Preparing law enforcement for safe encounters
A stranger calls 911 because your autistic adult is rocking on a bench at the bus stop. What happens in the next four minutes is up to a stranger in a uniform. Here is how to load that stranger with the information they need before the call ever comes.
Ask for the watch commander. Hand them a laminated copy. Ask that it be added to your address on the CAD system. Get their name. Most agencies will say yes. The ones that say no are the ones whose chiefs you should be calling. This single act changes the response to your first 911 call from generic to autism-aware.
Eye contact
Officers are trained to read averted gaze as deception. For many autistic adults, eye contact is the deception. Name this in the packet.
Stimming
Hand flapping, rocking, vocalizations. Read by an untrained officer as agitation or drug use. Read by a trained one as regulation.
Use of force
Restraint, prone holds, and Tasers escalate sensory overload into life-threatening dysregulation. Document any history of restraint trauma in your packet.
Traffic stops
If your adult drives, a sun-visor card with the words “I am autistic. I will move slowly. I may not look at you. My ID is in the glove box” buys the thirty seconds that resets the entire encounter.
Processing delay
A direct verbal command can take three to ten seconds to register. Untrained officers read the pause as defiance. Train the officers. Train your adult to nod.
Public incidents
Mall security, store managers, transit police. The packet works for all of them. So does a laminated card the size of a driver’s license.
What goes in the Know My Person packet
Recent photo, full name, date of birth, address
Autism spectrum, support level, co-occurring conditions
Verbal, AAC device, gestures, written only
Loud voices, sirens, touch, flashing lights
Calming words, lower voice, give space, no touch
Stimming, scripting, gaze avoidance. Not signs of guilt.
Seizures, medications, allergies, restraint risks
Family, guardian, case manager. 24-hour numbers.
David is 24. He was waiting for the 18B bus at midnight after his shift, flapping his hands the way he always does when the streetlight buzzes. A passing driver called 911 and said a man was acting suspicious. The first officer drew his Taser. David did not respond when ordered to put his hands up because David needs three seconds to process a sentence and four more to find the words. His case manager arrived with the laminated card in time. The officer apologized. We were lucky.
If your adult is detained, here is what you do
Response ladder
- 1Get to the scene. Bring the packet. Identify yourself by relationship and authority.
- 2Ask the supervising officer for permission to communicate with your adult.
- 3Do not consent to questioning without counsel. Ever. Even if “nothing happened.”
- 4Write down badge numbers, times, and witness names while the scene is fresh.
- 5Request the body camera footage in writing within 48 hours.
- 6File a written commendation or complaint. Quiet feedback shapes future training.
Have ready in your wallet
- Two laminated Know My Person cards
- Photo of your adult on your phone home screen
- Disability rights attorney number (county or state)
- Guardianship or supported decision-making letter
- Insurance card and primary doctor
- One-page sensory and medical summary
- Registry confirmation number
- Pen and a small notepad
Most encounters end well at step one or two. The ones that do not are the ones you need the rest of the ladder for.
The first officer at the bus stop had his hand on the Taser before David even saw him. The streetlight overhead was buzzing at a frequency that David noticed and the officer did not, which is a useful way to summarize most encounters between autistic adults and police. Both parties are responding to different stimuli. Only one of them has a weapon.
I have spent fifteen years watching families go through this. The math is not subtle. The Drexel Autism Institute’s National Autism Indicators Report, drawing on Rava and colleagues in 2017, found that 20 percent of youth with autism had been stopped and questioned by police by age 21, and nearly 5 percent had been arrested. That is one in five. The behaviors that draw the police call are the behaviors autistic people use to regulate themselves. Stimming. Pacing. Repeating phrases. Standing too close or too far. Avoiding eye contact. Refusing to answer because the question went in at 90 percent speed and the brain is still parsing the verb.
Why “officer training” is not the whole answer
Every police chief I have ever sat across from says the same thing. “We do autism training.” Some of them mean a one hour roll call video. Some of them mean a forty hour Crisis Intervention Team curriculum. Some of them mean a partnership with the local Arc chapter and quarterly scenario drills. The distance between those three answers is the distance between a routine call and a tragedy.
Training matters. It is not the whole answer. The whole answer is what happens in the four minutes between a 911 call and an officer at your door. That window belongs to dispatch. Dispatch knows what the address record says. Dispatch knows whether the caller mentioned a disability. Dispatch decides whether to send one officer or three. Dispatch can mark the call “autism” or “EDP” (emotionally disturbed person, the term that still gets used too often) or “welfare check.” Each label triggers a different response posture. You cannot train your way past dispatch. You can register your way through it.
Registries: what they are, what they are not
Most cities and counties operate at least one of three kinds of registry. The names vary. The function is similar.
A Take Me Home registry, pioneered by Pensacola Police Department and now widely adopted, lets families upload a photo, a sensory profile, and emergency contacts. When officers find a person who cannot give their name, they search the registry. Some Take Me Home programs also push the record into the local CAD (computer-aided dispatch) system, so that when a 911 call comes in from your address, the entry pops automatically.
