted to go to sleep," the teen told the newspaper. "I sat down on the curb and put my head in my arms, and they stopped me."
In the wake of the incident and after the revelation of Grevemberg's autism, the police issued what the Savannah Morning News called a "careful apology."
Police chief James Price repeated the officers' beliefs that Grevemberg appeared intoxicated, and he cited as a factor the "rowdy, raucous" atmosphere in the town that day because of a parade.
The chief also said the police were sorry that Grevemberg "was left unattended" in such an atmosphere, the newspaper reported.
Not unique
The Tybee case turns out not to be an isolated incident, nor even a very recent manifestation.
Indeed, individuals with developmental disabilities such as autism encounter the police on less than ideal terms far more often than does the general population. They are about seven times more likely than others to have "contact" with law enforcement, autism expert Dennis Debbaudt, the author of Autism, Advocates and Law Enforcement Professionals, and Dr. Darla Rothman wrote way back in April 2001, in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.
That's because autism affects the normal development of the brain relating to social and communicative interaction, the authors wrote.
"Individuals with autism have difficulty appropriately communicating with, or relating to, others," Debbaudt and Rothman wrote. An autistic individual could appear intoxicated, for example, as Grevemberg did.
In another instance, they wrote, police responding to a complaint about a shoplifter might find not a shoplifter at all but a person engaging in obsessive-compulsive behavior - rearranging items or ordering those items in some sequence that other individuals may not notice.
And, nearly 10 years ago, Debbaudt and Rothman served up the same scenario that unfolded last week when police approached Grevemberg.
"An officer's approach may cause people with this condition to flee, sometimes failing to respond to an order to stop," Debbaudt and Rothman wrote. "Other autistic individuals may react by dropping to the floor or ground and rocking back and forth, averting eye contact with the officer. Officers should not interpret an autistic individual's failure to respond to orders or questions as a lack of co-operation or as a reason for increased force."
Sometimes, individuals with autism may try to respond to an officer but cannot communicate properly. In one famous example used to demonstrate how police and individuals with autism might miscommunicate, an autistic person who is asked to waive his or her rights might just possibly wave a right hand at the officer.
While the autistic individual might be trying to comply, an untrained officer might assume the person to be uncooperative and even belligerent.
Sadly, such miscommunication has sometimes had fatal results.
In March, to cite but one instance, Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed autistic man after he approached two gang enforcement officers and appeared to remove something from his waistband, the Associated Press reported.
The officers reportedly encountered Stephen Eugene Washington while patrolling in their car. The 27-year-old was acting suspiciously and manipulating something in his waist area, the AP quoted police officials as saying.
When the officers tried to stop Washington to investigate, he quickly approached them and seemed to pull something from his waistband, the AP again reported police as saying.
Police shot and killed Washington. No weapon was found.
The coming wave
If chance meetings between autistic persons and police officers can spin out of deadly control in an instant, and if such contacts occur at a rate seven times higher than in the general population, the potential social, economic and legal ramifications of the autism epidemic are enormous as today's autistic children grow up.
Autism rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades from about one in 2,500 children to around one in 110, and one in 70 boys. That means there could be a flood of Grevemberg- or Washington-type encounters.
Of course, much of the medical community and mainstream media continues to insist there is no autism epidemic - the numbers reflect better recognition by doctors and expanded diagnostic categories and not any real increase, they say - but many parents, who deal with the challenges daily, see it differently.
So do some government officials. As Anne Dachel, media editor of Age of Autism, has recently reported, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Thomas Insel, is one of them, though, according to Dachel, he isn't about to call it a crisis.
Dachel recently listened and reported on a lecture given by Insel at the National Institutes of Health, and, in that talk, she reports, Insel kept referencing the number of autism cases as one in 90 rather than one in 110 (the former number was used in a Pediatrics article last year), a rate he said translated into about 700,000 cases in the U.S. today, the vast majority of them minor children.
In 1992, Dachel quotes Insel as saying, the rate was one in 1,500, and he said in his medical school days he never heard about autism.
"Eighty percent of the people with a diagnosis of autism (in the U.S.) are under the age of 18," Dachel quotes Insel as saying, and she said he described it as "a huge wave that is moving through the system."
Despite that, Dachel reported, Insel most often used the word "interesting" to describe the staggering incidence of autism and did not actually label it an emergency.
"We have responded to this as if it's a crisis," Dachel reported Insel as saying. "We see this as an enormous public health challenge. If you look at those numbers, the increase and recognize how many of those kids will become adults, we ... also need to be thinking about how we prepare the nation for a million people who may need significant amounts of services as they are no longer cared for by their parents or as their parents are no longer around."
Are we ready?
Certainly such a wave will strain families and schools and mental health and social services agencies - the first breakers are rolling in and they already are - but, in the context of this article, just how ready and willing is law enforcement to deal with nearly a million autistic individuals as they reach their mid- and late teens and adulthood?
Willing they seem to be. One thing many parents might find reassuring is that most police officers and department officials are on the street and not in the universities and government labs, and so they see the crisis as real, and they see the need for training.
In Tybee, for example, city manager Diane Schleicher said as much after the Grevemberg affair, saying Tybee police officers would receive training to better understand how to deal with special needs persons, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Police themselves have become pro-active.
