Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Bart Barta: Training First Responders for Autism Encounters
Mon, 07 Apr 2025
Send us a textWhen autism intersects with law enforcement, the results can be harmful or even catastrophic without proper training and understanding. Retired law enforcement commander Bart Barta shares his journey of creating specialized training for first responders after his son's autism diagnosis.• Started Autism Safety 101 after 31 years in law enforcement and his son's autism diagnosis at age 3• Individuals with autism are seven times more likely to encounter law enforcement than neurotypical people• Teaches officers to use simple language, practice patience, and understand sensory issues when interacting with people on the spectrum• Recommends minimum 4-8 hour in-person training sessions rather than brief online modules• Shares success story of officers de-escalating a knife situation by discussing the person's special interest in ice hockey• Emphasizes importance of autism registries with 911 centers to provide critical information to responding officers• Encourages families to obtain free personalized autism wallet cards at www.justdigit.org to help individuals safely disclose their diagnosishttps://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Bart Barta and what is Autism Safety 101?
Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World, Humanity Over Handcuffs, The Silent Crisis special event. Joining us today is Bart Barter. He is a retired law enforcement commander with over 31 years of experience.
He joins us today to discuss his company, Autism Safety 101, whose mission is to provide first responders with the necessary tools and tactics to achieve optimal outcomes when interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum. He possesses a wealth of knowledge and we are just so delighted to have him on the show. Thanks for coming on. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Chapter 2: How did Bart Barta's personal experience with autism influence his career?
If you would, tell us what you do now. I'm a retired law enforcement commander. I had a 31-year law enforcement career. 18 years ago, my world, the world of my family was forever changed. My wife and I have three sons, all adults. Our youngest adult son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was three years old. He went in for his three-year pediatric checkup.
That's when the pediatrician diagnosed him. And then we later followed up with a visit to the pediatric neurologist to confirm the pediatrician's diagnosis. Not knowing anything about autism at all, it set myself and my wife on this journey to try to learn as much as we possibly could.
We wanted to give our son the greatest opportunity at reaching his fullest potential in life, whatever that might be. We didn't know at the time would he even be able to communicate with us. He was verbal, only spoke a few words. He engaged in a lot of echolalia, things like that. So to say we were scared would be like an understatement.
We realized that we were really going to have to pour ourselves into him and try to help him reach his full potential. While all of this is going on, I'm working as a police officer and for a management role. I was a lieutenant at the time at the police department in South Florida where we were living.
And I quickly realized that law enforcement was not training its officers in how to recognize and respond to individuals on the autism spectrum. I kept seeing stories in the news involving encounters between law enforcement and individuals on the autism spectrum, and they weren't favorable stories. I really felt like we could do better in this area.
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Chapter 3: Why is specialized training crucial for first responders dealing with autism?
So I was working for the Coral Gables Police Department at the time, which is a bedroom community in Miami. In the city of Coral Gables is the University of Miami, and they have something there called the Centers for Autism and Related Disabilities. So I reached out to them. I see this real need here in developing some curriculum for law enforcement. Can you help me? I'm not an
expert in autism, but I needed to go to the experts in autism so that we could create some evidence-based training for law enforcement officers to help them better recognize and respond to individuals with autism so that at the end of the day, the individuals with autism is kept safe as possible and the officers remain safe if possible. So what happened out of that meeting?
They agreed to help me and assist me on this and set me on this journey while still working full time for the police department. I started working with something called the Crisis Intervention Team Training Program or CIT program. It was a program that came about to aid law enforcement officers and how to better recognize and respond to individuals who might have mental illness.
I started working with this program in Miami-Dade County, probably 18 years now. I started working with this program and started training South Florida law enforcement officers, primarily in Miami-Dade County. I would come into this 40-hour block of CIT instruction, and I would do about a two, two-and-a-half-hour block on autism. And I did this, I don't know, for probably more than 10 years.
After doing that, as I was getting closer to retirement, and I was still doing this training, but because of my full-time responsibilities as a law enforcement commander, I couldn't really pour myself in full-time into doing this kind of training. So as I could see, I was getting closer and closer to retirement. My wife and I had this discussion.
We decided together to try to launch a training business, training consulting business, so that we could work with first responders to help them better recognize and respond to individuals with autism. That's what I've been doing ever since. Sounds like a great idea. What happened next for you? So I retired in the end of 2017. Before retiring, I had launched Autism Safety 101.
I travel all across the United States of America providing training primarily to law enforcement, but I also train firefighters, EMS. I've trained correctional personnel, security personnel. And I really feel that it's crucial all first responders receive this training. And so that's where I got started.
