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Train-loving autistic teen disappears again

Jeffrey Cooper

UPDATE: Found, Monday afternoon.

Boston Police report they are once again looking for Jeffrey Cooper, 15, last seen Friday.

According to police, Cooper, who frequently goes missing and has difficulty communicating, never returned home from school in Roxbury. He was last seen wearing a red jacket, a maroon hooded sweatshirt with "Madison Park" affixed to it, khaki pants and black sneakers. He likes trains and in the past has been found on the Red Line in Braintree and Quincy. He might also be in the South End or the areas around Boston Garden or Boston University.

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Comments

Like, one we don't know about or the T forgot?

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I don't remember what he was wearing, but I saw a guy vaguely resembling this picture on the inbound platform at Harvard on Saturday morning. I only noticed because he seemed to have some something (autism?) going on based on his speech pattern and was asking the conductor lots of questions (about where the train was going, stuff like that). They kept talking until the train pulled out, but I was headed up the stairs so I didn't think any more about it.

I have no idea whether the two are related, but if not, it seems like a strange coincidence.

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Yeah, I saw someone who looked exactly like this boy, and wearing what I remember vaguely as some sort of high-school-logoed outerwear, sitting on an inbound red line train saturday morning. I got on the train at porter and saw him seated. on the ride, he was imitating train noises all excitedly, and then echoed the announcer: "next stop, harvard square." I got off at harvard--didn't notice whether he got off there as well. but I called the phone number listed and the detective said they're looking into things.

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......but WTF? I hope he turns up ok, but what is the parental situation in this kids life? This is getting to be a joke. If that was my kid I might not have him ride the train alone. Maybe get him to a school a bit closer to home. BPS will accomodate such circumstances. Maybe a bus??????? Something, cuz this train thing aint workin'.

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They are entertaining offers of babysitting at this point, if you want to show them how it gets done.

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As I clinician who works with adults and teens with autism, I can tell you that many folks bolt from home or school, but don't qualify for placement in a locked hospital unit, since they can carry out their day-to-day activities most days and aren't an immediate danger to anyone. In fact, based just on the media coverage, this guy is actually showing that he has basic self-preservation skills, since he comes home every time without having gotten run over or started fights or anything.

There's really not a whole lot families can do in these situations; the young man has a right to not be locked in a hospital (which is a temporary setting where he'd receive minimal schooling and be generally deprived of most aspects of life), but that's about the only option for keeping someone somewhere against his or her will. Most of the folks I've worked with who are on the autism spectrum who've tried a GPS bracelet just take it off; same with any sorts of devices for locking someone in a room or whatnot. Besides, I actually wouldn't lock a person in the house. I think it's inhumane.

I know many people hear "autism" and immediately think of someone who needs to be treated like a child all his life. What if we think more along the lines of a young adult who has mental illness? We've all known people who are chronically homeless and refuse shelter, burn out of every program, etc. This young man might be more in this boat; heartbreaking for the people who care about him, but really, what can you do when taking off from home and school seems to be what he needs to do? Encourage him to come back, yes, but don't literally chain him to somewhere he clearly doesn't want to be.

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So, fine. Let's go with your theory that you encourage him to come back but don't chain him down in any figurative (or literal) sense of the word.

Then stop calling the police and reporting him missing.

You don't want to do anything at all different to know where he is...and you don't want to not know where he is. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either he has freedom and chooses to use that to his advantage to do whatever he pleases or he doesn't and you know that he's safe instead of disappearing. The endless loop of giving him freedom enough to disappear and then asking the police to find him again for you shouldn't be a valid option.

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Guardian is legally required to notify the police if he's gone. If his disability limits communication, DPPC's guidelines might be that the notification needs to happen immediately or within a few hours, rather than the several hours or a day or so during which the authorities won't even file a report for a nondisabled teen.

Second of all, the options for a person who likes to run away without telling people where he's going aren't limited to 1) ignore him completely and let him fend for himself and 2) put him in a locked hospital unit. Again, think about teens without disabilities who run, or adults with substance abuse and/or mental illness who have periods of refusing shelter. Parents typically let them know that people care and welcome them back, but they don't take steps to lock them up. (They actually can't be locked up if they haven't shown behavior that's blatantly dangerous during the time away.)

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honestly this is turning into A RUNNING joke.

seriously though. wtf. put this kid on the ride. at least try a lojack bracelet. This is absurd.

