CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. —The South Fulton Police Department show how they train their officers to work with autistic people.

A former Atlanta Police Department officer, whose son is autistic, teaches the course.

The training the officers get could mean the difference between life and death.

At the training presentation, the officers learned about how things like an “officer’s approach” can really affect the outcome.

Many times, autistic people are affected by lights and sound, even smells like if an officer is wearing cologne.

With that in mind, police in South Fulton are adjusting their response to have a better outcome with some neurodivergent members of their community.

Devion Harris has been a South Fulton officer for almost a year.

“I definitely think this will humanize us,” Harris said.

He said the community’s perception of police isn’t always accurate. That’s why he believes the four-hour training course, called “Autism Safety 101,” is necessary for all of the officers, so the community understands.

South Fulton police are using the training to learn how to effectively communicate with an autistic person.

“Four hours is nowhere near enough to really cover the entire understanding of people with ASD in general,” Harris said. “There’s so much more we can learn, this is just a very entry level of understanding so that everyone has that standardized learning.”

The instructor for the training seminar is a former APD officer. He went through different scenarios with officers, he had them watch a news story from another state that showed what happened when an officer didn’t realize the individual they encountered was an autistic teen. Then, he showed South Fulton officers what they can do differently.

The instructor also explained what “stimming” is, which can sometimes be viewed as suspicious behavior.

“I think that every agency should do this, it should be required by the agency and I think you’ll have better outcomes when officers show up on scenes,” Sgt. Helio Garcia said, adding that the training will make every single one of these officers better.

The instructor only trains two police departments, one in South Fulton and the other in Thomasville. He said some other agencies do a more condensed version, where the training is only 30 minutes long.

WSB-TV’s Tyisha Fernandes contributed to this story.