For the past three months, the Daphne police have been trained in small groups in the Epilepsy Foundation’s  “Law Enforcement Initiative” by Executive Director Mitch Garrett and Caroline Foster, director of public relations/community.

This program teaches law enforcement personnel how to recognize a person in seizure — and particularly, realize that the person is not intoxicated or on drugs.

The program also teaches law enforcement personnel what to do to assist a person experiencing a seizure.

“The Epilepsy Foundation recognizes the growing need to provide information to law enforcement officers regarding key issues involved in police response to individuals with epilepsy and to calls relating to epileptic seizures,” the organization stated in a news release. “Law enforcement officers likely encounter people with epilepsy in a number of different settings — namely, during a seizure as the result of a call for emergency aid, at the onset of a seizure, and when a person is in a confused state following a seizure.”

The actual episode will have passed but the brain will not have recovered fully from the electrical onslaught that caused it. Sometimes, the seizure behavior is interpreted as criminal or threatening.

Individuals experiencing seizures have many times been wrongly arrested and jailed because they appeared intoxicated or on drugs. When arriving at the jail in these cases, it is discovered that the person arrested has a seizure disorder.

Whatever the cause of the seizure, the event itself is a disabling condition and requires a police response that recognizes the involuntary nature of the episode and the inability of the individual involved to make conscious decisions or respond to directions from a law enforcement officer.

In a few instances, failure to recognize seizures in people who are in custody has had a fatal outcome.

“The Law Enforcement Initiative” educates and informs law enforcement  personnel on how to avoid these mistakes and misconceptions.

Detective Sargent  Brian Gulsby of the Daphne Police Department arranged and coordinated the training with Epilepsy Foundation Alabama.