Jerry Turning: From Officer to Advocate: One Dad's Mission to Bridge the Gap

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. 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?
Your manner, you have a handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event.
Join us today as we host Jerry Turning, a twelve
year veteran officer in respected canine handler and trainer in
the police force. His life took a profound turn with
the arrival of his autistic son, prompting him to establish
Bluebridge Autism Training. This organization provides autism response training to police,
first responders and search and rescue professionals around the world.
We're delighted to share his inspiring story on the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Now, it's my honor. Thanks for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure if you would tell us a
little bit about what you do.
I'm a retired police officer. I retired about four years
ago from a police department here in New Jersey. Spent
twenty two out of my twenty five years of my
career in Canine. In two thousand and seven, my son
was diagnosed with autism. He's going to tern twenty one
in June. And when that day happened, I had already
been a cop for a long time, thought I knew
about this stuff. But when a doctor says those words
to you, when a doctor sits across a desk and
tells you your son is autistic, it has a way
of rearranging your.
Life a little bit.
In a flash of whitening, I realized that I had
a lot to learn about this topic as a dad.
For personal reasons, I had to get to work and
I had to start studying this and learn what this
was and what it meant for my family. As I
went on started that process, it became clear to me
that what I was running as a dad was directly
relevant to what I should know as a top.
The spark was.
Lit at that point pretty early on in my son's
diagnosis and getting an education and what autism was. I
started as best I could in my own area regionally,
just educating other cops and first responders about this and
teaching them about people like my son.
It was cool.
I was doing it through my department, through my agency
as I was going through my career, and then when
I retired in twenty twenty one, jumped full board into
it and created a company called Bluebridge Autism Training.
This is what I do now.
I travel across the country as often as my family
will tolerate, and I teach cops and first responders and
anybody who will listen to me talk about these amazing
people trying to bridge that gap and just make the
world at a little bit safer than when I found it,
And that's kind of my mission.
I think that's a great mission to have. So you
kind of got trained by your son, and now you're
helping others because you're finding out that you didn't know
exactly what you thought.
You knew, right.
I think it might be a generalization, but I think
police officers specifically were not lacking in confidence. In self confidence.
I think it's an important part of the job. You
have to believe in yourself and believe in your instincts
and abilities. So early on the first ten years of
my career. I had never received any formal training on
autism or anything like it. I had seen some depictions
in Hollywood, I'd seen some TV shows.
I thought, Okay, I get it, I know what that is.
And I was arrogant enough to believe that what I
didn't know, I could just trust my instincts and muddle through.
If I ever was confronted with an issue, including by
the way, some serious issues, I was the guy with
my dog you would dispatch to find these individuals when
they go missing. The old adage is you trust your
dog and you don't overthink it. But reality is we
put our dogs in a position to succeed. So that
arrogance that I thought I knew enough about this. When
my son was diagnosed, it became clear to me that
just by the grace of God, that first ten years
of my career, I had gotten lucky that I didn't
get in trouble, that I didn't get either physically hurt
or legally hurt based on the ignorance.
Of what this was. And it was a really, really stark.
Reminder that we have to stay humble, and there's a
lot that we have to learn in law enforcement about
a number of subsets of our population, but this one especially,
and the reality is a lot of the behaviors that
present from somebody who's on the spectrum, whatever their degree
of affectation. A lot of the behaviors mimic what we're
taught in the police academy to be characteristics of somebody
who's intoxicated, under the influence of narcotics, somebody who's being
evasive or trying to hide something. Eye contact is a
real good example of that one and a lot of
these areas. When I do this training, I do it, yes,
because I want to make the officers better public servants.
I present it in a way like, guys, listen to me. Yeah,
I want you to be motivated to be better public service,
but I also want you to be motivated that you
are exposed through risk and liability. Here we make these
split second decisions based on our training and instincts. We
make hundreds of those decisions a day. A lot of
them culminate in taking somebody's civil liberties from them temporarily.
