Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Dennis Debbaudt : reveals how proper training can prevent tragic misunderstandings between autism and law enforcement.

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

Send us a text Dennis Debbaudt shares his 30-year journey addressing autism-related police interactions and developing training programs for law enforcement nationwide. His pioneering work bridges the gap between public safety professionals and the autistic community through educational materials, videos, and hands-on training that helps prevent tragic misunderstandings. • Former detective agency owner whose autistic son's diagnosis in the 1980s revealed a complete lack of resources on autism-police interactions • Created the first-ever training materials addressing autism for law enforcement in the early 1990s • Highlights the staggering increase in autism prevalence from 2-5 in 10,000 people to today's 1 in 36 • Emphasizes that autistic behaviors can be misinterpreted as drug intoxication or non-compliance • Teaches officers to recognize "street signs" like autism awareness stickers and specialized terminology • Promotes techniques including increased personal space, extra processing time, and varied communication approaches • Focuses on voluntary disclosure strategies and technology tools that can alert first responders • Trains others to continue his work ensuring that these critical interactions become safer for everyone If you know anyone who would like to tell their story, send them to TonyMantor.com contact, and they can provide their information to potentially become a guest on our show. Please tell everyone about Why Not Me? The World, the conversations we're having, and the inspiration our guests give to show that you are not alone in this world.   https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI) The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. 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 Over Handcuffs, the Silent Crisis, Special Event. Joining us today is Dennis DeBot. Dennis has been a pioneer in addressing autism-related police issues since the early 1990s,

authoring over 40 books, reports, and training videos on the subject. He has trained with with NYPD's emergency services, consulted on the Chicago Police Department's autism training, and appeared in major outlets like the New York Times and Associated Press, among others. We're excited to have him share his insights with us. Thanks for coming on. Well, I have to. And thank you for this wonderful project that you're on here. It will make a difference.

Well, thanks. I appreciate your kind words. Can you give us a little insight on your journey to doing what you're doing today? No, I owned a detective agency in Detroit, Michigan, starting in 1981. When we moved down here to South Florida, I closed that license down and did it down here until 2013. So it was a 37-year career as a big city detective agency owner. And I did focus on people and things that needed to be filed. So that put me in contact with FBI, state police, and local police all around the country

and in other countries too when necessary. It was that background. And then I also had a brief flirtation with freelance reporting. So my work was seen in the Detroit News and monthly Detroit Magazine. And then in documentaries too are out and ValdeValien. UK and Canada. Their son was born in 1983. Within a couple of years,

we were having that lived experience kind of like what you had a year ago. You didn't know anything about it. And neither did it wait. So this ultimately led you to start researching to find more out about it, correct? What I did discover as a researcher and an investigator once I had enough

lived experience to try to find some solutions was that this population and their interactions with the policing public safety and criminal justice system had not been reported on ever. And when you write something or produce something, it's not your judgment ultimately whether or not somebody reads it or hears it, it'll be the consumer. And so when I did write my first report, I got a lot of positive feedback. from that in 1993. So once you started digging, what path did that lead you on to start helping the autistic world? Basically started with the autism spectrum disorder, the lack of information that I needed in the

late 80s, early 90s, and then realizing that there isn't any of this out here, if you're interested, you're going to have to dig in of them. which I did do. So it's autism focus. I've learned that prior to my efforts, there were the crisis intervention team models prior to that back in the late 60s, and then information and training materials video that date back to the late 50s, interactions that people with conditions of the brain or neurological disorders, mental illness, if you will, they were having a higher rate of contact with added risk for law enforcement, probably since law enforcement's been around. What kind of understanding did that help you with?

Those contacts were troublesome at that point in time. A new group of people grew in front of our eyes, and that new group was autism. Even when our son was diagnosed, the rate of autism was thought to be two to five in every 10,000 people. By the time we got his official diagnosis, it had gone down, if you will, to 1, 1, 1, 1,250. The end of the 1990s is now well under 500, and it currently today is 1 in 36. What the contacts, these interactions consisted of, even back in the 90s with my early research part of the Internet, those contacts continue to happen. The difference now between now and then is there are thousands more,

tens of thousands of more autistic people out here that we've identified. Now you've written some books and different things for police. What led you to get involved with helping the police and the first responders get a better understanding about autism and how it affects the kids and the people that they would come in contact with. Well, I was reporting what I found as a dad as someone from a related area of work. I was interacting with the police,

so operational policing was not foreign to me. And it was troubling when I could find nothing out here. So when I wrote my first report and then the second one, it got a lot of attention, a lot of positive feedback. And we were living in Detroit at that time. The Detroit Police Department

and heard me speak on it at a mixed day-long information exchange with folks with Alzheimer's, people with mental illness, and I was covering the autism issue. It was something fresh and new now. And DPD heard what I had to say, found it useful, and asked them to come into their training academy. That was 1995, so we're still doing it. You've also worked with a lot of well-known police precincts across the country as well, correct? The FBI accepted an offer for myself and a PhD from a curriculum project in Maryland in the late 90s. They accepted our proposal to publish in the FBI law enforcement bulletin. And that just opened a lot of doors at the time.