A Premise Alert program, which started in Illinois and exists in many forms elsewhere, ties the information specifically to a physical address. When dispatch pulls up the address on a call, the alert tells responding officers there is a person at this location with a disability, listing accommodations and a contact.
A Special Needs Registry is the catch-all term most departments use. Same idea, varying execution.
What registries are not is a guarantee. They are a probability shift. The officer who looks at the screen will respond differently than the one who does not. Some officers still will not look. Some dispatchers still will not flag. Register anyway. The probability shift is the point.
The Know My Person packet, page by page
The packet is one page. Two if your adult has a complex medical profile. It is laminated. You print it in color and you keep one copy in your wallet, one on the refrigerator, one in the glove box of every car the family drives, and one in your adult’s go-bag if they live or work outside the home.
The header reads, in 24 point font, the kind of font that survives a fluorescent dome light in a squad car: This person is autistic. Please read before you act. The first half of the page is identification. Recent close-up photo. Full legal name. Date of birth. Home address. Names and 24 hour phone numbers for the primary caregivers and the case manager.
The second half is the human operating manual. Communication style (verbal, AAC, gestural, written only). Behaviors that are often misread (averted gaze, stimming, scripting, delayed response). Triggers (loud voices, sirens, touch, prone restraint, the smell of pepper spray). De-escalation moves that actually work for this person (calmer voice, more space, slower questions, written communication). Medical notes that change the calculus (seizures, medications, restraint risks, history of past trauma).
The bottom line, in red: Restraint may be lethal. Allow time. Wait for the named contact below.
Practice scripts: for them and for you
You practice the encounter the way you practice a fire drill. Calmly, repeatedly, until the response is muscle memory.
For your adult, the script is short. “I am autistic. I will move slowly. I may not look at you. My ID is in [pocket / glove box / wallet]. May I show you my card?” You drill this until the words come out the same way every time, in the same order, regardless of how frightened they are. The words do not have to be perfect. They have to be present.
For you, the script is the 911 call. “I am calling about my autistic adult son. He is 24. He is on the [registry name] at this address. He is currently [location, behavior]. He is not violent. He is responding to a sensory event. Please send an officer who is familiar with the registry entry. I will meet them on scene in [minutes].” You practice this with your spouse, your other kids, your case manager, your respite worker. Everyone who might have to make the call needs the script.
Traffic stops
If your adult drives, you build a sun-visor card. It is a 4 by 6 inch laminated card, dropped over the visor on the driver’s side, that reads: I am autistic. I will move slowly. I may not look at you. My driver’s license and registration are in the glove box. May I retrieve them?
You practice the traffic stop in an empty parking lot. Pull over. Turn off the engine. Roll the window down. Place both hands at ten and two on the wheel. Wait. When the officer approaches, drop the visor card so they can read it before you speak. Then ask, slowly, for permission to reach into the glove box.
This sounds like overkill until you remember that the leading cause of death in police encounters with autistic adults is misinterpreted movement. The card reframes the movement. The practice removes the panic. Both are necessary.
Public incidents
Most encounters do not involve police directly. They involve mall security, store managers, transit cops, school resource officers, restaurant staff who called the cops because the noise was upsetting other customers. Your packet works for all of them. So does a wallet-sized laminated version of the same information, the size of a credit card, that your adult can hand over the way other people hand over a license.
Pair the card with one practiced sentence: “I am autistic. Please call this number.” The phone number on the card is yours. The conversation that follows is between you and the person who detained your adult. Most of the time, that conversation ends the incident.
Working with your local agency
You do not wait for the chief to call you. You walk into the precinct. You ask for the watch commander or the community liaison. You hand them a packet. You ask for the entry to be put in the CAD system. You ask whether they participate in any autism awareness training, and you offer the contact information for the local Arc chapter or ASAN affiliate if they do not. You leave your name. You follow up in a week.
You do this once a year for the rest of your adult’s life. Shifts rotate. Officers retire. New ones come in. The packet that was in last year’s binder is not in this year’s CAD entry unless you re-enter it. Make the renewal a birthday tradition. Drop off a fresh copy in the lobby every May. Bring cookies. The dispatcher remembers cookies.
What changes if they do not
You are going to live in a country where some agencies do this well and some do not. The ones that do not are the ones whose chiefs you write to. The ones who actively refuse a registry or refuse to accept a packet are the ones whose city councils you address in three minute public comment, with the packet in your hand and a video recording running. The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network both publish policy templates that you can hand to your chief verbatim. Use them.
You will not fix every agency. You will not prevent every bad encounter. You will, in your own town, in your own zip code, shift the probability for your own person. Then you will help the family three streets over do the same thing. Then the family three blocks over. The work compounds. So does the safety.
Jim Palasty is the founder of OASIS for Autism and a single father of an adult autistic daughter in Michigan.