A lot of them significantly impact lives. In this particular
sliver of our job, our training and instincts and experience
can mislead us and they can lie to us. You'll
be interviewing somebody or talking to somebody, and you'll swear
that that person is either under the influence of something,
or as being evasive, or as being disrespectful, or a
number of different things, where ninety nine times out of
one hundred you're right he's hiding something. But that one
out of a hundred times, where there's something else at
play or that individual is there is no malice, there
is no intent to.
Deceive, there is no disrespect.
That's where we are exposed to some dangers there. So
when I deliver the message that way, I see body
of language change all of a sudden.
All of a sudden, these officers.
Who you know, they're being respectful and they want to learn.
But when I turn it and say, listen, give yourself
permission to be selfish year, you're exposed. You're exposed to
some risk and liability. I see the light bulbs go
off at that moment. Yeah, that's great.
Now, once you get that across, the next step is
how do you differentiate between those two situations. For example,
I spoke with a father. His son was very outgoing,
happy kid, walking down the street singing, having just a
good time. Police drove by, questioned him, thought he was high,
took him to the precinct. They contacted his dad. He
came down to the precinct, explained everything, smile. They left,
no problems. Now, unfortunately there are some cases that don't
turn out that good. How do you get that across
to the police officers you're speaking with so they can
make that decision as quickly as they need to sometimes,
so that it ends in a good situation for everyone involved.
Well, first of all, I start here and you have
to stipulate this. This stuff is part. This is a challenge,
right and anybody who teaches this from a wholier than
now point of view will lose the room. I think
that's why I'm good at what I do, because, first
of all, I've done this job for a long time.
I have been in the situation you just described. I
have been the officer dispatched to the houses these people
are having an emotional crisis with a child. I have
been the guy passed with finding these individuals when they
go missing. I also have been the father. I've been
the dad who is scared to death to call nine
one one for assistance with my son because I don't
know the guy coming through that door, and I don't
know if he's going to be the right make up,
the right insights, the right education about what this is
to help, or is he going to come in and
poor fuel on a fire. And two things wake me
up these days. Two things, including last night. Number one
is who's going to take care of my son when
I'm gone? The other one is what happens if my son,
who's now six feet tall, two hundred pounds, meets somebody
I call brother, an officer out there, and they misunderstand him,
mischaracterize who he is, what he is, and heard him.
That drives me that alone, Tony, when I convey that
message to these officers, listen to me. Please understand, I
am not one of these voices screaming about defunding the
police and calling you all bullies and thugs. I am
not that. I need you to understand. I'm an ally
for you, Okay. I also stipulate this stuff is hard.
If this stuff wasn't hard, if it was easy and intuitive,
they wouldn't need me and you wouldn't see these videos
going viral on YouTube of officers making mistakes. I have
to gain their trust first. Once I have that, it
doesn't take a lot. We can cops are pretty pretty
good at reading.
Reading the room.
Explain that the lessons I'm going to teach you are
based on failing. I fail miserably weakly with my son,
and a lot of the things we're going to talk
about are not intuitive. A lot of the things that
I that I grow up, I'm a conservative guy. I
always believe in discipline and rules or rules and all
of these things. Sometimes with a certain subset of our
population that is growing right, those rules don't apply.
Don't you wish that you just had a piece of
paper that you could hand out then say here, this
is it. This is all you have to do.
I wish I could, Tony. I wish I could give
a template, a flow chart that if you see this,
then you do this and then this will happen. And
I can't do that, and I don't even I don't
even try to offer it. What I do, though, is
give them insights, generally speaking, broad insights on where these individuals,
where this population is challenged, where they may have a challenge.
I explain it with stories from my own personal family
and stories for my professional career, and I trust them
to be nimble and agile in that moment to use
the glimpse I can give them into our world and
be professional. When you say, like, how do you teach
them to know the difference?
I can't.
I can give you some general things, like, you know,
we go over a lot of the sensoryach challenges for
individuals on the spectrum century processing challenges and how that
can directly impact behavior. And all I try to do
is plant seeds, just have their radar pinion that this
individual that you run into in the back of some
woman's yard at three in the morning, yeah, chances are
that person's a predator. Chances are that person's you know,
up to no good. But I just want to plant
the seed in your head that as you're interviewing them,
start to look for these characteristics, these traits that just
I call it a glitchen, a matrix. They're not responding
to you the way a typical quote unquote criminal would.
