Officer helps California resident who only speaks sign language

[Demovictory9]

A woman in California trying to get her ID only speaks sign language. Luckily, a police office responding to a disturbance call was able to help her overcome the language barrier. The officer also helped her pay for her ID when she came up short on cash.

https://kimatv.com/news/videos/officer-helps-california-resident-who-only-speaks-sign-language

[LonePirate]

1. I've been no fan of LEOs lately but he seems like one of the good ones.

Thank you for sharing this kind story.

[Blue_true]

6. There are a lot of good police officers that routinely do stuff like that.

Then there are the cops and robbers, high speed chase and gunplay types that end up in the news for harming someone. Whether you get the first or second policing your town or city boils down to the caliber of the police chief and command officers, if bad ones hold those slots, there will be trouble at some point.

[dware]

8. ...

^^^This^^^

[Demovictory9]

10. yes

[Haggis for Breakfast]

2. Thank you for this post.

Deaf people often have difficult interactions with police because they are misunderstood. As someone who knows ASL and has assisted with information exchange, I can tell you this story made me smile.

I wish everyone would learn some basic signs. Deaf people are appreciative of anyone who makes an attempt to or tries to learn.

[Demovictory9]

3. it's sad that they called the cops about "a disturbance"

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. How little intelligence does it take to realize that some one is Deaf,

and not "a disturbance ?"

[dware]

7. At least the officer didn't come in with an aggressive attitude

and pull out his asp, pepper spray, taser, etc., he right away saw what the problem was and professionally and personally took care of the situation with all sides satisfied.

Kudos to the officer.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Many years ago I was a ticket agent at National Airport in

Washington DC. Because Gallaudet University is there, we'd get students who did not speak, but only knew sign language. A couple of my co-workers and I decided we needed to learn some basic sign language, and found someone who could teach us. I learned the rock-bottom basics: How to fingerspell the alphabet, and several dozen basic signs to help our passengers.

It was incredibly rewarding. I never got fluent, never got beyond being able to crudely convey basic information, but I'm glad I got to do that.

This is just like learning any foreign language. I have a close friend who speaks several languages, including Italian which was his mother's first language and Bahasa Malay from when he was in the Peace Corps in Maylaysia some 50 years ago. Recently he came to visit me -- I live in New Mexico, and every time I turned around he was speaking to someone else in one of his several languages. Too many Americans are monolingual, and have no clue that so many others out there speak other languages -- and here I'm including ASL. If I were dictator of North America I'd start everyone with a second language in first grade, and pile on new languages every few years. Sort of like they do it in Europe.

Thank you for posting this.

[Hekate]

12. Poindexter, here's to you for learning ASL for your airport job...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Thank you.

I didn't learn very much. I was constantly in awe of how the deaf students worked so hard to communicate with us hearing people. I cannot imagine what it must be like, to be always struggling to communicate with the larger world.

I had a couple of friends who were sign language interpreters, and I admired them immensely.

That experience helped me appreciate my many levels of privilege. I'm white. I am able-bodied. I can hear and speak fluently. I can read and write. I find it easy to communicate with others, meaning I don't readily offend or piss off others.

I'm probably missing other levels of privilege. Oh, there's the Old White Lady privilege, which means I never get a traffic ticket. Yeah, really. I make the same kind of dumb mistakes everyone does: drive a bit too fast, don't quite come to a full stop at a stop sign. And when I get pulled over, the cop looks at me, sees mom or grandma (and this is even though I live in New Mexico, the cops are all Hispanic and I am decidedly not Hispanic) and isn't willing to give mom or grandma a ticket, so I get off with a warning. Yes, Old White Lady Privilege, and I promise I don't try to exploit it, even though I appreciate it.

For what it's worth, some years back, when my sons were first driving, I told them more than once that they'd get a ticket in circumstances where I wouldn't, just because they were young and male, no matter how well they behaved. And each of them experienced exactly that once or twice.

Old Lady Privilege. It's a thing.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

14. As a deaf person who doesn't sign

I appreciate it when people are willing to be patient with me and speak to me clearly. More deaf people don’t sign than do.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

15. I was surprised to discover that.

Mainstreaming has become popular. I don't think anyone should judge what path a Deaf person takes with regards to ASL.

My great uncle was deafened at the age of four due to Scarlet Fever. Because he had already acquired speech, it never occurred to my great-grandparents to learn BSL (That part of the family is from Scotland.) or ASL upon arrival here. But it never slowed him down.

I earned a degree in Deaf Studies at Ohlone College in Fremont, CA. Some of my teachers were Deaf, some hearing, one HoH. Because of its close proximity to CSD-Fremont, we got to attend classes on their campus too. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I never became fluent, and I believe that if you aren't born Deaf, or into a Deaf family, you are ALWAYS a student of ASL. And then there are "home" signs, and if you travel, you encounter the same sort of "accent" issues within Deaf communities, which can be the source of light entertainment. For example -- In CA, we always signed "micro-wave oven" with a rapid "m" followed by a fast "w" which sort of simulated what a micro-wave oven does. When I moved to WA, I volunteered at the Library of the Washington School for the Deaf (Go Terriers !) and nobody knew what I was saying when I signed that. Lots of those.

I still try to sign around the house to keep in practice. But I don't currently have any Deaf friends . . . my loss.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

16. I signed microwave

With my pinky. Funny how signs can differ even in the same country. It might have been a joke sign, normal wave then a “micro”wave.

I think Pasteurised is also a funny, but actual, sign. I’m not sure of the handshape but it is signed as if going past your eyes.

The number of people who excitedly try to sign to me and I tell them I don’t use it far exceeds the number of times I’ve seen signers in public. I rarely see deaf signers, I see a lot of deaf people who speak though. It’s the main reason why I didn’t progress further in ASL, I didn’t need it because I don’t see anyone else using it.

I also took ASL because I didn’t want to criticise a language I hadn’t learned. It was interesting and even my own ASL teacher criticised the language. I grew up using Cued Speech and the teacher, who was a teacher at the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, said he wanted Cued Speech at the school to give them access to spoken language. He said that he would put documents on the overhead projector for his students to read and they couldn’t read it so he had to translate it into sign language.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

17. I guess because I was in the academic "bubble,"

I saw a lot of Signing going on around me. My Deaf teachers were all graduates of Gallaudet, and some were participants in the "Deaf Puh Now" movement in 1988. Our superintendent knew King Jordan.

What got me into ASL was HIV/AIDS. I worked for throughout the 1990s for the U S Public Health Service in San Francisco. The medical terminology that surrounds that illness and all of the opportunistic infections that accompany it are difficult for even educated hearing people to understand. I was at a meeting when a physician I knew was discussing how hard it was to explain not only the disease, but the complications, the medications, the available clinical trials to his Deaf patients (who sometimes had their children there as interpreters - an extremely embarrassing situation for the parent patients to be in, much less their children !) and how he wished there were more MEDICAL interpreters available. This broke my heart. So, I enrolled at Ohlone to learn ASL, with the goal of becoming a medical interpreter. Sadly, I got side-tracked when Migraines became my constant companion. I earned my degree, but the Master's Level training that I would need to achieve my goal never happened. I still wish I could have gotten further than I did.

Take care. Be well.

[dware]

4. Thank you for this story.

Not all cops are evil POS's, in fact, IMHO, most are honest, hard working officers who want to help the public.

[Blue_true]

9. I agree. Like every profession, there are a few bad apples that spoil things for everyone. nt