When you have a class, what does your audience look like? Is it police, firefighters, EMTs, operators from the 911 comm centers, or do you talk with each one of them individually as a group?
Generally, the class is specific to the audience. So if it's primarily a law enforcement, say it's a police department, I was just recently contacted by a police department in Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, Chamblee, Georgia. Chief of Police contacted me and asked me if I could do a couple of eight-hour trainings there for his officers and the local law enforcement partners in that area.
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Chapter 4: What is the importance of in-person training for law enforcement?
It's a great question. So here's the thing, right? This is really important. I have to start off with helping these officers understand what autism is. If you don't understand the challenges and the needs of people with autism, you're not going to recognize it.
And unfortunately, this is what happens in some cases too often where law enforcement officers do not receive meaningful training in autism. Officers will oftentimes misinterpret the person's behavior or their lack of communication. And they'll take one course of action where if they had some understanding about autism, then they might take a different course of action.
I have to break it down into its simplest parts so these officers truly understand what it's like to be in the body of a person with autism and understand all those unique challenges that come along with that disability. Part of that is, is helping them to understand when and where we can to try to slow things down as much as we possibly can. We have to be patient.
We have to give them time to process what it is that we're asking them or telling them to do. if we expect them to immediately respond or comply with our questions or requests, in many cases, it's not going to happen. It's imperative that law enforcement officers understand these challenges.
Once they understand the challenges that follow this disability, then we implement the strategies and how to de-escalate possible crisis situations or meltdowns that might be occurring. So it's not like There's a silver bullet here and you can come in and go, okay, do this every time. And then everything is wonderful and it's great because it is a wide spectrum and it affects people differently.
It's been said once, I think it was Dr. Stephen Shore that came out with this saying. He said, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, right? No two people with autism are identical. And that's important too, because law enforcement officers, we are trained to recognize pattern. We are great at recognizing patterns.
If you've seen something enough times, you go, oh, I know what this is. That's a little bit more challenging when you're dealing with somebody with autism who might have serious communication challenges, who struggles socially, who might even have an intellectual disability on top of that, coupled with co-occurring mental health disorders and other things. So let me say this to you.
And this is one thing I hope your listeners take away if they're looking to help law enforcement officers and their communities receive this kind of training is you can't do this online in a half an hour or an hour. You can't do it. I tell chiefs of police, they'll contact me from time to time and they'll say, Bart, can you come train the troops? And I'll say, sure thing, chief.
What do you have in mind? And they'll say, well, what about roll calls? Now, roll calls are like briefings that occur at the very beginning of the shift. You used to see it like if you watch shows like Hill Street Blues, the sergeant would come in, he would address the officers and things and give them kind of the instructions for the day. Those are roll calls, right?
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of online training for police officers?
Generally, roll calls don't last more than 15 minutes to a half an hour. So I asked the chief, what do you have in mind? And they'll say, what about a roll call? And I'll say, how long do your roll calls last? And they'll say, we can do 45 minutes. And then I stop them right then and there. And I tell them, chief, all due respect,
I can come in, I can talk to your officers for 45 minutes about individuals with autism, but they're not going to get much out of it. And they scratch their heads and they look puzzled, right? Because I can't understand this, right? And I tell them, don't do anything less than four hours. I hate doing four-hour trainings because when I do four-hour training sessions with law enforcement officers,
I feel like it's like they're trying to drink water from a fire hose, right? It's coming at them fast and hard and quick. And it doesn't allow for the engagement or the interaction that I really like to see occur in these training sessions with law enforcement officers. So I tell all these chiefs, I tell all these sheriffs, don't do anything less than eight.
But I will tell you, Tony, unfortunately, a lot of law enforcement commanders, chiefs of police and sheriffs are reluctant to do eight-hour trainings. I'm very encouraged when law enforcement agencies do eight-hour trainings, but I refuse to do anything less than four because I don't want to give short shrift. And some people say, what about an online training? Why don't you do online training?
And I tell them, because one, quite honestly, Tony, most police officers don't want to watch online training if it's more than 30 minutes. then they start tuning out. And if they're not compelled to sit there and watch it, they'll be easily distracted. They'll be looking at their cell phone or one thing or another, and they're not really learning it, right? They're not really getting it.
They're not really understanding it. Is it a lot of work to do in-person training? It is. But I personally have a vested interest in this.
Do you tell them about your son in their training?
I tell all these officers all the time. I have a son who's 21 years old and who is more than likely going to come in contact with you at some point in time. Others, it's not a question of if. It's only a matter of when they come in contact with a law enforcement officer.
