PENNSYLVANIA, USA — Pennsylvania State Police on Monday unveiled a new informational card for people on the autism spectrum to use during any encounter with officers.
The card is meant to allow officers to better understand any emotional reaction a person may have to an encounter, thereby making it safer.
Those with the cards are encouraged to display them at a traffic stop or any kind of encounter with law enforcement.
"Oftentimes, when a law enforcement officer is responding to a scene, we don't know the background of that person," said PSP Communications Director Lt. Adam Reed. "We don't know if they may have autism, or we don't know if they, for example, are being disobedient and willingly not cooperating with law enforcement. So we hope that with this card, that barrier is really going to be broken down, and that means for a more effective dialogue is going to be opened up."
The concept of the card came from 24-year-old Chester County resident Alex Mann, who has now visited 500 law enforcement agencies in the northeast to spread a message about how those with autism like himself may react to a police encounter.
"To any person on the spectrum emotions can be very heavily amplified," Mann told FOX43 News. "It's crucial for law enforcement to know how they can react to these to these situations, because not everyone is going to react to the same in every situation."
Mann had created his own personal informational card in case of a police encounter, and displayed it during a visit with Governor Josh Shapiro and PSP Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris.
The cards are available to download now on the PSP website.