A man in his mid-20s regularly roams the streets of my small town in the middle of the night. He looks angry and doesn’t communicate clearly.

Not everyone living in the area knows him. But the police do.

“His father reached out to us,” said Sgt. Adrian Acevedo of the South Orange, N.J., police department, “to tell us his son is blowing off steam, has special needs, and won’t make eye contact or listen to us. If we didn’t have this information, we could mistakenly take him for a burglar.”

All of South Orange’s police officers are aware of this man’s disability. His name, his parent’s phone numbers, and brief details about his special needs are on file at the South Orange Police Office.

“It’s a smart move,” said Gary Weitzen, executive director of Parents of Autistic Children, a nonprofit based in New Jersey that provides training for parents and educators on how to teach children with autism to respond to people in uniform. The group also hosts workshops for police officers and other officials on how to interact with people with special needs. To date, they’ve trained more than 70,000 police officers, firefighters and ambulance squads in New Jersey.