A Charlotte mother said a recent encounter between her son, who has autism, and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer turned into the kind of interaction she always hoped for but feared might not happen.
Cole Stanczak is just like any 20-year-old. His mother said he loves his independence.
“He wanted his driver’s license as soon as he could get it,” Eileen Stanczak said.
And he loves to drive.
However, his mother worries when her son, who has autism, is out alone in the world.
“That was always my fear that he would get pulled over and maybe the person didn’t understand autism,” the mother said.
Cole Stanczak had a recent run-in with a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer at the Fifth Third Bank on Providence Road.
“The call came in as ‘a suspicious person,’” said Officer Erik Stewart.
Potentially, a male subject wearing a hood that was walking around the parking lot, around the ATM, kind of lurking.
Stewart arrived at the bank to find Cole Stanczak in his car on the phone with his mom. He knocked on the window.
“I got scared for a second because I thought maybe I did something wrong,” Cole Stanczak said.
Stewart read the situation.
“I started seeing enough cues that, ‘Hey, he’s working a little bit differently,’” the officer said.
Cole Stanczak was trying to make a deposit at this ATM and when an error popped up, he didn’t know what to do.
“He was trying to accomplish something on his own without the guidance and support of his parents,” Stewart said.
His crisis intervention training kicked in.
He asked Cole Stanczak if he could walk into the bank with him and they could figure it out together.
And that’s just what they did, which meant the world to Cole Stanczak and renewed his mom’s faith in this world.
“He was pretty much everything I would have asked for if I had to write up the scenario,” she said.
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