Neurodiversity in Action: Why Police and Medicine Need Unconventional Minds

In the police force, as an autistic person with possible ADHD, I respected the deep-rooted hierarchy but came from a lifetime of learning by imitation. I laughed at jokes I didn’t understand and focused on high-priority tasks. After a few years I became the team leader and delegated lower-priority work, which my colleagues actually appreciated. I rarely socialized - I skipped breakfast and after-work drinks with them, and they didn’t mind. At the academy they saw me as “competitive,” while at the station I was the serious officer who came in, did his job, and left, though I collaborated readily when it was strictly about work.

I handled cases involving abused children and women, as well as people with mental disorders, drawing on my earlier experience as a medical technician. As a cyber-crime specialist I studied as much psychology as I could to support vulnerable people, because alongside justice, one of my guiding principles was protecting those in need. That sense of duty led me to break the unwritten rule of corporatism and testify against a superior, which triggered years of harassment until I was retired on grounds of depression under a completely erroneous diagnosis - they refused even to consider that an autistic officer could have graduated near the top of his class.

Day to day I was serious but practiced diplomacy whenever possible. I coped with sirens, screams, and gunshots as best I could, though they bothered me endlessly. My dislike of being touched was eased by the rule that no one could lay hands on me while I was on duty.

In investigations I was constantly analyzing cases and sleeping only about four hours a night, which let me envision countless variables and possibilities. By the end of each day I was physically and mentally exhausted from pretending to be someone I wasn’t and forcing myself to smile. My rapid switching from one task to another, or my restless pacing when a job felt unimportant, generally went unnoticed - I could step outside for a smoke or find another chore and no one thought it odd.

During cases involving minors, or any matter of similar gravity, I focused intensely. If someone interrupted me I could become extremely angry, just as I did when things were not clean and organized—sometimes even scolding more senior colleagues. My standards were higher than most, and people tended to avoid me for that, on top of my strictness.

Hierarchically I was inflexible: if a superior issued a lawful order, I obeyed without question. Yet illogical situations frustrated me, a common occurrence in police work. I clashed with a colleague who was slow because he insisted on making reports look pretty; I told him they needed to be clear, concise, and fast given our workload, which caused friction.

I complied fully with legal and professional requirements and had no disciplinary issues until I testified against that superior—a step no one else dared take—which changed everything. Because I was so straightforward, I was never allowed to play the “bad cop”: I would have informed the suspect of every right and spoiled the strategy, so I always had to be the good cop.

I was often overloaded with work, even taking cases from other units and the complaints office because orders came from above, and I carried them out without protest. To this day no colleague knows or suspects that I’m autistic and possibly have ADHD. Only one social worker ever noticed, thanks to details like my depth of knowledge in certain areas and her collaboration with autism foundations.

My daily struggles were having to mask how I felt and what I wanted to do or say. I had to endure being touched even though I hated it, raised voices or even shouting, being pushed, and witnessing injustices or favoritism, which violated my principles. Also, sometimes staying still was difficult, and when I was focused on a problem, every time I was interrupted especially for something trivial I had to swallow the intense anger this generated in me, often feeling frustrated because I couldn’t say things as they really were.

When I testified against a superior because no one else would, I suffered harassment from several colleagues and commanders for a couple of years. During that time my father had cancer, and as punishment they refused to transfer me, so I had to deal with many things: threats from armed people, being forced to make photocopies in front of more than 300 fellow officers as an “example,” and not being allowed to go home to care for my sick father. All this led me one day to take several boxes of pills to calm the accumulated anger - an incident the force seized upon to retire me, because I was endangering the positions of several commanders, including the station’s highest authority (the commissioner).

As an example, I hold a qualification that only one in two thousand officers in the technological-crime corps has (in addition to higher studies in telecommunications; since I was sixteen, without my parents’ understanding or support, I had to work and study at the same time), yet I was replaced by someone who barely knew how to turn on a computer and had never been on patrol even once.

Many colleagues, both healthcare professionals and police officers, didn't know how to act in these cases, as with abused children or women. However, not only out of empathy, but because you know what it's like, you know exactly how to act, what needs they have, etc., and thus help better, even avoiding dangerous situations.