Kahnawake First Responders: Autism Training

Approximately 40 Kahnawake first responders and front-line workers are taking part in Autism training. It’s a specialized one-day seminar being held at the Peacekeeper station that was organized by Connecting Horizons. One of the trainers is Jimmy Donohoe, he is a retired Police Lieutenant with the Pensacola, Florida Police:

“We start off with what is Autism and then we’re going to show some videos and talk about different things that we hope they can recognize somebody quicker that might have autism and be able to handle it differently than they would have before. We’ve had this trainings all over the United States and a few in Canada where we’ve had calls back and said: ‘I would have handled that call totally differently had I not had your training’.”

Donohoe helped develop the program and have been working at this for close to 2 decades:

“I developed a program that helps law enforcement help identify people on the spectrum through a software program and through that the Autism Society of America got a hold of us and asked us to put a curriculum together. We got together with some people on the spectrum, we have a committee of the Autism Society of America and we put together this training and it’s been {in place} for 18 years.”