How do we safe when dealing with police?

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I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the police shooting of a person with Asperger's syndrome who had posted some YouTube videos about being helped by a service dog during meltdowns.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/06/police-kill-transgender-man-who-gained-viral-fame-last-year-with-dog/?tid=sm_fb

Yes, I know that this was most likely a suicide by cop, but I am wondering about the bigger issue of how the police probably don't know much about dealing with autistic people or people with a mental illness like schizophrenia, people who may be in a compromised mental and emotional state and feel threatened, not understand instructions, and may give inappropriate body language or movements such as lunging or running away.

I've had three pretty scary encounters with police, and I am not a violent person at all. My impression afterwards is that the policeman's first impression was "neutralize the threat." Fortunately, I was lucid enough to know that one should stay very still around the police.

I have meltdowns and shutdowns, and I suppose they must look pretty strange to a cop who knows nothing about it. My wife didn't understand them either (this was before my diagnosis), and had trouble explaining it to the police. On all three occasions, the police started acting like they though my wife was abusing me rather than thinking I was the threat (because I was crying hysterically and nonverbal in one instance, and nearly unresponsive in two other instances). In one of the shutdown cases, the cop started to draw a gun on my wife until she could explain that I was having a hypoglycemic episode plus was very overheated in the sun. In all three cases, my wife had to do some pretty careful explaining to keep us out of trouble.

Here is my big, big fear: what would happen if i have a meltdown or shutdown and my wife is not there to explain things? I am usually unable to talk in a meltdown, and unable to stop crying and screaming. In a shutdown, I withdraw into myself and am barely able to understand what people are saying to me. My higher cognitive functions are pretty much shut down.

What can we do to stay safe? My therapist suggested a Medic Alert bracelet. I have a couple of texts on my mobile phone explaining my situation (hopefully I'll remember that they are there). Any other suggestions?

I don't do violent things like hitting people or throwing things or act threatening towards others, so I feel ok about dealing with police, who I never had any reason to deal with ever.

I don't think we can always assume this will be the case. I've seen the police get very paranoid even when violent behavior was not happening. Just acting weird is enough.

Case 1: I had just had a really terrible job interview, in which the interviewer humiliated me. I was to meet my wife at a fast food restaurant. She said something like, "so, how did it go?" and I burst into tears and proceeded to go into a complete meltdown. There was a cop eating lunch, and he started to get up and come over. My wife had to explain what was going on, but managed to defuse it.

Case 2: My wife and I were downtown on a very hot day. We hadn't had lunch, so I started having a combination hypoglycemic/heat prostration episode (my meds make me susceptible to heat). I was stumbling around, my wife was supporting me trying to get me to the closest restaurant. A cop came up and started to draw his gun on us. I was so out of it I barely understood what he was saying. I guess my wife talked our way out of that too.

Case 3: I had been talking about feeling suicidal to my therapy, and then didn't show for my next therapy session. She sent the cops to check on me. I was in shutdown mode and not very responsive. My wife says they took her aside and started asking her a lot of pointed questions about her abusing me. I tried to answer their questions, but in shutdown, I don't understand what people are saying much.

Background: I once worked as a civilian clerk in a police station once (I was not a cop). I found most of them had a very suspicious, hostile attitude toward civilians, including me. They were extremely conservative, many ex-military, and tended to see all people as potential threats. One guy said all crimes should be punished with the death penalty. One time, they found a dead lady in a guy's house and made jokes about it. Another time, a cop was waving his sidearm around describing something that happened on the job, and accidentally shot his gun. Fortunately, the only thing damaged was the breakroom vending machine. These guys are not rocket scientists, and they aren't hired for their sensitivity or people skills.

All my experiences with cops have been pretty much negative, including when I was reporting a crime and needed help.

Bingo. I have a lot of experience with police and trust me, the safest way for people like us to deal with police is to avoid them like the absolute plague. Don't engage, don't cooperate, if you see them anywhere move away immediately, don't let them see / find you, and I for one would never call a cop were I in any kind of trouble.
Your typical cop's reaction to your behaviour would likely be to section you - forcibly cart you off to a psychiatric ward of a hospital, which may actually be your best bet, as staff there are more able to help you than the police ever will be, and at least the environment and the majority of the people will be less threatening than they will.
Somewhat like an autistic, police typically don't see any grey areas or middle ground, in my experience. They tend to be extremely group minded and those that may once have responded in a sensitive manner will have it blended out of them within a few months.
A med alert bracelet may be helpful, but honestly, with a lot of police it won't matter. They will just dump you at a psych ward after searching you for drugs.

