Legislation Mandating Autism Training for Law Enforcement is Falling Short

As of today, 40 states have passed legislation mandating law enforcement training related to mental health and developmental disabilities, including autism. Several of these states have passed laws with explicit or highly specific autism-focused mandates. While these laws are a welcome and optimistic trend, they often fall short in several critical areas:

1. They rarely outline WHAT specifically should be taught. Statistics, graphs, charts, and clinical terminology might dazzle a room of doctors and advocates. They mean close to nothing to the street cop.

2. They often skew heavily toward "crisis intervention" and "de-escalation" rather than recognition, understanding, and crisis prevention. Crisis Intervention training is crucial, and I'm a fan, but most interactions between autistic individuals and law enforcement ARE NOT CRISES. They are routine interactions (car stops, investigations, interviews). The "crises" are often CAUSED by misunderstanding and lack of insight by well-meaning, noble officers trying to perform a difficult task, often with minimal information.

3. They often place autism in the same category as mental illness, emotional disturbance, and addiction. In some versions of this mandated training, the topic of autism receives 20 minutes out of an 8-hour course, shoe-horned between suicide intervention, Meth addiction, Schizophrenia, and other psychoses. This is not only woefully inadequate; it's offensive and dangerous for both the autistic individual and the officer.

4. They rarely outline WHO should be delivering the training. Cops are not impressed by academic credentials. Doctors, therapists, and advocates may know autism, but if they can't generate trust and buy-in from the officers they are trying to teach, they are wasting everyone's time. If cops feel demeaned, attacked, or vilified by those expert instructors, more harm than good is being done.

Legislation is great. Mandates are welcome. But both of these communities that I love deeply deserve better.