The following piece was sent to us by a British Transport Police officer. Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

I met Lucy whilst escorting football fans through the London transport network. Lucy, amidst the noise and confusion of an Underground station, was curled up in a corner at the bottom of escalators in a crisis of sensory overload.

Lucy though that no one cared about her, not even her parents who thought she was a disappointment, that someone with an IQ in the top 2% of the population worked on a farm with animals.

Lucy explained to me that she went to university and studied creative writing and literature, but didn’t manage to complete her final year and felt that she was a failure.

After I reassured her and calmed her down with the assistance of station staff, Lucy waited in the staff canteen, with her headphones on until the crowds of football fans and rush hour traffic had passed before completing her journey.

Lucy – as I said to you at the time, you’ve achieved so much and the fact that you got to university is an achievement that you should be proud of.

You don’t have to keep saying sorry and you certainly don’t need to thank me. I’m glad to have meet you today – my little boy might be you in 16 years’ time, and I’d hope someone would look out for him if he was in your situation.

In July this year, a police officer in Buckeye, Arizona came into contact with a young boy with autism, and completely mistook the behaviour he saw. The end result was a young man with some unpleasant injuries, an investigation, and the predictable social media outcry. This has been followed up by an article by none other than Steve Silberman, the author who has almost single-handedly reframed the way in which we think about autism. His article, published in the New York Times, called for police to receive training in autism, on what to look for and how to react to it.

The article itself was posted on Twitter. Following that, a prominent mental health commentator who happens to be a police officer here in the UK replied, suggesting that there are literally dozens of mental health and learning disability conditions that can present in similar ways to autism, and that to train frontline police officers to recognise all of them is such a huge task as to be unrealistic.

It’s relatively easy to see his point. After all, police officers are not paramedics. Nor are we lawyers, mental health professionals, psychiatrists, doctors or pharmacists. We can’t possibly be trained in everything, and even if we were to try, we’d probably spend all of our time in a classroom instead of doing actual police work. It’s unfair to criticise the police for not knowing about something when there’s too much to know. So if indeed this is the case, why bother at all?

The answer is because it matters. People on the autism spectrum account for at least 1% of the population here in the UK, which is a greater number* than it might sound. That means that pretty much every police officer in the country will almost certainly have come into contact with someone with autism at some point in their career, and will do so again. And despite the comparison given, autism is not a mental health problem. Nor is it a learning disability. It’s a neurological difference, a point many of us on the autism spectrum wearily mention almost on cue, having had to do so many times before.

It matters because the way in which we, as police officers deal with autistic people can have a profound impact on the rest of their lives. It matters because a simple appreciation of how the majority of autistic individuals behave is all it takes to avoid outcomes similar to that which occurred in Buckeye.

We don’t need to be experts on autism – a simple working knowledge of how we might moderate our behaviour is all we as police officers need. And yes, once you’ve met one person with autism you’ve met one person, but we’re more similar than we are disparate.

It’s for these reasons that the NPAA is delighted that many police forces in the UK are designing and delivering training for frontline officers in how to recognise the patterns of behaviour and idiosyncrasies that come with autism. We will continue to support those within the law enforcement community whose lives are touched by autism.

Why bother? Because it matters.

Adam O’Loughlin
NPAA Communications Officer

*Based on the current population and recent data from the US indicating a 1 in 68 incidence of autism, there could be nearly a million people in the UK on the autism spectrum.

For the vast majority of football fans, the name Jean-Marc Bosman is very familiar. I doubt
though, that many police officers and staff know who Terri Brookes is. However in the
same way that Bosman changed football transfers forever, Brookes’ judicial challenge of
Government recruitment processes and the landmark Employment Tribunal judgement in her favour may have an important effect on the way police officers are recruited and
promoted.

Her case is one of the first times a claim for indirect disability discrimination has succeeded
at Employment Tribunal level.

Terri Brookes has autism, and was required to take a multiple choice situation judgement
test as part of the first stage of her application to the Government Legal Service (GLS).
Many of us who have been through promotion or joined the police recently will be familiar
with this style of testing, as it serves a purpose and the multiple-choice format makes the
assessment process more efficient. However she asked to be allowed to submit short
written answers to the questions, as the black and white nature of the multiple-choice test
placed her at a disadvantage. This was refused, and she failed.

Crucially in this case however, she had asked for the adjustment prior to sitting the test, and then at the Tribunal raised the issue of multiple choice tests in her exams at University,
during which she had been allowed to prepare written answers instead. By doing so, she
was able to provide evidence to prove that the adjustment she was requesting was
reasonable in the circumstances. The Employment Tribunal agreed with her.

So what does this mean for those of us within the police family who are on the autism
spectrum and want to apply for promotion or another role? Well clearly, as we all know,
there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to reasonable adjustments and what may work for one person may not work for another. For example in my particular case I’ve sat various
psychometric tests over the last few years and have always done very well at them. I’d
probably argue that my autistic brain helps me do well.

What this decision shows is the dangers of rigid thinking when considering how to best test
for key competencies, and the need to demonstrate a willingness to find solutions when it comes to reasonable adjustments. It also shows that those of us who need some form of
adjustment need to know what we require to level the playing field, and possibly to be able
to provide evidence as to why.

But what it also shows is the absolute necessity to ensure promotion practices are not likely
to put a particular group at a disadvantage. Considering a disabled/neurodiverse candidate,
many are at the mercy of preconceptions about their condition and their perceived ability to
do the job. And while this decision is a step in the right direction, there aren’t many
alternatives out there that also eradicate some of the other biases that can affect who gets
promoted and who doesn’t. Policing has come a long way in this regard, but still has a long
way to go.

Whichever way you look at it, many police forces in the UK will now be required to think far more flexibly about reasonable adjustments and how to implement them, or face having to explain to an Employment Tribunal why they haven’t.

Adam O’Loughlin
NPAA Communicatons Officer
Police Sergeant, Avon & Somerset Constabulary