Dr. Lori Charney and her students work with children who have autism.
Charney, who is the faculty advisor for the Cougars for Autism Awareness Club at Misericordia University, welcomed the opportunity to work with older populations with autism through a partnership with the Dallas Township Police Department.
“Most of our autism interventions are focused on individuals who are in the pediatric population,” Charney said. “This was a really great experience to be able to provide this opportunity for our students to see as well that we can assist people in the teenage to adult population, who are driving, and it fits in with our mission here at the University for service to the community.”
The club partnered with the police department and Lehigh Valley Health Network, part of Jefferson Health, or LVHN, on the Blue Envelope program, which alerts police officers to drivers’ autism diagnoses.
Blue Envelope program
The goal of the program is to make drivers with autism more comfortable in case of an interaction with law enforcement.
“The blue envelope program supports drivers with autism spectrum disorder and can also be beneficial for others with communication challenges, anxiety or other conditions that may affect their interactions during a traffic stop or accident,” said Erin Ludwig, LVHN’s executive director of community engagement.
According to LVHN, “The front of the envelope notes they are on the autism spectrum and indicates if they are verbal or nonverbal. It includes instructions for the driver on what they should do during a traffic stop. The back of the Blue Envelope has tips for police to help their interaction with the driver go as smoothly as possible.”
The inside of the envelope contains information explaining the Blue Envelope program, contact information in case the officer needs to contact a family member or friend and difficulties a driver with autism spectrum disorder may experience during a police encounter.
“It does have contact information in the blue envelope, which would not generally happen on a traffic stop,” said Dallas Twp. police officer Gina Kotowski. “If there was something going on with traffic stuff and they were that afraid, we would literally call mom, dad, sister, whoever would calm them down, whether it be their calming voice over the phone or, ‘Hey, we're at the corner of Main and Eighth Street. Can you come here?’ ”
LVHN first launched the program in Lehigh County in April 2024. The health network has now distributed more than 1,000 envelopes to around 50 police departments.
Envelopes are available in both English and Spanish and can be requested online by individuals and organizations at https://www.lvhn.org/blueenvelope.
The envelopes are free to police departments.
“In terms of launching this program, we do finance it, we print the envelopes,” Ludwig said.
Dallas Twp. is Luzerne County’s first police department to distribute the blue envelopes.
“When we met up in Luzerne County, we presented it to the chief of police association, and before we were even out of the room, they voted on accepting it, and they did,” said Joshua Houck, director of emergency preparedness at LVHN. “And that was a big win.”
Kotowski said the program will be rolled out to all other police departments in Luzerne County in the new year.
Kotowski worked as a resource officer at Dallas School District for a decade. She credits Dallas teacher Jennifer Lamoreaux with bringing the program to her attention. Kotowski immediately brought the idea back to her department.
“Why wouldn't you want to try to enhance the communication between somebody who's struggling? For us to recognize different levels of the autistic spectrum, especially on a traffic stop, which is a heightened security thing,” she said. “For us, we don't know what certain movements mean. We're trained to think that any sudden movements or any nonverbal interactions are maybe not being compliant with us, or maybe trying to hurt us. I thought this was just a no-brainer, win-win for everybody.”
Students in Misericordia’s Cougars for Autism Awareness Club help the police department distribute the envelopes.
“We host events here on campus that have a table that has the envelopes there, so the people from the community can come, and they can pick up these envelopes,” said Carlie Coombs, the president of the club. “There's an officer who will sit at the table, and then someone from the club. So that's kind of where that joint partnership comes in. And we also made videos, kind of explaining what the blue envelope is, and a little demonstration of what it would look like to give the blue envelope to the police officer that's pulling you over.”
Coombs, who is a senior occupational therapy student at Misericordia, sees the partnership as a way to get more experience in her soon-to-be career.
“The club found it very rewarding to be able to help other age groups outside of the pediatrics, because that has historically been what we've been focused on, but the club is called Cougars for Autism Awareness, so that doesn't just mean the children that we're helping. It was really rewarding to be able to help people outside of that age range, and have something that we could give to them to make their lives easier and just assist in their everyday lives,” she said.
Making drivers with autism comfortable
Kotowski said at first, Misericordia was hesitant to get involved.
“They were kind of like, ‘Why are the police involved?’ When I sat down and told them what this was about, they were like, ‘Oh.’ They looked at it from our perspective, like, 'We didn't realize that certain behaviors that they're used to could be taken as a threat to us,'” Kotowski said.
Misericordia welcomed the program after learning more.
“The officer who brought it to us expressed how in 30 seconds they have to make a determination of what's happening when they're making a traffic stop. And sometimes the movements of a person with autism who may be not speaking, because they're in that state of fight, flight or freeze, or they may be using some hand maneuvers that may be self-soothing to them, but may be interpreted as something aggressive to that officer,” Charney said. “I think if we can help to break down some of that miscommunication that might happen, it's a super impact that we can make with the population, and hopefully prevent any sort of nefarious things that might potentially happen from occurring.
“It's just amazing when people reach out, and they want to learn more about the autistic population and some of the nuances that might appear,” Charney continued. “We're very excited to work with Dallas Twp. police, because they're really at the forefront of helping people be more inclusive, now including the drivers with autism.”
Kotowski knows communities, especially marginalized people, can be wary of the police. She’s glad for the opportunity to gain the community’s trust and make the police department more inclusive.
“Somebody just showing [the envelope], that's an instant I'm safe, you're safe, and this is going to go way differently than if we feel threatened or if they feel threatened. It's a huge, huge win, and it's just a matter of a blue piece of paper,” Kotowski said.
The program has been received well so far.
“Anecdotally, we definitely hear from parents who feel really good about the fact that maybe their student driver, who's just becoming a new driver, is going to have this envelope. There's a lot of peace of mind that is benefiting the caregivers as well,” Ludwig said.
LVHN said they often don’t hear back from departments after they receive their envelopes. And they have yet to hear any blue envelope success stories. But that does not stop them from distributing the envelopes and spreading the word.
“If one interaction occurs where this envelope assists the community member with the law enforcement interaction, it's going to be well worth it for all the time and effort that has been put into this,” Houck said.
