Autism & Law Enforcement Education Coalition

This past November, ALEC was visited by Aspect National Manager for Research, Vicki Gibbs. Vicki came to the United States on a grant from Australia to investigate the programs being done here in regards to law enforcement training and people diagnosed with autism.  For more than 10 years, organizations in the UK and USA have offered police officers, firefighters, paramedics, ambulance personnel, court room and hospital emergency room personnel training on how to handle situations involving people with autism.  Vicki applied for a grant and started researching the most reputable programs out there.

Upon her investigation of programs, Vicki found ALEC. She reached out to Program Director, Bill Cannata to schedule a visit.  On her three-day visit, Vicki met with Boston Police Commissioner, William B. Evans, to talk about what the city of Boston is doing to train police officers in collaboration with ALEC.  She also met with Matt Brown, Autism Safety Trainer for ALEC, ME Criminal Justice Academy Instructor and Federal Law Enforcement Officer to discuss his training in the education field.  Vicki was able to observe two ALEC trainings while she was here as well.  She has a wealth of knowledge she brought back to Australia from her visit, and hopefully soon can use the model ALEC has built to bring to her country.  ALEC Australia, here we come!

Other updates:

The formal evaluation of the program by The University of New Haven is in the initial stages. We have completed the preliminary round of testing and fine-tuned the evaluation tool.  Our hope is to have the data by spring to show that the ALEC training program is an effective and efficient training for better equipping first responders with the tools they need to interact with people with autism.  Stay tuned!