Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Erie County Sheriff's Office has a new tool in their inventory that gives deputies critical information on a person with special needs.
The "Handle With Care" registry was introduced in coordination with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Buffalo and Western New York on Monday. Erie County Sheriff John Garcia says it will allow for caregivers of individuals with special needs to provide a brief description on how to properly care for them in the case of an emergency.
"If a deputy has information while they're traveling to a call of what they may encounter, which might be, you know, person with dementia, it could be a child or an adult with autism. It helps our deputies recognize that before they get there and in this registry, you could see what triggers a person might encounter what kind of calming words or actions to use. At the end of the day, just have a peaceful resolution to a call," stated Garcia in an interview with WBEN.
Garcia says the registry is completely voluntary, however, he recommends caretakers in Erie County to take a few minutes out of their day to fill it out.
"Sometimes when you get to a call and you don't have that information, you're trying to assess that in real time. It's difficult, because there's a lot going on. There might be yelling, there might be people that are agitated. Something must have happened for someone to call 911 to begin with," explained Garcia. So now going into it, what we go and do is we calm the situation, and we use words and our body actions and so forth, just to calm the situation down. But if we have that information at our fingertips prior to going there, that's just a tremendous, tremendous asset, and this wouldn't happen."
Although the registry is still in it's early stages, he's glad it exists and hopes to see it grow throughout the county.
"This is to better serve our public I'm very proud that we're the first law enforcement agency to do this. This is going to be just a tip of the iceberg to hopefully implement other things into this system, and I want to thank our partners and government for helping us out with this."
Check out the Erie County Sheriff's Office website to learn more on how to register.