Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Bart Barta: Training First Responders for Autism Encounters

Starting point is 00:00:05 Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mayator. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World, Humanity Overhand Custs, the Silent Crisis, Special Event. Joining us today is Bart Bartor. He is a retired law enforcement commander with over 31 years of experience.

Starting point is 00:01:05 He joins us today to discuss his company, Autism Safety 101, whose mission is to provide first responders with the necessary tools and tactics to achieve optimal outcomes when interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum. He possesses a wealth of knowledge and we are just so delighted to have him on the show. Thanks for coming on. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. If you would, tell us what you do now. I'm retired law enforcement commander. I had a 31 year law enforcement career. 18 years ago, my world, the world of my family, was forever changed. My wife and I have three sons, all adults. Our youngest adult son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was three years old. He went in for his three-year pediatric

Starting point is 00:01:53 checkup. That's when the pediatrician diagnosed him. And then we later followed up with a visit to the pediatrician's diagnosis. Not knowing anything about autism at all, it's set. myself and my wife on this journey to try to learn as much as we possibly could. We wanted to give our son the greatest opportunity at reaching his fullest potential in life, whatever that might be. We didn't know at the time would he even be able to communicate with us. He was verbal, only spoke a few words. He engaged in a lot of echolalia, things like that. So to say we were scared would be like an understatement, we realized that we were really going to have to pour ourselves into him and try to help him reach his full potential. While all of this is going on, I'm working

Starting point is 00:02:51 as a police officer and for management role. I was a lieutenant at the time at the police department in South Florida, where we were living. And I quickly realized that law enforcement was not training its officers in how to recognize and respond to individuals on the autism spectrum. I kept seeing stories in the news involving encounters between law enforcement and individuals on the autism spectrum, and they weren't favorable stories. I really felt like we could do better in this area. So I was working for the Coral Gables Police Department at the time, which is a bedroom community of Miami. In the city of Coral Gables is the University of Miami. And they have something there called the Centers for Autism and Related Disabilities.

Starting point is 00:03:38 So I reached out to them. I see this real need here in developing some curriculum for law enforcement. Can you help me? I'm not an expert in autism, but I needed to go to the experts in autism so that we could create some evidence-based training for law enforcement officers to help them better recognize and respond to individuals with autism so that at the end of the day, the individuals with autism, is kept safe as possible, and the officers remain safe if possible. So what happened out of that meeting?

Starting point is 00:04:07 They agreed to help me and assist me on this and set me on this journey while still working full-time for the police department. I started working with something called the Crisis Intervention Team Training Program, or CIT program. It was a program that came about to aid law enforcement officers and how to better recognize and respond to individuals who might have mental illness. I started working with this program in Miami-Dade County, probably 18 years now. I started working with this program and started training South Florida law enforcement officers, primarily in Miami-Dade County. I would come into this 40-hour block of CIT instruction, and I would do about a two, two-and-a-half-hour block on autism. And I did this, I don't know, for probably more than 10 years.

Starting point is 00:04:51 After doing that as I was getting closer to retirement, and I was still doing this training, but because of my full-time responsibilities as a law enforcement commander, I couldn't really pour myself in full-time into doing this kind of training. So as I could see, I was getting closer and closer to retirement. My wife and I had this discussion. We decided together to try to launch a training business, training consulting business, so that we could work with first responders to help them better recognize and respond to individuals with autism. That's what I've been doing ever since. Sounds like a great idea.

Starting point is 00:05:23 What happened next for you? So I retired in the end of 2017 before retiring. I had launched Autism Safety 101. I travel all across the United States of America, providing training primarily to law enforcement, but I also trained firefighters, EMS. I've trained correctional personnel, security personnel, and I really feel that it's crucial. All first responders received this training, and so that's where I got started. When you have a class, what does your audience look like?

Starting point is 00:05:57 Is it police, firefighters, EMTs, operators from the 911 comm centers, or do you talk with each one of them individually as a group? Generally, the class is specific to the audience. So if it's primarily a law enforcement, say it's a police department. I was just recently contacted by a police department in Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, Shambly, Georgia. Chief of police contacted me and asked me if I could do a couple of eight-hour training. there for his officers and the local law enforcement partners in that area. We've scheduled two dates in April, and I will go up there, and that class will just encompass primarily law enforcement officers. I do trainings right now. In fact, I have some fire rescue in South Florida. They have me come in

