April is Autism Awareness Month
Courtesy of the Bladen County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page
ELIZABETHTOWN — The Bladen County Sheriff’s Department is honoring Autism Awareness Month by adding an autism awareness vehicle to their fleet of patrol cars.
This vehicle will be available during the month of April for pictures or events. Please contact 1st Sgt. Monroe at 910-862-6960 to schedule.
The way society understands autism has been changing in recent years. Autism is a developmental disability that can cause social, communication, medical, and behavioral challenges. What many people didn’t understand for many years is that autism is a spectrum disorder. This means that the disability varies from person to person, with each autistic person having a unique combination of symptoms and a unique level of severity of each symptom.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 36 children in the United States of America has autism. This is a prevalence increase of 317 percent since 2000.
In recent years, there have been interactions between autistic youth and police officers that have made headlines.
According to a 2015 lawsuit, Troy Canales, a Black autistic teenager, was sitting outside his home when he was beaten and injured by New York Police Department.
Another lawsuit alleges that in 2017, Lindsey Beshai Torres’ 10-year-old autistic son was having a meltdown when she called for an ambulance. The ambulance never arrived. The lawsuit claims that instead, two Worcester, Massachusetts officers arrived and knelt on the boy’s body as they placed him in handcuffs.
In 2018, it was discovered that a school resource officer in Statesville, North Carolina had handcuffed, restrained, and mocked a 7-year-old autistic boy who was experiencing difficulty following a switch of medication.
And in 2019, Kobe Heisler, an autistic 21-year-old, was shot and killed by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
The newest addition to the Bladen County Sheriff’s fleet of vehicles will hopefully serve as a reminder to Bladen County’s autistic residents, non-autistic residents, and to the officers who may respond to a call involving an autistic person, that the purpose of police officers is to protect and serve.
The Autism Awareness vehicle is definitely a step in the right direction.