But, yeah, NYPD, Chicago PD, now the Department of Homeland Security, it hadn't been created back in those early days. But many other large and small agencies here in Canada has taken me to the East, Southeast, and the UK. Now, you've done several books, but you've also done some films and videos to help them. as well. Yeah, and the belief you're here is if we want to help law enforcement discover that person they may be interacting with might have autism, the more people with autism that they get to view, see, and meet, whether it's on video or live, the better their outcome will be. It's great to have talking heads such as myself with living brains, but nothing takes place of that kind of evidence, and it's memorable.

Do you do one-on-one in a police department where you have a group of police that are there and you talk with them about someone they may come upon that might be having a drug problem or they might be autistic but merely look like they're having a drug problem? Have you had those kind of conversations with them in some of your presentations? Yeah, I would say, Tony, that every session that I do, and Zach? Yeah, I think that's a good thing. I spoke with a presenter the other day, and he told me of an officer that was highly trained in drug enforcement, came across this person, had all the characteristics that he was high on drugs. He did everything by the book. Unfortunately, this person

was autistic. Now, he was unaware, and he was in the process of actually arresting this person. Thankfully, the mother was close by, came over, was level-headed, told the officer about the autism that her son had. Everything turned out all right. In any other situation, this could have gone the opposite way. Yeah. Nobody, even the greatest autism experts in the field of diagnosis can do a field diagnosis and say with absolute accuracy and certainty that this person's autistic. you bring up the potential that they might be autistic is where the training goes and showing some of the lived experiences where things could have turned out better and where training

can address that. So certainly the slang, the jargon and the terminology that emanates on of the autism community is below Hag and fruit here. So if you hear these key words stimming, and many others, the best place you first want to hear them would be in the training room. There's still no guarantee that this person is autistic, but there are street signs that I first became aware of in the late 90s, so traffic signs in neighborhoods, bumper stickers, hats, license plates, half of the states, over half of the states in America, have an opportunity for anyone to purchase a specialty license plate features autism awareness and the word autism, I might add. So all of this is part of basic scene assessment for risk that are specific

to, again, low hang of fruit is when you see these images that gives you a green light to start talking about autism. There are also folks who choose not to disclose. So the word in the concept of disclosure is probably the law enforcement's biggest enemy here. I don't know somebody is autistic or has mental health conditions or otherwise. It's kind of hard to shift your gears when some of the behaviors and characteristics that you're experiencing in the moment do ape people who are getting ready to commit a crime or who just have committed a crime. So disclosure becomes the enemy, but it's also your best friend when you have. In your travels, have you come across police during your training that they're listening

to you, talk about autism, and then after your class is done, they come up to you and they have more to thank you about other than just the training because they have autistic children as well. So you not only help their fellow officers, but you help them. in their children as well. Absolutely. The numbers were much smaller in the 90s and the early part of the 21st century. And I go out of my way as a presenter trainer

to ask that those questions to elicit who's in the audience. I do that in minute one of the training. That's the first thing I did. Yeah, that's true. What are you finding as far as their response for the longest time, autism, had a stigma attached to it.

They didn't know much about it, so they didn't believe it because they didn't know it. Now they have someone like yourself with lived experience that's worked with other police precincts around the country. Now they understand that it is real. So what's the response that you've been getting from them? You mean family members who have an autistic child or anybody? Anyone that you've been training or otherwise

that just didn't realize what autism is? The common feedback, and this dates back to the mid-90s Detroit Police Academy, is, hey, buddy, I really appreciate the information you had, if I'd have only known, because I have met folks like that throughout my career. I just didn't know it at the time. Right. So that kind of feedback that it made sense, and it connected troubling contacts where they thrown for us.