Starting point is 00:06:46 twice a month to provide autism training to their firefighters, and that is just specific to firefighting. There is some overlap. There is times occasionally and it doesn't happen very often. Maybe less than 5% of my trainings include a mixed first responder audience, meaning there will be police in the audience and there will be firefighters in the audience. That doesn't happen very often. Normally, it's centric to whatever audience is. So I have a training for school resource officers. People may not realize this, but policing in schools is a lot different than policing the street. So I come in and I have a background in that as well. When I was a sergeant earlier in my career, I used to oversee and supervise school resource officers. I have a training as specific to

Starting point is 00:07:36 them and we talk about students with autism in the schools and things like that. Training that I do is tailored specifically to whatever first responder audience I'm dealing with. What's the first thing that you tell them to start your class off? They are sometimes going into the unknown. They don't know whether it's autism or another mental health issue. It could be ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, or anything else mental health related. With the police, sometimes they only have seconds to make a determination. So how do you tell them to approach it so the situation does not get out of control so it can be handled in a very good way where everybody walks away,

Starting point is 00:08:18 knowing that they did their very best, to ultimately have a satisfying conclusion? It's a great question. So here's the thing, right? This is really important. I have to start off with helping these officers understand what autism is. If you don't understand the challenges and the needs of people with autism, you're not going to recognize it. And unfortunately, this is what happens in some cases too often where law enforcement officers do not receive meaningful training in autism. Officers will oftentimes misinterpret the person's behavior or their lack of community. and they'll take one course of action, where if they had some understanding about autism, then they might take a different course of action. I have to break it down into its simplest parts so these officers truly understand what it's like to be in the body of a person with autism and understand all those unique challenges that come along with that disability. Part of that is helping them to understand when and where we can to try to slow things down as much as we possibly can. We have to be patient. We have to give them time to process what it is that we're

Starting point is 00:09:32 asking them or telling them to do. If we expect them to immediately respond or comply with our questions or request, in many cases, it's not going to happen. It's imperative that law enforcement officers understand these challenges. Once they understand the challenges that follow this disability, then we implement the strategies and how to de-escalate possible crisis situations or meltdowns that might be occurring. So it's not like there's a silver bullet here and you can come in and go, okay, do this every time. And this and then everything is wonderful and it's great because it is a wide spectrum and it affects people differently. It's been said once, I think it was Dr. Stephen insure that came out with this saying. He said, if you've met one person with autism,

Starting point is 00:10:21 you've met one person with autism, right? No two people with autism are identical. And that's important, too, because law enforcement officers, we are trained to recognize pattern. We are great at recognizing patterns. If you've seen something enough times, you go, oh, I know what this is. That's a little bit more challenging when you're dealing with somebody with autism who might have serious communication challenges, who struggles socially, who might even have an intellectual disability on top of that, coupled with co-occurring mental health disorders and other things. So let me say this to you. And this is one thing I hope your listeners take away if they're looking to help law enforcement officers and their communities receive this kind of training is you can't

Starting point is 00:11:03 do this online and a half an hour or an hour. You can't do it. I tell chiefs of police, they'll contact me from time to time and they'll say, bark, and you come train the troops. And I'll say, sure thing, Chief, what do you have in mind? And they'll say, well, what about roll calls? Now, roll calls are like briefings that occur at the very beginning of the shift. You used to see it, like if you watch shows like Hill Street Blues, the sergeant would come in, he would address the officers and things and give them kind of the instructions for the day. Those are roll calls, right? Generally, roll calls don't last more than 15 minutes to a half an hour. So I asked the chief, what do you have in mind? And they'll say, what about a roll call? And I'll say, how long do your roll calls last? And they'll say, we can do 45 minutes.

Starting point is 00:11:46 And then I stop them right then and there. And I tell them, Chief, all do respect. I can come in. I can talk to your officers for 45 minutes about individuals of autism, but they're not going to get much out of it. And they scratch their heads and they look puzzled, right? Because I can't understand this, right? And I tell them, don't do anything less than four hours.

Starting point is 00:12:03 I hate doing four-hour trainings because when I do four-hour training sessions with law enforcement officers, I feel like they're trying to drink water from a fire hose, right? It's coming down a fast and hard. and quick, and it doesn't allow for the engagement or the interaction that I really like to see occur in these training sessions with law enforcement officers. So I tell all these chiefs, I tell all these sheriffs, don't do anything less than eight. But I would tell you, Tony, unfortunately, a lot of law enforcement commanders, chiefs of police and sheriffs are reluctant to do eight-hour trainings. I'm very encouraged when law enforcement agencies do eight-hour trainings,

Starting point is 00:12:40 but I refuse to do anything less than four because I don't want to give short shrift. And some people say, what about an online training? Why don't you do online training? And I tell them because one, quite honestly, Tony, most police officers don't want to watch online training if it's more than 30 minutes. And they start tuning out. And if they're not compelled to sit there and watch it, they'll be easily distracted. They'll be looking at their cell phone or one thing or another. And they're not really learning it, right?

