Kenmore resident Rhonda Palmiero, a registered nurse and expert in dementia care and cognitive impairment, is on a mission to improve how first responders in Western New York interact with those living with brain disease. She was inspired to do so after hearing how two former police officers in Colorado mistreated a senior citizen with dementia last year when responding to a report of shoplifting.

According to a National Public Radio report, Loveland Police Department officers Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali arrested and booked 73-year-old Karen Garner as she was walking home from a local Walmart on June 26, 2020, after failing to pay for about $14 worth of merchandise. During the arrest, Hopp handcuffed Garner and allegedly dislocated her shoulder after she refused to stop walking. During booking, she remained handcuffed to a bench in a cell for six hours before receiving any medical attention, despite complaining numerous times that her shoulder and wrist were in pain. According to a lawsuit filed by her lawyer, Garner suffers from dementia and sensory aphasia, which makes it difficult to communicate and understand others.

“A woman living with dementia was, in essence, unnecessarily assaulted by a police officer because he didn’t take the time to understand what he considered to be resistance to his requests,” said Palmiero.

Through learning about that incident, Palmiero said she sensed that police cadets don’t understand how to engage people living with dementia and brain disease when they encounter them, and decided to reach out to her local police department to see if they were interested in receiving specialist training on the subject. Kenmore Police Chief Thomas Phillips was interested, and in July officers of the Kenmore Police Department underwent training to improve interactions and deescalate situations among individuals living with brain disease. Palmiero said the training is crucial because it helps officers determine through questioning if a subject is suffering from brain disease, which unlike a physical disability, can’t be “seen” until someone begins to interact with the sufferer.

“It isn’t until we start engaging with people with cognitive impairment that we realize, this person’s not firing 100% here,” she said. “We know that these people move from a world of logic and the spoken word to one of feeling. So if they see a person in uniform and they pick up this tension, and you’re shouting at them, they’re immediately going to go into fight, freeze or flight. It takes them four or five or six times as long to process the request that you’re asking of them, and an officer that’s not keenly aware of this may take that as noncompliance and move into their next level of training.”

Instead of making demands or touching someone with brain disease, Palmiero said officers are directed to ask open-ended questions and get the person to tell their story, which can be used to determine what they need. This is important because it can help officers prevent individuals with brain disease or dementia from being hospitalized.

The training also includes next steps for caregivers of people with brain disease to prevent burnout, neglect and abuse, including tools officers can provide to help caregivers understand how to manage a particular disease a loved one has, and resources to contact to receive self-care.

Capt. AJ Kiefer, who attended and facilitated the training, said it gave KPD officers an idea of different strategies and approaches to use when encountering people with dementia or brain disease. He said while the department typically receives only about a dozen calls per year related to dementia or brain disease, one incident could lead to several repeat visits to an address.

“It just takes one household, which all of sudden we could be responding to multiple times,” he said. “If that situation is taken care of, then it could quiet down.”

Kiefer said the department already receives crisis intervention training from Crisis Services of Western New York, but Palmiero’s classes add a layer and “a little more preparation” on how to approach mental health situations.

With the success of the training with the KPD and with the Loveland Police incident in mind, Palmiero is reaching out to first responders around the region to provide similar education. She said thus far she has been in conversation with the Town of Tonawanda and City of North Tonawanda, as well as American Medical Response, Twin City Ambulance, and the New York State Police.

To contact Palmiero and learn more about her training, visit www.sugarandsoul.solutions.