Autism Police Safety: Not Just for Kids

The police in York, Maine have started a new program for better police interaction with autistic children. The program looks on the surface really good--the understanding of sensory and communication issues, the customized approach acknowledging every autistic person is different, and specialized training for police officers are all good things. I didn't grow up in York, but I lived near there, and know it well enough for a vivid pictures to surface: both memories of Maine and memories of tense situations with police officers.

I appear fairly ordinary here online, but in person I do not "pass for normal." Not in movement, not in speech, not in social convention or verbal communication. As a young adult I also lived an almost entirely nocturnal lifestyle in an attempt to avoid the overload and confusion of a loud and fast-paced daytime world. I am also the sort of autie with too little anxiety rather than too much, so situations which are legitimately dangerous simply don't register to me as scary. As such, I was often wandering the coastal towns of Maine in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes sitting at the docks for hours with a sketch book, or exploring ways to climb onto rooftops and into church gardens. Which would inevitably lead to police officers accosting me and demanding to know what sort of drugs I was doing, what vandalism I was up to, and where I'd stashed my liquor. Of course I'd done nothing like any of that, and would get confused and argumentative (if I could produce a response at all) which is really not how one should be interacting with the police late at night in the dark. Looking back it's kind of a wonder I made it through some of those encounters with all my limbs intact--I think being a child-sized, attractive female was probably what saved me.

So a program like that implemented in York would have been a really good thing for me back when I lived in Maine--

--or, um, maybe not.

Most of my midnight gallivanting was done after I was no longer a child, and no longer lived with my parents. As much good as the York program sounds, I'm completely baffled by its mention only of children. Especially because a small child or even a teen acting strangely in front of a police officer is not going to result in the same kind of extreme bad as, say, a 250 pound 6'2" middle-aged man acting just as strangely.

Is this just an oversight in reporting, and adults really are included in the program, just not mentioned to the press? Or have adults been left out yet again?