The Monterey Police Department keeping an eye on vulnerable communities with the new Monterey Community At Risk Database program.
Officer Martin Walker came up with the idea because his daughter is on the Autism spectrum, and he wants to make sure others with special needs are given extra protection. Walker said the free, confidential program is meant for anyone with special needs or conditions that may be challenging to a responding officer.
“We came up with it to improve how we as first responders react to individuals during an emergency,” Walker said. “You know, especially if it’s somebody that can’t communicate clearly with us, or they may not respond in the typical way you’d expect someone to respond in an emergency.”
Walker said typically, officers expect mutual interaction when they go on a call, but this is not always the case for people with conditions like dementia or autism. Walker said this serves a tool to better create a first contact.
Walker said the police academy has started teaching officers how to handle these situations and how to handle them. He said his daughter is nonverbal and prone to wander off. Information like this as well as appearance and triggers are kept in the database.
For example, Walker said his daughter has a fixation with water, but cannot swim. In the event she were to go missing, the database would tip officers to search nearby water sources first. In addition, Walker said the database could be used for identification purposes.
“If she got out and I wasn’t there, and another first responder came into contact with her, how would they know who she is?” Walker said. “Where she’s supposed to be, things of that nature. I thought, well, if there’s a system in place where if that first responder called dispatch and said, ‘Hey, I have a small child here, you know, brown eyes, black hair, in this area,’ it would be cool if they could pull up a database to search it and say it could be this person.”
Walker said this feature also includes contact information to make sure missing vulnerable people are brought back to the right place.
Walker said there are a lot of people in Monterey that could benefit from this program. Walker said there are a lot of unknowns on a call to begin with, much less if someone on the scene has a special need.
“If I’m going on a call, and dispatch tells me right off the bat, ‘Hey, this person is diagnosed autistic,’ or you know, ‘This person has dementia,’ that immediately tells us that we can handle this in a more gentle, empathetic manner,” Walker said. “You know, we still have a job to do. If they are being violent or something of that nature we still have to deal with that, but at least we know why and we can react to that appropriately.”
Walker said the program is only a couple of weeks in, but there are already multiple ways to add information about vulnerable people to the database. He said there is a link to the questionnaire on the Monterey Police Facebook page. Walker said any information submitted is voluntary, but the more they have, the easier it will be to provide an appropriate response.
Walker said there is also a paper version and a PDF version of the questionnaire available for those who would prefer to submit someone that way. Only first responders can access the database, and it will be used for official purposes only.