And if you can start to look at these indicators
like hand flapping, toe walking, things like scripting and echolalia
and pretty common behaviors for the autism community, if you
start to look at them and wear them on top
of each other. While you're having these interactions with these people,
you'll see that it'll lead you to a different conclusion
than you otherwise would have and not rely on Well,
he wouldn't look me in the eye and make eye contact,
So that was proof of guilt, you know, it's evidence
of guilt. He was being evasive, He's trying to hide something.
A lot of times that's true. I don't want to
downplay the validity of that interrogation and interviewing because it's reliable,
statistically proven, except for roughly two to five percent of
our population where that rule doesn't apply. I offer insights,
I offer information, offer glimpses into our world without seeming
like I am coming down on them as ignorant thugs
for not knowing this, You know what I mean.
And I think that approach is critical.
Absolutely, I can see that now I've got a reason
for asking this question. What were some of the things
that your son was doing or not doing which led
you to get him diagnosed for his autism?
Oh back in the day, Well, in two thousand and seven,
I was a bonehead. I handled my son's diagnosis about
as poorly as a parent could. My wife knew well
before I did. Her radar was pinging on this really
really early. I mean like a year and a half,
and you know all the things your son stops. You know,
he doesn't hit his milestones, he's not pointing at objects
that draws attention. He really minimal interest in playing with
other kids. The verbal milestones weren't there. And then as
a dad, I was going through this thing like I
didn't want to hear it. I just didn't want to
be confronted with this, and you know, I would say
things like, well, he's our second child, or our daughter
is advanced, so.
We're comparing him to her.
I remember even calling up our pediatrician at one point,
asking him to call my wife to tell her that
our son is fine.
There's nothing going on there.
He told me, he goes, Jerry, I'm sorry, I can't
do that, And that's where I think crystallized in my head,
like Okay, you really got to turn and face this
and start this process of having him evaluated.
Yeah.
I hear that story a lot with parents, so it's
very common. The reason why I asked you this question
is do you use this in your presentation to your
fellow policeman.
Yeah, I bear it all. And I think that's an
important part of it. I think it's important that they
understand a that I am not trying to say I'm
gonna know it all or I'm the perfect father. I've
failed miserably, including early on. And it's funny. This path
I took of training cops and first responders, in a way,
it's the most selfish thing I do. In a way,
it was a way for me to gain some control
over this thing. This feeling of not having control of
where my life was going. I think that was the
hardest part to wrap my brain around. It was an illusion.
We have this plan, right, you have this plan mapped
out of how your life's gonna unfold, and you're gonna
coach a little league and you're gonna talk to your
son about girls. And we take that for granted as parents.
When that is taken from you, when all of a
sudden you are not in control, when all of a
sudden you have to confront the fact that God may
have a different plan for you, it wrecked me, It
really did. The reason I do cover that hard in
my training is because I need these officers and the
first responders to know that you're not just dealing with
the individual with the diagnosis, You're dealing with an entire
family and people surrounding him, all of whom are just
trying to get by and wrap their brains around this
and do the best they can, which causes stress, anxiety,
and trauma. So you walk into this house, you are
walking into an environment that is it's like a tinder
box of stress and trauma. And the reality is, if
we're meeting these people, we're being introduced to these people,
usually something bad happened right, something traumatic happened. If me
as a police officer and meeting your family, unless you're
at some event and it's a community outreach event. If
an EMT is coming into your home, something happened right,
which is stress and trauma inducing. So I need them
right off the bat to understand that you're walking into
an highly infused environment and these people, the family and
the individual, it may come across that they're being belligerent.
They may be very short with you, they may be
yelling at you. It's not hatred or anti police that's talking.
It's stress, it's anxiety, it's fear, and you have to
embrace that and understand that's part of the math when
you enter these.
Situations, how do you tell them to handle that. I've
got a lot of friends of mine that are first bonders.
