Boardman police officers attend autism training

By GRACE WYLER gwyler@vindy.com

The Boardman Police Department might soon start flagging houses whose residents have autism in order to better respond to calls, said Detective Michelle Glaros.

Glaros was one of six police officers from Mahoning County to attend an autism risk management and safety course in Independence on Feb. 3.

The course suggested that police departments find a way to register residents with autism so that officers can be better equipped to respond to emergency calls from those households.

The Boardman Police Department already has the capacity to flag residences with prior history of criminal activity, Glaros said. The department could use that software to register residents that might have the tendency to wander away, including people affected by autism and Alzheimer’s disease, she said.

“After the training, I thought that we should flag houses to register citizens with autism so officers can know what to expect in advance,” Glaros said. “The more information an officer has, the better he or she will be able to respond to a call.”

The training course, sponsored by the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the Autism Society of America, was led by Dennis Debbaudt. Debbaudt, who has a 26-year-old son with autism, is a private detective and law enforcement trainer based in Florida.

He trains first responders — including emergency medical technicians and law enforcement officers — in recognizing and responding to calls involving people with autism disorders.

At the urging of Andrea Keller, the mother of a 14-year-old boy with autism, State Sen. Joe Schiavoni sent a letter to police departments in the 33rd district encouraging officers to attend the free training session.

Diagnoses of autism, a neurological disability that affects people with varying degrees of severity, have dramatically increased in the past decade, said Keller, a Canfield resident. One in 100 children are diagnosed with autism, she said.

Police officers do not have any formal training in how to identify and react to people with autism, Keller said.

“My hope is that we will make this not optional training but more standard training, especially with patrolmen,” Keller said

Schiavoni said he was excited to see that officers from Youngstown, Austintown, Beaver, Boardman and Canfield attended the training program.

“I think that this shows that the police officers in Mahoning County, and in our area in general, really care about the people that they serve,” he said.

The training session included discussion and videos about communicating with people with autism, possible problems with interrogation and interviews and restraint and arrest options.

“In the training, everyone learned the value of calming body language, giving people extra time to respond and using clear language if at all possible,” Debbaudt said. “It is all based on officer safety but the key is to remember that these calls are going to take longer.”

Debbaudt, who has conducted autism risk management training with first responders for 15 years, has written over 30 book chapters and reports addressing interactions between law enforcement and people with autism.

Debbaudt has also done consulting and provided training materials for large law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Pennsylvania State Police, the New York Police Department and police departments in Toledo and Cincinnati.

“In different parts of the country, this training is really catching on,” Debbaudt said. “At the training, by mere show of hands, it was pretty much unanimous that this type of training would be very useful in the state of Ohio.”