Seven
years ago today I awoke with a mission. I wish I could say it was a noble
mission of starting a career as a public speaker, but it wasn’t. My mission was
one of self-preservation because I, quite simply, didn’t want to make a
complete fool in front of 40 police officers at the Saint Louis County Police
Academy because I was about to give my first presentation for Easterseals
Midwest and I had never presented to police officers before and I had no idea
what I could say that they would get.
My
presentation that day was at 1PM and I awoke around 11:30 as back then I had no
direction and no real purpose to get up so it was odd to get up and have
somewhere to be. Was I nervous? Words can’t relay the feeling of dread I had as
I left the house and inched towards the academy. What was I going to say? I had
50 minutes and I had an odd hodge-podge PowerPoint formulated which was, well,
I don’t fully remember it because I only used it that first time and as I
presented it I was cringing on the inside because I knew I was going down in
the most glorious of flames.
It was
bad, or so I thought. There was no fluidity in my words and no real message. I
tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about and while I was sure I
failed when my time was up I was confused because the officers there applauded
and not in the polite way one does at the end of any given presentation but
this was a genuine round of applause as if what I had just done was something
out of the ordinary.
On my
drive home I had many thoughts of how to make it better because I knew my
material I had presented, whilst good, wasn’t what officers in the field needed
to know. I didn’t know that in my audience that day were many high ranking
officers including the then head of the Saint Louis C.I.T. program that would
have me present to this day, and that impressing them was a feat to be proud
of. This didn’t register because I had been so nervous and now I was so focused
on needing to make my presentation more relevant.
E-mails
were sent and I got a coworkers presentation and to this day I’m still using
the same presentation. Much has change despite the PowerPoint remaining mainly
the same (one major change; rate of autism has gone from 1 in 155 to 1 in 68)
as the stories I use have become more complex. Also, after doing a police
ride-along in March of 2010 I got a better understanding of what an officer
faces and I changed my usage of words. Maybe it’s this understanding which has
led to the continual great responses I’ve had and as the years have gone on my
passion has not waned one bit. If anything my dedication to the field of law
enforcement has increased as I’ve received the honor of presenting to three FBI
field offices and last month I received the thrill of my career when I got
invited to a conference that the FBI had.
While
it was like playing in the Super Bowl or World Series last month at that
conference every presentation to law enforcement at any level is important and
each presentation can have ramifications that you and I will never know what
the impact may be. If it were up to me I’d present to every officer possible
because it’s something that can’t be put off or ignored as the rates of autism
keep going up. It isn’t a matter of if an officer is going to have an encounter
on the job with a person with autism but when. Statistics show that the vast
majority will be because the person on the spectrum will be a victim, but if an
officer isn’t aware of the traits, or the potential taking of things literally,
the way the encounter goes may not be the best, or in certain situations the
end result may be a story that ends up on the news in a tragic manner. I’m not
saying my presentation or any other person’s presentation about autism may
prevent a perfect storm from forming it is something that needs to happen.
The
overall reception I’ve had from officers has been nonstop since the first one
and I don’t take any police presentation for granted. I was oblivious seven
years ago on what I was getting myself into and had no idea how much rides on
being on my game each and every time. Actually, I never thought that officers
needed training in the first place, but seven years later I now know the
need for trainings throughout America and the world is growing faster and
faster and I will forever be thankful for how aggressive the Saint Louis area
has been at getting their officers trained. I can only hope that seven years
from now we have made more progress than we can imagine because, well, we
already have in the past seven.
Hi there. I am so pleased you are doing this. My son is turning 21 and would live to chat with you sometime. He's been raised to be a "good citizen" but my biggest worry is the police misunderstanding how autism impacts him. He's read at a college level since age 8, and has volunteered since about that age as well, member of Demolay (civic organization associated with the Masons and Shriners), and he is like so many others. There is a 70% unemployment rate for this population even if they are skilled and capable. That unemployment rate isn't for a lack of them trying to get work. So lots of misconceptions in the community in the community in general. My background is social work and I worked with families of those with disabilities for some time before retiring. Let me know if our family can be of any help.
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