Among them, a lot of them are police. They tell me.
One of the most dangerous situations they go into domestics. Yes,
domestic violence. Yeah, so when they go into a situation
like that, that's called in is domestic violence. But it's
just an autistic meltdown. It can get violent, of course,
but it's still just an autistic meltdown. With a kid
that can be six foot two hundred and fifty pounds,
that can make the house look like a tornado just
went through it. What type of approach do you tell
them to do so when they do go into it,
they don't treat it like a normal domestic violent situation
that got out of control.
Yeah, you're right.
And it's funny that the worst possible day, the worst
day of the year to be a police officer is
there's Christmas, even Thanksgiving. It's because that's when all families
get together. That's when families get together and old arguments
and old grievance just pop up.
It's terrible.
It's because of the domestic situation and it's a really
great question. And it's one of the examples I give.
Is your police officer's patrolling a zone in your city
and you get dispatched to let's say, the parking lot
of Walmart. The way this happens is really interesting, where
the mom who has a child who's on the spectrum,
that child is having whatever a sensory meltdown, whatever it is,
and she's struggling to get him in the car.
It's nobody's fault.
But what happens is a well meaning bystander, Let's say
a nice elderly woman's in the parking lot and she
sees something like this mom struggling with her son and
calls nine one one, trying to be a good public service.
When she calls nine one one, it comes to that
nine one one center a certain way. Usually it's this
man is assaulting or fighting with a woman, something like that.
That dispatcher takes that information, puts it in a computer,
and dispatches a police officer. The way that dispatcher puts
in the call and that computer is domestic assault in progress.
The officer receives that information and he wants to respond
to that parking lot, right, You would not be a
human being if that didn't with you a certain way.
When we hear domestic assault progress, we go into a
certain mode. We're rushing to get there. We want to
save this woman from being assaulted. We want to take
care of business and lock up this guy.
And who is this guy? I think he is?
And what kind of a bully hits a woman. You
would not be human if you didn't go into a
mode when that happens. And I explain to them, I'm
not blaming you at all.
I was that guy.
All I'm saying is be careful and when you get there,
if you hear that mom screaming, he's autistic.
He's autistic. This is my son.
That's a tough situation and they only have seconds sometime
to make a decision on what to do.
You have to be receptive enough to take a pause.
And not blow through that as a criminal thing and
actually be open to well with something else is here.
Maybe there's something else going on. And here's the hardest part, Tony,
understand you are not the expert there when you respond
to that call. Doesn't matter if mom is injured, She's
still the expert on that scene. About this individual approaching
that with humility, asking questions of that person or the caretaker,
asking questions of the person you're trying to get cooperation
and compliance from being humble and understanding. You are not
the end all be all there. Okay, you are a
person with authority, but you have to be humble enough
to know that there are people on that scene that
know more about what you're stepping into than you do.
I don't say they have to have all the answers.
I do reach that they have to know what questions
to ask, like, ma'am, is there something sensory going on here?
I help him out in some way to get him
through this? Or do you have any techniques that work
at home where I could help him through this? Asking
the right questions is ninety percent of the battle. Well
that's not true. Identifying what you're looking at as not
a criminal thing, as not an assault, that's most of it,
and then asking the right questions. Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Absolutely. Now you're not the only officer that has had
an autistic son or daughter in their family. Yeah, I've
spoken with many that have. Do you have officers in
your travels that you found do have autistic chill and
they just wanted to hear another perspective that just happened
to be yours.
Yes, that's been the most unexpectedly gratifying thing about what
I do. I have not yet had one, and I
travel a lot. I haven't had one class yet where
at least one individual, a cop or a first responder
or whoever, will come up to me, either during a
break or at the end and say, you know, my
daughter was diagnosed five years ago, and you really explained
a lot of this to me. And we're out there,
I mean cops with with specially these kids.
I meet them every single day.
I think law enforcement especially, we're very i don't know,
guarded with information.
We are private.
So to coax those individuals out the out of the
corner and get them involved and shared their experiences, it's
a challenge, but it's a lot of fun when it happens,
and I get three real cool compliments when I do this.
