a. An Examination of Current Training Practices for Law Enforcement Officer Interaction with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

With the current cultural impetus towards normalizing differences in mental health status, as well as the integration of people with disabilities into communities, police have become the forefront when interacting with and managing people who were once institutionalized. This shift in responsibility from the mental health field onto the police has not been paralleled by an increase in training on interaction with people with disability. The purpose of this study was to examine the current training practices, as well as the knowledge and confidence that officers possessed with regards to interacting with individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as reported by the officers. It is expected that the level of training will be highly inadequate in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, due to lack of available training and resources available to officers, as well as the lack of mental health training requirements. This project does not seek to criticize officers, but rather to assess the current overall status of their training as well as their perspective of their training status