A few years ago, in North Carolina, Iredell County sheriff's deputy Tim Byrd became deeply involved in efforts to educate law enforcement about the needs of autistic individuals, and his labor has had a national reach; among other things, he helped develop a training video for California law enforcement officers.
"The educational aspect is important," Byrd told his local newspaper, the Mooresville Tribune, after picking up an award for his volunteer work. "There's an epidemic of it (autism) out there, and educating people how to identify it and deal with it is so important."
Lots of law enforcement agree with him. In the past several years, scores of police departments coast-to-coast - from El Dorado, Calif., to Calvert County, Maryland - have become involved in setting up autism programs and training protocols for their officers.
Here in Oneida County, too, local law enforcement officials will be attending a meeting in early June to discuss autism awareness within their departments.
There are no lack of resources to do so.
Chief among them, perhaps, is Dennis Debbaudt, who was the first to raise the issue of potential conflicts between police and autistic individuals back in the mid 1990s, in a report called Avoiding Unfortunate Situations.
Debbaudt writes articles and books, produces videos and trains emergency personnel around the world using multi-media presentations, not only for law enforcement but for first responders such as paramedics, fire, rescue, and hospital staff.
He and others use a variety of methods to help police and other emergency personnel deal with autistic individuals. For example, some agencies use on-scene response cards in the field.
As Debbaudt points out on his website, www.autismriskmanagement.com, the cards contain important communication and response information for first responders and "can be used by children and adults with autism, parents and care providers as an on-scene handout."
For instance, one side of the card might caution that autistic individuals "may not respond to your commands or questions" or "may laugh or giggle at your presence," while the other side advises personnel to "use simple language," "give praise and encouragement," and "allow extra time for response."
That's just one way police departments are preparing for an epidemic.
Other agencies have established voluntary registries for autistic residents. In these programs, parents and caregivers give police the names, addresses, descriptions and behavioral characteristics that police should be aware of in case of an encounter.
With an address or name in hand, police would know after a 911 call that an autistic individual might be involved, and that information would help them handle a contact with a nonverbal person or one who was behaving erratically or not responding in normal fashion.
Still other agencies have worked with local schools, taking part in mock drills to prepare for potential encounters at accident scenes or in other emergency conditions. Officials say the effort helps individuals with autism know what to expect in such a situation, and gives police officers and rescue workers a chance to see how those people might respond in chaotic or in specific nonroutine events.
While the techniques are varied, the point is that many police agencies are "getting it," and moving quickly to become prepared.
The question is whether those agencies can move quickly enough, and whether enough agencies will respond. Perhaps taking their cue from public health officials who don't see a crisis or an epidemic, some police departments still don't see the need for training programs specifically aimed at special needs and autistic individuals.
However, that seems to be a dwindling number, as the growing number of incidents such as those involving Grevemberg and Washington help to open more and more eyes.
Richard Moore can be reached at rmmoore1@verizon.net.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Friday, June 04, 2010
Article comment by:
Andrew
Mr. Moore as a parent of an eighteen year old son living with ASD and an officer with 23 years experience I would encourage you to realize that the disability community also should take some responsibility within what is transpiring within these situations. The two incidents mentioned are perfect examples of that. In both situations these young men were alone, out in the late evening, and in areas where behavior may be interpreted differently. In the CA incident, there was a shooting the evening before where a perp did pull a gun from his waistband.
individuals with disabilities living within their communities should also be prepared for encounters with law enforcement. Having the expectation that officers can identify a "hidden disability" within seconds is unrealistic in my mind.
Does there need to be more education in these areas, yes and that is why my organization has assisted in created two curriculums for officers, one specific to autism done in partnership with the Office for Victims of Crime and the DOJ.
There are also many free resources out there for community members to access and this does have to be done locally to ensure the officers responding to such calls have tools to properly respond to all individuals with disabilities.
We however as members of those communities should also be responsible to ensure individuals living with ASD are familiar with law enforcement and how to interact with them as well. You can visit our website at www.leanonus.org and offer these free resources, like LEO pocket cards, 911 data base entry sheets, etc.
Thank you for your column and bringing this issue to the attention of others.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gammicchia
Posted: Thursday, June 03, 2010
Article comment by:
Ken Reibel
Why no comments on your latest autism article, Mr. Moore? I expect you to censor me. Has no one else commented?
Posted: Thursday, June 03, 2010
Article comment by:
Autumn Gerber
As a mother of an Autistic child I must say that the police and other emergency responders do need autism awareness training. Autism is an epidemic and everyone and I mean EVERYONE needs to realize that.
Posted: Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Article comment by:
Anonymous
This article about autistic youth is very offensive to me. I have worked with autustic teens and know that they are not dangerous as your paper propagates. Those cops should not have tried to physically subdue that teenager, who was doing nothing dangerous.I would encourage the author to watch "Radio." Furthermore, I used to think the Lakeland Times was a newspaper of integrity. I think that this author should realize he is using public fear to sell his news article. Now many local people will view autistic people out of a wrong light, because of this author.
Posted: Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Article comment by:
AutismNewsBeat
"Autism rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades from about one in 2,500 children to around one in 110, and one in 70 boys."
Mr. Moore, how are you defining "autism"?
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