One will say the officer will come up to.
Me and say, wow, I really understand my community a
little better, thank you, which is awesome. I have another
one will come up to me and say, I really
understand my child a little better, or my nephew or
my niece, and I really appreciate that, and that's awesome.
Then I get this other one, Tony, which is really
really wild. I have the officers come up to me
and say, hey, you really help me explain myself better.
I understand some things I do differently now that I've
always been I've always wondered about why do I constantly
drive in my patrol car and play with this pocket
knife all day? And now I know I'm stimming and
it's a sensory thing. I never really understood that about myself.
And that's the pinnacle for me. When people start to
understand themselves a little better and see themselves in these
examples I give of sensory processing world that we all
kind of live in. That's really cool and and it
fuels me. It fuels me.
I love it. I live for it.
Yeah, I get that.
Now.
Where it all starts is in the communications center nine
one one.
Yeah. Yes. Do you work with them.
As well so when they take a call they can
ask some questions and get a better understanding from that.
I realize they only have seconds themselves sometimes because they
have the other person panicing on the phone. But if
they could ask a couple of questions. Then they could
give a little more information to the responding officer that
might just make his job a little easier.
Yeah, I do quite a bit with this.
I don't think dispatchers is a bad term, but it's
where I say it. I think they like to be
called communications professionals, whatever that term is.
I do a lot of speaking to them.
Yes, there are things that they can be aware of
and have an ear out for the worst thing for
me to have happen would be to have people be
paralyzed because they're trying to overthink situations. And the reality
is these people, these professionals, have to gather facts, get
the officers rolling to the scene quickly efficiently, so I
don't want to just see no, you got to stop
and ask all these questions. I'm very realistic with how
this works. However, though, when you have a woman on
the phone calling nine one one saying I need help
with my son. He's autistic and he's nonverbal and he's
having an emotional crisis, I have a very well bar
at this point. I need that to land a certain way.
I need them to understand that that information that she
is giving you is important and if you don't translate
that to the officers who's responding to that call.
We have a.
Problem, yes, and emotions are running high at that point.
We've got to be honest too.
A lot of times families don't know how to communicate this,
and especially when you're in the heat of a moment
and this an emergency, you lose your ability to think
clearly and offer information that would be important. So having
these communications, professionals know to tease this information out and
get this information that is important, not just operating by well,
anything important. She's gonna offer it, ye, mom, of course
she's gonna tell me if if this person is nonverbal, no,
you can't rely on that.
She may not. And believe me again from failure.
I've lost my son five times, lost them in his
life requiring help, and I was a level headed cop.
I think I was involved some pretty hairy things and
got through it well. When you lose your child or
you're dealing with an emotional crisis, like at that level
with your own child, rational thinking is not easy even
for the best of us, and that stress and trauma
will rob you of your ability to properly communicate things,
even things they seem logical. Of course, of course she's
going to say on the phone that our child is
autistic and nonverbal. No, no, you'd be amazed that they
just can't properly put it all together and communicate it.
Well, it's the adrenaline and it's just pushing them to
another level.
But there are other tools now, and this is really important.
We're getting on top of this now. We're wrapping our
brains around this now in my community and law enforcement
and first responders, and now there are tools like registries.
You can register your home or your car with your
police department and first aid and fire where you don't
have to rely on being able to get this information
out in the heat of the moment. You can have
your home flagged person with special needs lives here. And oh,
by the way, there are feels. You can enter all
the information you want, including not just height, weight and
things like that, including triggers, what sets them off, including
ways to de escalate, including things that he loves. If
your son loves Spider Man and he won't stop talking
about Spider Man, and that in the registries, so when
the officer gets dispatched to your home, it's automatic's passive.
It comes up on his terminal in his car. All
this information that you have put in there when it
was calm, when you were thinking rationally, be.
Edited and updated.