Starting point is 00:13:06 They're not really getting it. They're not really understanding it. Is it a lot of work to do? In-person training, it is. But I personally have a vested interest in this. Do you tell them about your son in their training? I tell all these officers all the time. I have a son who's 21 years old and who is more than likely going to come in contact with you at some point in time. Others, it's not a question of if. It's only a matter of when they come in contact with a law enforcement officer. In fact,

Starting point is 00:13:34 there's studies recently that show that individuals with autism are seven times more. more likely to encounter a law enforcement officer than someone without autism. Okay. So there's been some studies too recently by the time, I think by the time they're 18 years old, more than a quarter of them have already encountered a law enforcement officer. Wow, that's pretty staggering numbers. I will say this. It's not all doom and gloom. I am optimistic. I'm seeing law enforcement leaders, sheriff, chief of police, are really starting to embrace this and understanding that people with autism are a significant part of their communities. They're a part of the citizenry that they serve. Really important. If you want to serve your citizens well, understand your citizens. And those

Starting point is 00:14:17 agencies that invest the time, I get a lot of feedback after my trainings. Sometimes years later, I'll have officers that will email me or they'll call me and they'll say, I've got to tell you about this call that I went on. And let me tell you what happened. And I'm so glad that I came through your training because now I felt so confident in handling this situation and they had a successful outcome. If you don't do this kind of training, you're setting your officers up for failure. And I don't blame these officers. I've seen stories in the news where officers have had, unfortunately, negative contacts with individuals of autism. And if you go and you start looking into the situation, what you will discover in most of these cases, these officers that you're seeing in the

Starting point is 00:15:01 news that had these horrific incidents involving indivisals of autism, they'd had little to no training in autism. Now, whose fault is that? Is that the officer's fault? A lot of people in the autism community, parents and caregivers, they get upset. I've seen them say, that officer should be fired, he should be suspended without pay. And I tell them every time, I said, have you looked in to see whether or not this officer's had any training whatsoever? And in most cases, they haven't. Is it fair to blame the officer? Because the truth is, Tony, you don't know what you don't know. And if you don't have this kind of training, you're not going to understand. That's why I do what I do. And I do it passionately. Every time I do these trainings, I try to bring folks with the autism community into

Starting point is 00:15:42 these training sessions. Julian happens towards the end of the training where I give them an opportunity to interact and engage with these first responders because that's where the most significant part of this training occurs is that interaction that curves between individuals with autism and law enforcement and officers, and the more opportunity is we can create where we can bring people with autism into a setting with law enforcement officers in a non-crisis situation. It's a win for the individual with autism, and it's a win for the first responder. So I encourage these officers, I encourage these command staffs with these police departments and these fire departments to have your personnel regularly engage with people on the spectrum. Because again, like I said earlier,

Starting point is 00:16:27 If you meet one person with autism, you met one person with autism, and it's a wide spectrum. When you first start talking with the officers, it's like anything else. It can be two hours, four hours, six hours, eight hours. At the end of any conference, whether it's two hours, all the way up to eight hours, there's going to be certain points that they remember. There will be certain points they will forget. How do you get the points across that you feel are most vital for them to remember? that way they do not forget it because as we know, it's the most important things that they remember, even if they forget some of the little things that hopefully they retain, that could be most important to having a much better outcome than what it could have been. That's a great question. And one of the things that I try to stress again is patience,

Starting point is 00:17:17 trying to slow things down the best you possibly can. You are correct. Is officers respond to various calls for service, they're responding based on the information that were received, and oftentimes that comes from a dispatcher, right? A communications operator, 911 operator who's giving the information the officer. So oftentimes when the officers are arriving on the scene, they're responding with only a little bit of information, and they have to quickly assess and determine what is going on in sometimes only seconds. And so they're trying to process all this information as quickly as possible. If the individual does not have a weapon, meaning they have a knife or a gun or something like that, this affords us an opportunity to try to