Folks won't like my answer, but I believe the best way to deal with police is to obey everything they tell you to do. If you can't, drop to the ground with your arms displayed so they can see where your hands are.

They are a threat to life and limb. I can't blame black people for thinking it's racially motivated because they do get worse treatment, but cops are a danger to everyone, regardless of race or gender. A police force is a paramilitary organization where following orders is considered the ideal, so mouthing off to them constitutes a threat in their eyes and they will escalate the situation.

Once you are in custody, if that happens, do not believe anything they tell you but speak only to a lawyer. It has been ruled in courts that cops can lie to you in an interrogation and it does not invalidate your confession or other things you say or do. (Example: "your friend already confessed, so we know you did it too" - when the friend never confessed.) Or even, "if you sign this confession, you can go home." NOT LIKELY!

I have the same issues with meltdowns and shutdowns, and my times during such am unable to speak. Or I lock up and become unable to respond when under stress. I wear a bracelet that says I am autistic and refers the reader to my wallet card. That also says I have asthma and that I am alergic to bee stings and asprin. Only time I remove the bracelet is when I shower, go in my hot tub or go swimming. Dodger

I have AS, and my worst experiences were with police dispatchers, and not the police themselves. It's hard to communicate with those people when they constantly interrupt you to tell you to repeat what you've already said, and then they tell you that you don't even know how to spell your own name.

I cooperate with the police. They know me, and I know them. We have dialogues, discussing matters related to their service to the community, and how the community could better support them.

I've had only good experiences with police - but then I tend to be quiet and timid, and if I get upset I just shake and huddle in a ball and cry silently, so I guess I don't look very threatening.

I used to live in a house with drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes (aka my in-laws), and the cops were over at least once a week. I guess I saw them as the people who stepped in to help when my family got violent.

So I've never personally witnessed a police officer abusing his power, but I've definitely read stories of corruption and brutality, and I agree it's worrisome for someone who has more aggressive-looking meltdowns.

Unfortunately, i have to agree with all of this advice. I also try to be as polite as possible, and speak in a quiet, even tone. The thing that scares me is the possibility of being too compromised to be able to speak for myself, in a meltdown or shutdown. In the instances where I encountered police during a meltdown or shutdown, they actually seemed more threatened by my wife than me, maybe because she is an old hippy and tends to have a somewhat belligerent attitude toward the police. I've tried to tell her that giving them attitude is VERY unhelpful, but she forgets. She reminded me yesterday that one cop actually pulled his gun on my wife until she explained that I was passing out from heat and low blood sugar, and that she wasn't abducting me or something.

I don't think cops are actually wanting to be mean or oppressive or whatever, but I think they are immersed in a culture that sees civilians as a threat and tend to act from that assumption.


Dodger, where do you get one of those? Or do you get a blank one and have them engraved?

Personally, I'm not too scared of cops killing me or causing me permanent physical damage, but I am worried I might get arrested, possibly in a way that involves minor injuries or emotional trauma. I'm also worried about getting a DUI because I'm a bad driver, I'm probably too clumsy to pass a roadside sobriety test, and I take prescription amphetamines. Studies show people with ADHD drive better with medication than without, but I doubt the cops and judges have read those studies!

Back to safety... I think "cultural programming" (patterns you unconsciously pick up from trends in the way other people act, things your parents tell you, how fiction creators craft their work, what news media chooses to emphasize, etc etc) can cause us all to associate certain traits with a person because of their appearance. This is problematic because some of those appearance elements are totally out of a person's control, and some of them are things that you might have other reasons for adopting. All else being equal, I think these qualities are likely to make you seem more intimidating or more threatening than if you did not have them (not all of them have equal impact):
Being tall
Being male
Being hispanic or black, or having an appearance that lets you get mistaken for either of those
Being muscular
Standing up straight
Eye contact? Might be regional
Frowny facial expressions
Certain clothes--dressing like a rapper stereotype makes you look scarier than if you're wearing a business suit, for example.
Sometimes tattoos, it might depend on their location or what they depict.

The more of those qualities you have, the more careful you probably have to be with the aspects you can control.

^^^^^ This. I don't know why, but I fear the cops. It's the kind of fear that makes you very quiet, very quick. I have had very few bad contacts with the police. Usually reverse racism (Why is a white middle aged man in THIS neighborhood?" Uhhhhh, 'cause this is where I can afford?) has caused the worst. But I figure that they have the power. I would rather live to fight in court than be a lesson for someone else.