loop here. And we can also add in that autistic people in spite of everything that we may be trying can be aggressive to family members or people that they don't know, strangers. And if strangers are in uniform, you know, there's the consideration of some use of force. So that is also addressed. Yeah, that's something that we hope never happens. But unfortunately, it is a very real thing that can happen. So have you had training situations where you've gone through your program, officers have listened, then they walk away, not fully understanding everything, because there's a lot to understand. Then at a later date, you may hear from them or hear from their precinct that what you trained them actually worked and the response from it was just they were really glad that they had

taken your class on autism? Yeah, I don't have the opportunity to go back and hear these stories when they happen. The folks that say, I've had these contacts that you're disgruntling, and after they get a half day or a longer session or even a shorter session, they're going to see and hear from a variety of different people under different circumstances that'll cue them in. So if that's happening, and we're hearing about it during the session. What you're suggesting, Tony, absolutely is happening out here. There are more and more folks who are in careers in law enforcement in public safety and criminal justice professions

who are carrying forth the training. They are now conducting the training, which is a good thing. Involving autistic people in these trainings live, as long as they're volunteering to do it, to hear their perspective live in person is extremely important. There are a variety of ways to get the examples of these images that they may see you here. And they need to do that under the obligation to make sure that it's safe to try these techniques of investing extra time, giving people more personal space, using varied forms of

communication and then repeat this over and over you can get somebody who may be in an aggressive state or in a meltdown get them the time to get through it if they're not harming themselves or anybody else it's time and there after the training sessions there are other policy decisions for policing and public safety and criminal justice system what topics are typically discussed after classes to improve the interactions between the autism community and the first responders. How can we connect up with this community that's having a higher rate of contact for autism and development of disabilities is still in about seven times higher contact rate than a typical person? How can we connect with these organizations and individuals so we can talk about these

issues in a good environment where there's an exchange of information. And there are really good examples around the country and in other countries where law enforcement may be the ones reaching out their hands. There may be advocates reaching out their hands to them. The more we spend, the more time that has spent talking about things that might have gone wrong, talking about expectations that are not realistic for the police, about the police, from parents, from police. I used to talk about that is through these opportunities to share information. And here's a group that is having a higher rate of contact. You know, it's not the locozinostra.

The LCN is not going to want to meet with the police. But in most cases, the advocates do for folks with disabilities. The training is a policy decision to help get some skill sets develop. Someone will win and how and why you might need to use them. But another community-oriented command-level decision would be to do outreach to these communities and not allow it to be a one-off. One-off is cool for the moment. You know, it's like having a good meal.

You know, it wears off. And if you're eating bad meals after that, all you can do is think about the good one. Absolutely. Now, how do people contact you so if they want to get some of your videos or your written material, they can order it or find it? How do they find you? Absolutely. I can be reached at 772-398-9756 through email at DDPI at flash.net. The website, you can find some of those materials. at and links to it is autism risk management all along logword.com. Or they can contact you, Tony. You know how to get a hold of me. You found me. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Now, is this something that you're going to continue to do? Is this an ongoing thing? What do you see over the next few years for your company and what you're trying to do with autism? Yeah. These days, now, I haven't been in

this and researching it now for 35 years and the Lent Experience closer to 40. I am training other people who are interested in and have a strong interest and skill set level to go out and conduct these training sessions in their communities. Maybe to give something back if they're a PhD or they're in ABA or social work or their educators or it could be officers who are retired or family members could be a brother, sister, and a cousin, or it can be, and it is, agencies and individuals to see the need for this and want to go back to someone who has been successfully doing this for 30 years. I do have lesson plans and material that can help someone get going in this area. Yeah, this isn't something you take a pill for and it's gone. It's a lifelong

thing. People have to figure out how to handle it and work through it so they can do what they want to with their life in society. This way they get to live a fulfilled life without hopefully ever having an issue with the legal system. Right. It will be ongoing. There are other populations, the more that we get together. And then there are other factors that get in the way how politics could get in the way of it, funding issues, but basically this is the front line of contacts that are going to take place, whether it's addressed in the training room or not. Help the law enforcement be prepared as they possibly can. Nothing to be perfect.

We can't complain about things that are imperfect because life is not perfect. Yeah, that's for sure. I wish it was. Now, what would you like to tell the listeners that you think is very important? that they need to hear about what you're trying to put across. And it's about everyone's safety first. It's about developing realistic expectations of what's going to happen and how you can become involved in being an agent of change.

That can be simply telling your story, your lived experiences. Talk about it, write about it, let people know. I know disclosure is an issue that others and many others, and you have to address it as it goes. It's not like, well, I will always disclose. No, you got to make decisions. I disclose to the guy and buying a hamburger from? No, maybe not.

But there might be a time, place where that might be useful. So having that skill set and having the information available in the 21st century here in 2025, there is great technology. or our information that's important about an individual and key it up to wherever they're at at the time, to alert law enforcement that here's somebody that needs a different approach, and in fact create that personal plan and have it placed voluntarily, mind you, in the emergency call center or 911. There are places for disclosure that we need to accept.

explore further. And I think in the future, technology is going to catch up to this quicker than I expected. There is no perfect answer. The more people thinking about it, better off wall we. Absolutely. Well, this has been great. Great information, great stories. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. No problem. We'd have you to, Tony. And thank you for doing this important work. You're doing what we're suggesting out here right now. Well, it's a work in progress for all of us. 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 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.