Starting point is 00:17:55 slow things down, right, to try to practice some patience and telling them that when you're trying to communicate with somebody with autism, use the fewest words possible. Use concrete, simple language because many people with autism process language differently than the rest of us. If you tell someone with autism, freeze, that means something to you. It means something to me, but that means something completely different to them. You need to use simple, concrete, direct language. You need to keep it as simple and as few words possible. Giving them as much time to respond is necessary, right? You may have someone who is a serious eloper and all of a sudden they bolt and they take off and they start running and maybe they're starting to run for the middle of a busy highway

Starting point is 00:18:44 or a busy street. That officer at that point of time might have to go hands on. They might have to use force to stop that person. Some folks with autism have no fear of danger. So, they might just take off and run out right in the middle of street. In that case, the officer has to go hands-on immediately. But one of the things I try to tell them, if ever possible, try to avoid touching them, if somebody with autism is actively trying to hurt another person, just because you have a disability doesn't give you a license to affliting violence on another person, you might have to stop that person from inflicting violence onto another person. you might have to go hands-on, and we talk about what you should do if, in fact, you do go hands-on with somebody with autism. We give some tips and strategies and things like that. Those are the key things right there is helping them understand, one, the processing of your

Starting point is 00:19:35 instructions and your language and understanding this, too, Tony, and I didn't bring this up, you have a large percentage of people with autism that are non-verbal or low-verbal, and if they can speak, it might only be a few words. Now, having said that, just because some... someone doesn't have verbal language doesn't mean they don't understand you. Doesn't mean they're even low intelligence, right, or low IQ. It doesn't mean that they might not even be able to communicate with you. And we talk about the other ways in which people who are nonverbal or low verbal can and oftentimes do communicate. And we talk about how to deal with that. Sensory issues are also something that we have

Starting point is 00:20:15 to address when we're dealing with individuals of autism. Why? Because you're a law and force and off, and you're coming to the scene, right? Oftentimes in a sensory machine. You're driving a patrol car, right, that has lights, bright lights, that has a siren and you're coming on to the scene. That just in and of itself can create so much anxiety in that person with autism that now it's escalated the situation in this person, right? So now what do we need to do to try to help them manage their anxiety that they're experiencing because of the sensory input that they're receiving. So we address things like that, how to turn off your lights, how to turn off your siren, if you can safely, turn off your light safely and turn off your siren.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Your radio, your police radio, sometimes the sound of the police radio can be unsettling for some people with autism. A barking canine companion, these kinds of things can be for people with autism. So we address the sensory issues, we address that as well in the trainings. That's great. Perfect, actually. There's a wide spectrum in autism. However, there's also a wide spectrum in how we treat people with autism. The key is how we bridge that gap between autism and the first responders. The first ones that respond is always thought of as being the police. So it's very important that we do bridge that gap for sure. Hypothetical here. What happens if they have a knife? Not a gun, just a knife. They're not showing real aggressive behavior. It's a dangerous thing to have for sure. What do you advise them to do? So in the end, the outcome is one that everybody is happy with. Never been asked this question before, but that's a great question. So normally what happens in law enforcement agencies is this is apart from autism. I'm going to address this because this is where most of this will occur. Law enforcement agencies will

Starting point is 00:22:09 create scenario-based training in which law enforcement officers will either have to move up the use of force continuum or move down the use of force continuum. For example, when you start to introduce lethal weapons to a scenario, it increases the chances, obviously, for a higher use of force response to whatever that officer is dealing with. Let's say it's a knife. One of the things, too, that officers are trained to do, especially when you're dealing with individuals who have knives, if and whenever possible, and I have to say this, if and whenever possible, because every situation is different, okay? There are no two situations that are identical. What is your friend is time and distance? If I can create more distance between me and that person with that

Starting point is 00:22:59 knife, it increases my chances of survival. And the more time, if I try to engage this person in conversation, right, we can hopefully de-escalate the situation. I will say this. There is a scenario that I use in my training. And this is a story that came out of an agency in Canada. Years ago, this agency in Canada had created a registry for individuals of autism. And what I really liked about this registry, say, for example, say 911 gets a call to the residence. This home is already been flagged because the caregiver or the parent or guardian has registered their address with the 911 Center. And so when first responders are en route,

Starting point is 00:23:51 the dispatcher at the 911 Center will let the officer or the firefighter know that there is an occupant in that home with autism. And they will provide them their name, physical descriptors, things like that. But on top of all that, it'll include things like, does the person have sensory issues? Does the person have communication challenges? Are they verbal? Are they nonverbal? Are they low verbal? It could talk about whether or not they have self-regulating behaviors that they might engage in to try to calm themselves down. And so trying to help officers understand this. Part of that includes things like what sort of things might also help

Starting point is 00:24:34 calm them down. You'll see individuals with autism. Many of them have developed coping mechanisms that will help them self-regulate, that will help them manage their behaviors, right? Which oftentimes to us, neurotypicals, folks that don't have autism, it might look unusual. It might look odd, right? Because there's maybe hand flapping, there might be body rocking. There could be a number of different things that's going on to the outside person or somebody is not familiar with autism. They'll think, wow, this looks really strange.