I go through scenarios like this all the time in my head. Some of it isn't realistic, but unfortunately power-tripping cops do things to innocent citizens and get away with it. It's completely unbalanced.

I think the main thing that will save me is that I learned from abuse as a child, is to flip into a mode that is docile, unthreatening and appeasing to power-hungry monsters - while keeping a separate consciousness that is alive and aware and mostly thinking. The things you learn...

It's likely that they would be made suspicious from no eye contact or mumbling to myself, but I know my rights and hope I get it right if anything unexpected happens.

I don't see it as a great outcome to be sectioned; that would be a PITA to get out of and impacts your life record. I like to imagine that I could be disassociated enough to stay calm, but not seem mental to them. Also it takes a lot of mess to get out of that state, but that's after the threat is past.

You know I really don't see this as an autistic problem, I mean you deal with cops autistic the same way you deal with one normally. I mean regardless you have to follow these steps autistic or not because they don't care.



Humour aside you just have to kinda fake it and wing it.

I have a medic alert tag on a nylon wrist strap which is easy for me to unclasp and hand to anyone who may need it (I got it here: http://medicalidstore.com/). It has the red medic alert symbol and the words "Autism: Over Please" on the front. On the reverse side it has my name, "non-verbal under stress", the fact that I'm on Zoloft (mostly for medical emergencies in which knowledge of what drugs you're on is relevant), and "ICE" (first-responder shorthand for "In Case of Emergency") with my mom's phone number. This is my first and most immediate line of defence against police misunderstandings. If I'm a little more coherent and have access to my wallet, I also have an autism alert card tucked behind my driver's license. It's twice the length of a normal ID or credit card, folded in half, which allows for four sides of information rather than just two. The front states that I have autism, and gives a brief bulleted description of what that means: difficulty with eye contact, sensory problems, stimming, the fact that I may be confused or non-verbal. The bottom asks the person reading the card to flip it over, where they'll find a brief list of ways to help me, such as speaking clearly, not touching me, being patient and giving me time to respond, etc. The bottom of that side directs the reader to unfold the card, where they'll find my emergency contacts on one side, and a paragraph explaining the basics of what autism is on the other. I'm thinking about updating my medic alert tag to inform anyone who sees it to check my wallet for my card.

If I'm stressed and non-verbal or minimally verbal, but not freaking out or behaving in a threatening manner, I have two different apps on my phone, one which is like a basic texting app, which opens with a message about my autism and the fact that I'm using the app because I can't talk, and another which is a standard text-to-speech app which I think is meant for reading text out loud to those who can't or don't want to read, but I use it in place of my voice when I can't talk, or just don't feel up to it.

I can't make up my mind about whether this is a sensible idea or not, but I've also given consideration to getting a bumper sticker for the back of my car which says something along the lines of, "The driver of this vehicle has autism" to give the police a heads up before they even reach me, if they ever pull me over, but I'm afraid that might give me some problems from the other non-law enforcement drivers on the road.

Last edited by StarTrekker on 08 Feb 2016, 12:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

I am not afraid of them. I dislike them. Big difference. I dislike them for their collective culture, for their attitudes toward other people whether crims or not, for their position in general society. I will refuse to talk to police out of disgust, not fear of any kind. They are not worth talking to.

Four years ago I woke to find a dead body of a neighbour in my garden. Shaken, I called the police who arrived very quickly. I told the police about the events of the night before: that I had heard this man come home, that I had heard a woman's voice talking to him (he was a bachelor) and a woman laughing in the way that loud drunks laugh, then there was an enormous crashing sound like heavy furniture falling over. I could tell that they did not believe me, and it was an unsettling experience. I rang my lawyer just in case I needed his intervention. It transpired that all the details I gave were independently confirmed, and the woman who was laughing was identified, and she had thought it was a great joke to drop my neighbour off on very late on a dark night in the rain knowing he didn't have his house keys or a phone, so that he could spend the night locked out. Oh how funny - not. He tried to access an open window by climbing on his roof, slipped at around 3am, fell to the ground (the crash I heard) and died then or shortly after. He was very dead when I found him at 7am. Yet I felt at one point the police were sizing me up as a suspect though I had no motive whatsoever (the neighbour and I had occasional cordial neighbourly chats). Unfortunately I have known of people who were fitted up for crimes the police knew that did not commit - some subsequently cleared, some not. There have been serious miscarriages of justice and that day I realised how easy it could be to become one of them. I don't think anyone can count on being 100% safe when dealing with the police and never deal with them alone, if you can avoid it. Some are great, but the number of bad apples are greater I think than people realise, and power and ambition are corrupting influences in such institutions as police forces.