Yeah i don't care if i come off as an insensitive clod. I care for this kids well being, but he goes missing every 2 weeks. i think that should qualify him for special treatment.

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Support state-sponsored services so the kid could be accompanied by an aide.

Because that's the only thing that maybe would work. Somehow, our society expects parents to never work or sleep but still support their kids on their own and will spend far more on services to find the kid than services to keep him from going walkabout.

Everybody thinks "just use some technical solution that I think will be perfect because I like technology". Like the kid is some dog with a special invisible fence collar and he lacks opposable thumbs to undo his bracelet or collar. Like signal would magically work in the T anyway.

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Unless he's going to live in the tunnels, it'll work as soon as he comes back above ground. Furthermore, some tracking devices use cell phone network info to locate themselves.

Other problems with the situation aside, sometimes technology is a solution even if you want to crap on it for no good reason.

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He's also not completely incapacitated and likely capable of removing any technology placed on him. Locking him into a bracelet that he could not remove would likely require a court order - he has rights. You don't get to lock a tracking bracelet on anybody just because they have a disability and you want to control them and he has done nothing but wander, so ...

Can you explain what experience you have with kids like this, Kaz? Anybody in your family have autism spectrum issues - like my brother? Have you ever worked with such people - like Eeka has or like my kids' godfather has? You don't seem to be listening to people here who have such experiences because that might mean you are actually incorrect about the miraculous solution capacity of your technological prescriptions. Perhaps Eeka and I can dispel some of your misconceptions if you are willing to actually learn a little about what it is like to live and work with such folks.

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You offer no solutions yourself. Why is it that just this autistic child seems to disappear once a week? in both your, and eekas exerience, how would you stop this boy from running away?

I understand he has rights but can we at least try a lojack and see results before we lambast the system,
or we let him run until he is robbed, or even worse....

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I'm sure this kid has a number of professionals working with him. I'm sure things are being tried. We don't know -- they may well have something in place that's working great and has reduced the running from every day to once a month. Again, he doesn't seem to do anything particularly dangerous when he's out, so he doesn't warrant being locked up.

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GPS devices are usually the first thing people try with pretty much anyone who has trouble using a phone and/or communicating who they are and where they're going. With folks on the autism spectrum though, the whole issue of the disorder is that folks tend to become very uncomfortable and actively reject things that they don't see a point to. Every person I've tried the bracelets with takes it right off, because they don't get what's in it for them. Even when we've tried creative things like hooking it up to an mp3 player or light-up toy or something that they like and are willing to carry, they take it right apart, because their toy worked just fine without some weird thing hanging on it. It's kind of the nature of ASD.

And yes, you need a court order to lock something onto a person. I'm not even sure where to purchase one that's not removable; the ones in the catalogs of adaptive equipment all are removable, and even these require approval by a human rights committee since you're putting something onto someone's body and using something that communicates information about the person against his will.

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How about an iphone/similar gps capable smartphone? Put a tracking app on the phone under the guise of a game. Unless he can program, he would never know.

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This idea worked with one young adult I work with who likes gadgets. He also will answer the phone so someone can call him and ask him to come home for a particular reason, which he usually will do.

Another young adult I work with has no interest in gadgets, so he wouldn't carry a phone or anything with him when we tried.

Yet another guy doesn't have a running issue, but will only use a certain (discontinued) model of iPod. Not interested in any sort of other gadget and won't touch any other iPod model, even with his music loaded on it and even when his had been out of commission for a month. His residence has bought a few of the "right" ones on eBay when his has worn out. If he needed to carry a GPS, he wouldn't carry an iPhone.

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I mean that sincerely too. This thread has made me realize how little I know about autism.

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I did a bit of one-to-one work to pay for grad school. I don't know anything about this kid, so he might be someone for whom "hey, we should go home now" would work, but he also might not. It's not legal or clinically appropriate to restrain someone unless he's in the process of doing something immediately life-threatening, so a person who was with him might not be able to do much of anything if he's someone for whom verbal prompts don't matter much.

But really, considering that the authorities are aware of this guy, I'm guessing that everything that's legal and clinically appropriate has been tried. When someone has any sort of behavior that could impact safety, it's the first priority of the person's IEP team, clinical team, and DDS team if they have one. I'm not sure how it's helpful that a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who know nothing about support services or human rights seem to have magical solutions that no one in the field could have possibly considered.