Starting point is 00:25:01 These sorts of things can be included on the registry. Also included on the registry is whatever that person's special interest. is. What are their things that they like? This particular department in Canada, when they were en route to this call, they received a call on a young man with autism who had barricaded himself in the basement of the family home with a knife. No one else in the home, but this young man with a knife. So now these responding police officers are going to this residence. And they learn all this about this young man with autism. Guess what else they learned, Tony? They learned through this registry that his special interest was ice hockey. So when the two first responding units got there on the scene, they headed

Starting point is 00:25:47 down to the basement. But because of training, they know that time and distance can help keep them alive, so they kept the safe distance between themselves and this young man. What do you think they started talking to him about, Tony, when they arrived on the same? Ice hockey. Why? Because that's his special interest. So what happened, they started to build some rapport with this young man by engaging him in what was his special interest. After talking to him for about 15, 20 minutes about ice hockey, right? They said to him, Mike, we would love to talk to you about ice hockey, but you've got to put the knife down. And what do you think Mike did, Tony? He put the knife down. So now, Tony, let's be fair. Is this going to work in every situation? No, probably not.

Starting point is 00:26:33 but it can. And the reason why it worked in this particular situation was because these officers had information. They had knowledge about this person, then helped them when they arrived on the scene to de-escalate a very volatile situation. If they had not received any training, they had not received this information, things might have been handled much differently. Absolutely. In closing, what do you feel is important that the listeners here that needs to be covered in what you do. Let me just say this real quick to your listeners. It is important that first responders

Starting point is 00:27:09 receive training and how to recognize and respond to autism. There's also a part that I think sometimes we're missing, and that is this. As parents, as caregivers and guardians, we need to prepare our loved ones for interactions with law enforcement and with other first responders.

Starting point is 00:27:27 What does that mean? We need to help provide them with some education and some training and how to safely self-disclose their autism to a first responder. I'm a firm believer, Tony, that if a person with autism at the onset of a contact with a law enforcement officer, the chances of that interaction going well have just increased substantially. Even if the officers had zero training in autism, if an officer approaches, say, my son, and he says, hi, sir, what are you doing?

Starting point is 00:27:57 And my son says, officer, my name is Daniel, and I have autism. Can I show you my wallet card? The officer's going to say, sure. And then my son's going to reach into his back pocket, and he's going to take out his wallet. And there's a card that's in his wallet that says, my name is Daniel, and I have autism spectrum disorder. And when I get nervous or anxious, I do the following things. And then it'll say things like, there'll be some strategies. To help me better understand you, please do the following.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Then on the back of the card is a mercy contact information that includes my name and phone number, my wife's name and phone number, so if law enforcement officers and will reach out and contact us. The wallet card is just one of many tools that can help individuals with autism and help safely self-disclose their autism. They want to learn more about the wallet card. They can go to the website for the wallet card. It's WWW Just JUST. Or if you go to that website, there is a link there on the page where the parent or caregiver can request a personalized wallet card for their loved one. What I love about this is each card can be personalized because autism is not a one-size-fits-all disability. So they can customize the card to speak to whatever unique challenges and needs their loved

Starting point is 00:29:13 one has and include their emergency contact information on the back. The wallet card is free. It doesn't cost anybody a dime. I'm proud to say I've been a part of that wallet card program now for over 10 years. It was a partnership between the University of Miami Centers for Autism-related Disabilities, the Disability Independence Group and the Coral Gables Police Department. Think about that wallet card. If there's one takeaway here today that you can take action all and help your loved one on the spectrum, the wallet card would be the one thing that I would suggest that they get. Good. I appreciate you coming on. Great conversation. A lot of great information. Thank you, Tony. It's been a pleasure. And I just again, I'll tell you, thank you for what you do.

Starting point is 00:29:51 You provide a tremendous public service to this autism community, and it's large and it's broad. Keep doing the great work that you're dealing. I appreciate it. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymentor.com. Contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask, tell everyone.

Starting point is 00:30:33 everywhere about why not me the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone, everywhere that you are not alone in this world.

Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Bart Barta: Training First Responders for Autism Encounters

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