So when that officer receives that call, all of a sudden,
now we're not relying on the on the dispatcher asking
the right questions. We're not relying on the mom offering
or suggesting information. All of a sudden, now we're relying
on completely unemotional data that was entered in when everything's cool,
and that officer is going to see on the screen
Tommy loves Spider Man. And if a possible de escalation
technique would be to get him to start talking about
Spider Man. That is a solid gold nugget of information
that that officer can receive without relying on the human
element here, without relying on communication from the individual. And yes,
there is a privacy argument, and there's some families that
there's the whole big brother thing that I'm very much
respectful of. Some people don't want their child in registries,
they don't want the government to I get that, and
I respect it. But as the cop who's been dispatched
to these houses, I've never seen a call go badly
due to too much information.
Yeah, that's a great thing, and if they didn't do it,
the opposite could happen. Unfortunately, it could be a tragic ending.
I've seen thousands go sideways due to not enough information,
and that's where I land. They opened up a registry
in my county. My son was the first one registered,
first one, and I'm proud of that. His number in
the system is zero zero zero zero zero one. I
fully believe in that when whatever form it takes, whether
it's technology, computers involved, or whether it's a sticker on
the window of your house, however we can to communicate
to these responding people in an emergency that our child
has specific challenges and needs I'm a proponent of. With
a head nod towards the privacy argument that I am
respectful of.
Yeah, so what would you like to tell the listeners
that you feel is important that they need to hear?
If I'm speaking, I think we are. If I'm speaking
to families, to special needs parents and families and even
individuals who who themselves are on the spectrum. The one
lesson I need them to take away is my profession
is a noble profession. I firmly believe we are good guys.
People who get into this want to help. Do we
have a lot to learn? Yes, when these events happen,
when it goes bad, when a mistake is made, I
fully understand the anger and frustration and all of those
emotions that you feel.
I share them too.
Okay, However, it's not a spectator sport, all right. So
what happens is when these bad events happen, whether it's
a viral video of a little seven year old getting
handcuffed in a classroom, whatever it is, the tendency is
to start screaming and clamoring about well, we need more training,
more training, more training, And they're one hundred percent right.
I am out there trying to do that, and a
lot of the best people I've ever met are out
there doing that giving the training. But the reality is
there's a lot that family can do on their own
without the help of some guy in New Jersey who's
going to fly across the country and train the department.
And it's not that hard. All they have to do
is take a nice quiet Sunday when their child is
in a good place emotionally and it's happy, take a
ride to your police department, knock.
On the door.
Literally knock on the door, introduce the child to that officer.
Whoever it is, opens the door. Hello, officer Smith, this
is Tommy. We live at one two three Main Street.
I just want you to meet him and shake his
hand and start that interaction. You're doing a couple of
different things. A you are solidifying in your child's mind
what a police officer is. And if we can solidify
that that is a good guy, that that is not
somebody to be afraid of.
Wow, he was actually kind of cool.
Officer Tony, you are setting in motion a lifelong set
of beliefs. Also, you are training that cop. You are
training that officer much better than I can because I
can use anecdotal stories, I can use videos. But for
that officer who works in your town to interact with
your child and see the stems, see the hand flapping,
see whatever idiosyncrasize your child has, see the challenge of communication.
That's training I can't replicate, right, I can't do that.
And by the way, that's the very officer who may
become in your house at three in the morning and
in a crisis. And how much better off would you
be if that officer is responding to your home. He
knew your child right, already knew that he loves SpongeBob right,
and he gets dispatching his car and he's like one
to three Main Street, the Smith residents. He's like, I
know that kid, he loves cars.
Whatever.
I don't think people give enough credit to that part
of this. This doesn't take a grand governmental kind of program.
It takes people meeting people. It takes interaction and exposure.
That's my takeaway. That's what I would ask them to do.
Yeah, that's just great advice. This has been really good,
great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the
time to come on this show.
It was my honor, sir, and thank you for doing
what you do for our families. And I appreciate you
using your voice to spread the good word.
I appreciate it.
It's been my pleasure. Thanks again, thanks for taking the
time out of your busy schedule to listen to our
show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much
as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know
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guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell
everyone everywhere about why not me? The world, the conversations
we're having, and the inspiration our guests give to everyone
everywhere that you are not alone in this world