I'm guessing this comes from a place of helplessness. We see that this guy routinely gives his family a scare, and we all want to help. It sucks, but sometimes there are people we just can't help. Based on past behavior, he doesn't seem to do anything particularly dangerous, but all the same, it's nerve-wracking for his family (and for all of us in the community, it seems) when no one is sure where this guy is.

A family I work with from rural east Africa was talking with me about how overwhelmed they are by all the services we're getting in place for their child with autism. They told me that at home they have "people like that" but without all these services and laws and things; everyone in the village just knows who's a bit different, and everyone makes sure that these folks have a meal and a place to sleep. Perhaps THAT'S the solution; we can't change that this guy runs off, but we can change what he's likely to run into when he's out and about. It would be a lot easier for his loved ones if they knew that people who encounter him will respond by seeing what he needs, rather than dismissing him as someone who deserves what he gets since he should have been locked up or wearing a tracking device.

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I'm not sure how it's helpful that a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who know nothing about support services or human rights seem to have magical solutions that no one in the field could have possibly considered.

Thank you. When it comes to mental illness and developmental disorders, the people who seem to have the strongest black-and-white opinions on What Needs To Be Done(!) are the people who have little to know experience actually working with the folks in question. As if the people who work with the disabled on a day-to-day basis and likely have extensive clinical training are utterly clueless and just can't see the totally obvious solution that's right in front of their noses.

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Ugggggh, obviously I meant "no," not "know." Wow, I don't usually do stuff like that.

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I didn't know they found him the last time. Maybe they should just stop pretending that he can get around on his own safely and pay someone to travel with him.

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My guess is the parent(s) work and can't take him everywhere with them. I also doubt they can afford to pay someone to travel with him.

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We don't know if he does travel independently and periodically takes off, or if he's not an independent traveler and is bolting from home or school, but none of that is any of our business.

However, if he is transporting himself and is taking off every month or so, he's not "unable" to transport himself safely. Again, think about the behavior as it is, rather than through the lens of a specific disability. When I worked in a treatment program for adolescents with emotional/behavioral disabilities (but no intellectual disability), most of our kids ran from the program much more often than once a month. Sure, we took away privileges and stuff to attempt to teach them not to do it, but for the kids who didn't do anything illegal or particularly dangerous when they ran, we didn't hospitalize them or anything, and they were brought right back to the program where they were free to run off again. When a teen ran off and spent the time riding around on trains or at the mall or at someone's house, we didn't take this as evidence that they weren't able to stay safe in an unlocked program. Because it isn't.

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When the family's repeated inability to control their child ties up public resources and places said child in danger, it becomes the public's business.

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As a member of the public, are you willing to take the first shift when his parent needs to sleep/go to work?

Of course you aren't.

Are you willing to pay sufficient taxes so that his family gets the support they need to prevent his walkabouts?

I doubt it.

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.

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Everyone personally involved with this young man seems to know about his tendency to take trains whenever it suits him. What are the legal obligations of his caretakers to report him missing? He hasn't got hurt yet, but if he had and no one had reported that he hadn't come home, gotten to school, etc in x number of hours, wouldn't there be hell to pay if those people had just operated on the assumption that he would turn up safe as usual? I for one wouldn't want to be the person who said "eh, he'll turn up sooner or later" only to discover that some harm had befallen him.

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Yeah, let's hope something is done before the kid gets into trouble he can't handle. But it's kind of nice living in a city where the authorities actively work to find him rather than just ignoring the situation.

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he should live in some kind of supervised home for autistic kids

or something similar before hes sexually assaulted on the t..

pervs think - nothing can be finer than to shack up with a minor!!!

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He has the human right not to be segregated from typical peers. Plus, at all of the group homes where I consult, people can and do leave when they please. See my post up above that this behavior doesn't warrant being in a locked hospital unit.

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Why don't we all just take care of each other? Honestly, though I worry a bit for his safety it seems like the most prudent thing for us to do is remember his face and look out for him if we see him. Is that really that freaking hard?

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Thank you, Tara, for speaking up. You are exactly right! While all too many cases of parental and institutional neglect certainly do occur, this young person's situation highlights instead our collective responsibility to one another as individual members of our community. Sometimes there are no quick fixes, folks- so let's just look out for one another, please!

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God bless this kid

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According to MBTA Transit Police, who now have a poster up (with an old photo).

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Boston Police report.

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I'm reminded of the cartoon where the train whistle blows and the coyote and sheepdog both stop from the chase and go clock out.

"Good night, Fred."
"See you tomorrow, Harry."

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