If you’ve been following our tweets over the last couple of weeks, you’ll have seen that we’ve hinted on a few occasions that life as a police officer or staff member with an autism spectrum condition isn’t always easy.

I wanted to show what “not easy” means by describing the experiences of one of our police staff members, who wishes to remain anonymous. I’ll refer to her as Rachel.

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Rachel works as a data analyst in an open-plan office with other civilian staff. She has dyslexia and also believes that she is on the autistic spectrum, although this hasn’t yet been diagnosed.

Rachel’s problems started when she sometimes misunderstood things said to her by work colleagues, for instance responding to “You alright?” literally rather than taking it to mean “hello”. This led to negative comments being made to her manager, who then challenged Rachel for her “rudeness”. Rachel was also sensitive to sounds – a typical ASC trait – and had taken to wearing headphones when she was working to block out the background noise from the office. This led to more complaints from colleagues, as they felt uncomfortable not being able attract Rachel’s attention when they needed to speak to her.

After a further meeting with managers, Rachel was referred to Occupational Health, who suggested that she explain her difficulties to her work colleagues to avoid further ‘misunderstandings’. Following this, Rachel’s line managers decided that her colleagues should be informed of her needs at a staff meeting. Rachel was given the choice of standing up and telling her colleagues herself, or her line manager doing it for her. Rachel found this embarrassing and humiliating – she had thought that she would just need to talk to the people who had raised issues about her, not the whole office. Rachel asked to use Powerpoint software to help her through her “presentation”, but her line manager would not agree to this.

On the day of the meeting, Rachel did her best to explain herself to the 30 or so staff present. Another line manager from a different department spoke up for her and told Rachel’s colleagues that she was describing the symptoms of autism, and that it was not easy for her. After this, Rachel found that her work colleagues were noticeably more understanding towards her, with several coming up to her afterwards to sympathise.

Things continued to improve for Rachel when she moved to work under the line manager who had spoken up for her at the staff meeting. She was offered coloured screens and notebooks to help with her dyslexia, and her Force even offered to fund noise-cancelling headphones, although these turned out not to be suitable (other people complained about being able to hear Rachel’s music) and could not be replaced with an alternative model due to the Force being tied to an approved supplier.

Rachel eventually took a dyslexia test, however this turned out to be inconclusive, which surprised her as she had been diagnosed as dyslexic at school. Word of the test results spread around the office, and Rachel found herself the victim of gossip that she was a “drama queen” and exaggerating her symptoms.

Rachel has since moved to a different line manager, although her previous manager still helps her with problems at work. She has secured permission to take flexi-time to meet with her partner, who works in the same department and also has Asperger syndrome, for 10-15 minutes each day in the lunch room to give each other some support. They used to have a chat at Rachel’s desk, however colleagues complained that this was “too noticeable”, so the arrangement had to be formalised. Given that other staff often strike up conversations in the office, Rachel and her partner feel that it’s unfair that they have to use their flexi-time to talk to each other.

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When I first heard this story, I felt pretty shocked that something like this could happen in 2015, let alone in a police force which prides itself on its respect and understanding of diversity issues. How could a manager show such ignorance towards disabilities and humiliate a member of staff in an effort to make them “fit in”? Unfortunately, too often “diversity” in the police service seems to be limited to BME (black and minority ethnic) issues affecting the public. In terms of our understanding of disability issues – particularly those affecting staff – we still have a long way to go.

In the meantime, one of the aims of the NPAA is for every Force to have autism lead Federation and Unison reps to assist with autism-related employment issues. After reading this blog, hopefully you will see why we need this in place.

Following our last blog on categorising hate crime, we’ve been in touch with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. They advise that eight police forces are now recognising attacks due to the victim’s subculture as hate crime. These are (in no particular order):

• Lancashire Police
• West Mercia Police
• Greater Manchester Police
• Warwickshire Police
• Durham Constabulary
• Suffolk Police
• Surrey Police
• Hampshire Constabulary

This is great news  – hopefully ‘alt hate crime’ will be recognised by all Forces soon.

Why do police like to categorise and label things? One reason is that it’s a way – sometimes the only way – of managing risk, a big part of policing.

One example is the domestic abuse checklist, which anyone who has received a follow-up visit from a police officer following a “domestic” will be familiar with. This involves giving yes/no answers to 20+ questions around the past behaviour of the abusing party – whether they were violent, exhibited jealous or controlling behaviour, made threats, and so on. The number of “yes” answers determines the risk level of the incident and the way that police respond to it – whether the victim is offered a panic alarm for instance, or referred to a legal advisor specialising in non-molestation orders. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s a systematic and reliable way of quantifying the risk to the victim and offering the right support to the right people.

The problem with categories and labels is when they start to dictate the service given by the police – a case of the tail wagging the dog. This has tended to happen with hate crime. Back around 2004, the police service recognised six categories or “strands” of diversity – these being race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and belief, disability and age. Of these, race tended to be taken the most seriously (diversity training used to be called “race and diversity”, as if race belonged in a category all to itself). A few years later, diversity strands were renamed as “protected characteristics” and expanded to nine – the additions were pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment, and marriage and civil partnership. These are enshrined in the Equality Act 2010.

Of course, with the six categories becoming nine, the only thing that has changed is the police’s understanding and response to hate crime. Hate crime itself is the same as it always was – and herein lies the problem with trying to categorise it. Hate crime is about being marginalised, attacked or abused due to being different. The most obvious way of being different is the colour of your skin – perhaps the reason why the police have tended to focus on racially-motivated crime, which is still more common than other forms of hate crime. However, looking different – and being made to suffer for it – isn’t only about race.

In 2007, Sophie Lancaster, a young woman in her early 20’s, was with her boyfriend when they were attacked by a group of males in their mid-teens. Sophie suffered severe head injuries in the attack, went into a coma and later died. It was later revealed that the attack was motivated by Sophie’s appearance – she was part of the goth subculture.

This was a classic example of hate crime – Sophie was attacked because of the way she looked, and being part of a minority subculture. The problem was that at the time, no police forces were set up to recognise this form of hate crime. Because it didn’t fit into any of the nine protected characteristics, as far as the police were concerned it wasn’t a hate-related incident.

In our tweets this week, we have mentioned Sophie’s death as an example of the importance of neurodiversity in the police service – recognising difference in all its forms, including difference of thought, rather than trying to assign labels to it. This means recognising the strengths of staff affected by autism rather than putting them into the “disabled” category, and recognising incidents like the murder of Sophie Lancaster as being motived by hatred despite them not fitting into a protected characteristic tickbox.

To end this post on a positive note, Greater Manchester Police, the Force investigating Sophie’s murder, was the first to recognise subculture (or lifestyle choice) as a category of hate crime – an acceptance that clothes, makeup hair or pretty much anything can cause someone to be a victim of crime. We hope that other Forces will follow GMP’s lead.