READING, Pa – The Blue Envelope Program is a new initiative to communicate important information in a short window of time.<\/p>\n
“The first thirty seconds of a car stop are probably the most important part of that because there’s this variable of the unknown,” said Chief Anthony Kuklinski with Hamburg Borough Police.<\/p>\n
Now, through a multi-agency effort, those in the autism community can hand over a blue envelope of important information to the police.<\/p>\n
This envelope explains the person’s situation and includes things like registration and car insurance information.<\/p>\n
“An individual on the autism spectrum\u2019s ability to respond to an officer may be difficult,” said District Attorney John Adams.<\/p>\n
“The fact that they can present this blue envelope will not only help them but help the police officer,\u201d Adams added.<\/p>\n
One man spearheading this effort says he’d like to see more programs like this one for adults with autism.<\/p>\n
“I would like to see more programs and initiatives for adults,” said Alex Mann, Autism Awareness Advocate.<\/p>\n
“I agree they are typically centered around younger kids on the spectrum. I went through some of these programs myself; you get to a certain age, and there’s not a lot out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mann has spoken to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country. The Blue Envelope program could signal a societal shift to address challenges those with autism face.<\/p>\n
“I’d absolutely love to see more programs and even just like training on things to make people with autism be a better part of this world,” Mann said.<\/p>\n
Those gathered here say they want all law enforcement agencies in Berks to encourage participation in the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa – The Blue Envelope Program is a new initiative to communicate important information in a short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113480,7518,89571,349,113479,16393,69553,15321,1856,206,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-269160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-adults-with-autism","tag-autism","tag-autism-awareness","tag-berks-county","tag-blue-envelope-program","tag-communication","tag-community-initiative","tag-disability","tag-law-enforcement","tag-police","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}