In fact, there's studies recently that show that individuals with autism are seven times more likely to encounter a law enforcement officer than someone without autism. OK, so there's been some studies too recently by the time I think that by the time they're 18 years old, more than a quarter of them have already encountered a law enforcement officer. Wow, that's pretty staggering numbers.
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Chapter 6: How can law enforcement effectively interact with individuals on the autism spectrum?
And those agencies that invest the time, I get a lot of feedback after my trainings. Sometimes years later, I'll have officers that will email me or they'll call me and they'll say, I got to tell you about this call that I went on. Let me tell you what happened.
And I'm so glad that I came through your training because now I felt so confident in handling this situation and they had a successful outcome. If you don't do this kind of training, you're setting your officers up for failure. And I don't blame these officers. I've seen stories in the news where officers have had, unfortunately, negative contacts with individuals with autism.
And if you go and you start looking into the situation, what you will discover in most of these cases, these officers that you're seeing in the news that had these horrific incidents involving individuals with autism, they've had little to no training in autism. Now, whose fault is that? Is that the officer's fault?
A lot of people in the autism community and parents and caregivers, they get upset. I've seen them say that officer should be fired. He should be suspended without pay. And I tell them every time I said, have you looked in to see whether or not this officer's had any training whatsoever? And in most cases, they haven't. Is it fair to blame the officer?
Because the truth is, Tony, you don't know what you don't know. And if you don't have this kind of training, you're not going to understand. That's why I do what I do. And I do it passionately. Every time I do these trainings, I try to bring folks in the autism community into these training sessions.
Generally, it happens towards the end of the training where I give them an opportunity to interact and engage with these first responders because that's where the most significant part of this training occurs is that interaction that occurs between individuals with autism and law enforcement officers.
And the more opportunities we can create where we can bring people with autism into a setting with law enforcement officers in a non-crisis situation... It's a win for the individual with autism, and it's a win for the first responder.
So I encourage these officers, I encourage these command staffs with these police departments and these fire departments to have your personnel regularly engage with people on the spectrum. Because again, like I said earlier, if you meet one person with autism, you met one person with autism, and it's a wide spectrum.
When you first start talking with the officers, it's like anything else. It can be two hours, four hours, six hours, eight hours. At the end of any conference, whether it's two hours all the way up to eight hours, there's going to be certain points that they remember. There will be certain points they will forget.
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Chapter 7: What impact does Bart Barta's training have on law enforcement outcomes?
That's a great question. And one of the things that I try to stress again is patience. It's trying to slow things down the best you possibly can. You are correct. As officers respond to various calls for service, they're responding based on the information that was received. And oftentimes that comes from a dispatcher, right?
A communications operator, 911 operator who's giving the information to the officer. So oftentimes when the officers are arriving on the scene, they're responding with only a little bit of information and they have to quickly assess and determine what is going on in sometimes only seconds. And so they're trying to process all this information as quickly as possible.
If the individual does not have a weapon, meaning they have a knife or a gun or something like that, this affords us an opportunity to try to slow things down, right? To try to practice some patience and telling them that, when you're trying to communicate with somebody with autism, use the fewest words possible. Use concrete, simple language.
Because many people with autism process language differently than the rest of us. If you tell someone with autism, freeze, that means something to you, it means something to me, but that means something completely different to them. You need to use simple, concrete, direct language. You need to keep it as simple as in as few words possible, giving them as much time to respond as necessary, right?
You may have someone who is a serious eloper, and all of a sudden, they bolt, and they take off, and they start running, and maybe they're starting to run for the middle of a busy highway or a busy street. That officer at that point in time might have to go hands-on. They might have to use force to stop that person. Some folks with autism experience have no fear of danger.
So they might just take off and run out right in the middle of the street. In that case, the officer has to go hands-on immediately. But one of the things I try to tell them, if ever possible, try to avoid touching them. If somebody with autism is actively trying to hurt another person, Just because you have a disability doesn't give you a license to inflict violence on another person.
You might have to stop that person from inflicting violence onto another person. You might have to go hands-on. And we talk about what you should do if, in fact, you do go hands-on with somebody with autism. We give some tips and strategies and things like that.
Those are the key things right there is helping them understand, one, the processing of your instructions and your language and understanding this too, Tony. And I can bring this up. You have a large percentage of people with autism that are nonverbal or low verbal. And if they can speak, it might only be a few words.
Now, having said that, just because someone doesn't have verbal language doesn't mean they don't understand you. Doesn't mean they're even low intelligence, right? Or low IQ. It doesn't mean that they might not even be able to communicate with you. And we talk about the other ways in which people who are nonverbal or low verbal can and oftentimes do communicate.
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