Cops ​“Cha Cha” With Developmentally Disabled Youth

The young people set the rhythm for the Cha-Cha-Slide, and the cops joined in — with the hope of making one ​“right foot stomp” fit into a broader effort to connect police with developmentally disabled youth.

The dancing took place the other day at an ​“all abilities” dance party held in Hamden’s town center.

The Hamden Police Department sponsored the July 13 event with nine other town organizations: The Hamden Youth Center, the Recreation Department, the Public Works Department, the Arts & Cultural Department, Hamden Community Services, Hamden Youth Services, the Charles F. Lowry Foundation, the Hamden Fire Department, CERT, and, last but not least, SPCP — which stands for ​“Strengthening Police and Community Partnerships.”

The event was part of a series of broader youth programming hosted by Hamden during the ​“post-pandemic” summer.

It is also part of an initiative to build ​“community policing” by offering opportunities for bonding and communication between police officers and younger folks through activities like football, dodgeball, and bike rides. Later this summer, those same groups will hold a carnival featuring games like ​“Dunk the Chief.”

While all community kids were also invited to participate in last week’s party, the dance was specifically designed for Connecticut residents with special needs.

Venezia Michalsen, a professor of criminal justice and co-founder of Hamden’s Special Education PTA, attended the event with her 10-year-old autistic son Bowie.

“As a default, every event centers abled people,” she said. ​“This is a chance to say, ​‘We’re gonna celebrate you.’ If the music is too loud, we’re gonna turn the music down. You can eat messily and not be judged.”

Friends Lera Asprelli and Steven Mazzacco attended along with Lera’s mom, Carol Asprelli, in order to eat free ice cream, get some exercise, and see old high school friends, like Brendan Lyle, who is now a student at Albertus Magnus.

Asprelli and Mazzacco went to Amity High School in Woodbridge, where they attended homecoming as well as junior and senior proms together. Dances are, for them, ​“a tradition, basically,” Lera Asprelli said. The pair graduated high school four years ago and now work at the bakery ​“Love Lera,” which Carol Asprelli founded last year in order to support adults with disabilities who are looking to enter the workforce.

Student resource officer Chris Sheppard said that he already knew 10 out of the roughly 50 folks who showed up, due to his work with special needs students at Hamden schools. Those ten, at least, were reconnecting for the first time after a harsh year of distance learning.

Jacqueline Beirne, an SPCP officer and the other co-founder of SEPTA, pointed out how difficult Covid-19 has been on disabled individuals and their families. Her son, Ruari, was gradually diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and apraxia before he turned nine.

Because he is hypersensitive, he cannot wear masks. So, Beirne drives him an hour away to The Speech Academy in Easton because he has not been able to go on public transportation or attend public schools this year without a mask.

Michalsen said she outplaced Bowie during the pandemic, moving him from Spring Glen elementary to ASPIRE in Stratford because the school was so ill-prepared to adapt to his changing needs and anxieties. ​“They absolutely failed my son,” she said.

ASPIRE has smaller student to teacher ratios than Spring Glen Michalsen said. It provides teachers with the necessary training and resources to support special needs students when they’re struggling or having an ​“autistic meltdown,” as Michalsen put it, due to disruptions in their routine.

The lack of care for disabled students within public schools is just one example of the systematic inability of public structures to respond appropriately to individuals with special needs. While a teacher’s lapse in understanding and attentiveness can be harmful on its own, it may also speak to larger implications concerning violence against disabled folks.

Mass ignorance around autism, for instance, leads to a high number of calls to the cops from individuals who don’t understand why an autistic person is throwing a tantrum or perhaps even acting aggressively.

“Cops should not be called on disabled people,” Michalsen said. ​“It makes it worse. They don’t know what to do. They end up criminalizing disability in a way that doesn’t help the person they’re calling on. It doesn’t help the greater public.”

Though data on the topic is scarce, one 2012 study estimated 32 percent of incarcerated individuals nationwide that year reported having at least one disability. And it gets more complicated when variables like race, gender, and sexual orientation are added to the mix, given that people of c solor are chronically overpoliced.

Michalsen elaborated that individuals with disabilities are highly likely to come into contact with cops multiple times throughout their lives. ​“Maybe they’re being abused by their caretaker, maybe they’re having a meltdown, or maybe they get in a car accident,” she enumerated.

That’s why initiatives like ​“The Blue Envelope” exist. That’s a Connecticut program which provides autistic individuals with blue cards which they can present to officers in order to communicate that they are on the spectrum.

Based on such realities, Michalsen said, ​“a familiarity” with police ​“is gonna have to be useful.”

But, in her opinion, events like last week’s have to ​“be happening in tandem with a process by which we extract policing from the lives of disabled people in order to better serve them what they need.”

Jacqueline Beirne said, ​“It’s sad that we have to say, ​‘Let’s take human beings and train them how to be human beings.’” But, just as non-disabled people need to engage with disabled individuals to know how to serve and care for one another, Beirne said, police need training and baseline exposure.

Beirne recalled when a retired officer from New Jersey, representing the organization Blue Bridge, came to an SPCP meeting to demonstrate how to deescalate a ​“severely autistic 17-year-old autistic child” who was having an aggressive meltdown. It worked, and Beirne was impressed.

Beirne joined the SPCP council, alongside community advocates, government workers, and elder care representatives, when it was launched in Hamden last year. Since then, she said, she has learned how ​“progressive” Hamden PD is.

Her goal is to get to a point where all ​“policing” is considered ​“engagement.”

And, she noted, ​“Chief Sullivan is 100 percent engaged in what we do.”

Chief Sullivan himself said that ​“community” has always been at the center of his 28 years on the Hamden police force. He said that the goal is to effectively communicate with all youth in order to ​“build strong relationships” with residents early on.

Sullivan said he was also hoping that those who came out would get the chance to see cops as ​“regular people out of uniform”.

Whether or not such events do establish trust, inform officers’ biases or policing habits, or reduce crime down the line, one goal was met last week: Cops and attendees alike had an hour or two of fun with one another.