If you know a person with autism who wanders, you should be involved with the work of Project Lifesaver. Individuals registered with Project Lifesaver wear a transmitter. If a person wearing the transmitter goes missing, the caregiver can contact the police who will then send out a trained team to find the individual. According to the Project Lifesaver website, recovery time averages only about 30 minutes.
This type of program is critically important, especially as media stories over the past few years have increasingly carried stories of children and adults with autism wandering away from their homes and even dying of exposure. A very recent story about the LAPD shooting an unarmed man with autism underlines the potential conflicts between individuals with autism and the police force. According to the LAist:
Over the weekend, the LAPD shot and killed an unarmed man in Koreatown who was behaving suspiciously and appeared to be removing something from his waistband. The victim was 27-year-old Steven Washington, and according to his family, was autistic. The gang enforcement officers, Allan Corrales and George Diego, believed Washington was reaching for a weapon, and fired once, striking him in the head, according to an AP report.
Corrales and Diego's actions have prompted the ACLU to investigate the shooting, and calls into question the LAPD's procedures when it comes to dealing with members of the autistic community.
There is a Facebook community set up to spread the word about a petition to get Project Lifesaver into every town. Take a look; if you're interested, join in the effort.
The LAist failed to mention the time this happened, just after midnight. Regardless of Project Lifesaver and the media about the police, was a call sent in to the police that this man was missing? There’s more questions to ask about this than questioning the behavior of the gang task force. It’s very sad this man died in thi smanner, ut one wonders where his care givers were.
I am endowed with Asperger’s and raised children with Asperger’s.
Having a transmitter probably could not have guaranteed that autistic wouldn’t have been shot.
What parents of children with autism need more than transmitters is to educate the public that sometimes autistic children must be restrained for their own protection, and quit treating parents like they are abusers.
Autism parents are trapped in a Catch-22; if they restrain their kids they are abusers, but if their kid gets out and wanders they are labeled a bad parent. Neurotypicals can’t seem to comprehend this dilemma. How to restrain someone sophisticated. How to restrain someone willing to take irrational risks like jumping off of a roof onto a car.
(I cut my first master key when I was 15.)
Lisa – I think Project Lifesaver, where available, is an excellent tool for parents and caregivers. If it’s not available, GPS enabled cell phones can be helpful. Thanks for writing about this.
Your comments re the LA incident seem a bit unrelated to me. Law enforcement and first responder interactions, some of which involve elopement, are a big area of concern and ongoing work but the circumstances of this tragedy aren’t yet known (and may not have anything to do with elopement).
That aside, autism safety is not yet the important issue it ought to be to everyone in our community. It’s not just the really horrid interactions like the one in LA that need to be addressed. There are a ton of risks that need mitigation. To put tools in the hands of parents and professionals, Autism Speaks created the Autism Safety Project http://www.autismsafetyproject.org
ASA also has a section on their website highlighting their “Safe and Sound” Campaign
http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_safeandsound
Everyone involved with autism (in any capacity) should look at these sites and put plans in place to lower risk.
Thanks for your post! If anyone would like additional information on Project Lifesaver, please visit http://www.projectlifesaver.org. We are also on facebook and Twitter. There is also a petition being circulated at the moment to get Project Lifesaver in all communities, because it really does saves lives. The link to the petition can be found here – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/485/petition-to-get-project-lifesaver-in-all-communities. Thanks again!
Lisa –
The effectiveness of these types of devices depends on the range, accuracy, and speed of the underlying technology. EmFinders EmSeeQ (www.emfinders.com) is a wrist-worn device based on a different type of technology—the cellular network. It is the only solution directly integrated with our nation’s 9-1-1 system.
Over 50 official 9-1-1 PSAP demonstrations of EmFinders EmSeeQ have been conducted across the country to-date. In each of these tests, once the EmSeeQ device received the activation signal from the EmFinders operations center it took eight seconds or less for 9-1-1 operators to receive the location of the wandering individual.
Unlike Project Lifesaver, police are not required to physically span a geographic area in search of a wanderer; the location is displayed as a dot the 9-1-1 Operator’s on-screen map. Moreover, EmFinders EmSeeQ works nationwide, so that missing persons can be quickly located regardless of how far they have wandered from their last know location. EmFinders EmSeeQ is available in a two-handed clasp version, which cannot be removed without the aid of a caregiver. For more information, please visit http://www.emfinders.com.
This sounds like a great project. This case is horribly tragic, yet it rings a bell, as though we discussed one similar in the fall? I believe we mentioned everything from putting a chip to carrying a device. Perhaps your blog, Lisa, inspired an entrepreneur.
There is no easy answer for this, in my city, Baltimore, as in many crime ridden areas , police have no choice but to “react” or lose their lives ,every day. It’s not a nice little subdivision where Dad introduces his children to the neighbors and the local police are aware of them. Although that is not impossible, as most cities, such as ours, are divided up into compass districts..n/e/s/w/ne/nw and so on..giving one the opportunity to perhaps arrange for community meetings and stress concerns.My neighbor’s son, at 16, and 6ft. tall ,and overweight….would bolt with meltdowns, and run screaming up the street. We ,all of the neighbors , would hold our breath that someone wouldn’t kill him. It could easily have happened.Thank God he has stopped, yet is mine next?. Don’t ask where the caregivers are, God willing, our kids aren’t in cages, and there may be a time that any one of them does this. Education , well that sounds nice too, but these cops are facing fourteen year olds daily from gangs, fourteen year olds that want to kill, they really have to “make a call”. No one wants a rogue cop, hair trigger, on a force, yet in a combat situation, (and that is the rule in these cities) even the best will react, and this will happen again and again. There is friendly fire among them too, these big forces don’t “know” each other. I lost a dear friend, a forty year Baltimore cop, last year, about to retire, from “death by cop”. Again, this is a danger, a huge danger, I’m sick just thinking about it, because there is NO prevention.
This man was a good man, a family friend we knew since we were kids. I’m posting this as information, not about him, so much as about the “new cops” , and the standards that aren’t comparable with a different “era”. These cities are combat zones who wants the job?
http://budtheblogger.blogspot.com/2008/04/death-of-officer-norman-stamp-seems.html