No interpreter: Sheriff held deaf man for 25 days

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No interpreter: Sheriff sued by deaf man held 25 days

Fabulous attitude. We have no idea what's going on, so we just lock the guy up, just to be safe. That it then took them almost four weeks (of the man's life that he is never going to get back) to arrange for an interpreter to find out what actually was going on ... geez.

He probably can be happy he didn't appear menacing to the police in addition to making weird noises since he then would have probably been overwhelmed, if not peppered, tasered or shot.

 

That does seem harsh. However, I don't understand how a deaf person reaches adulthood and cannot read, write, speak, or read lips. I can understand how the police would just think the person was being obstinate.

 

Well.... at first, yes. And that is sufficient explanation for his original arrest. But how long would it take to figure out that the guy really couldn't speak? The answer certainly should be a heck of a lot shorter than 25 days.

That said, I agree that this is a bit unusual. There are obvious reasons why people who are deaf have difficulty in speaking clearly. However, (like you) I have never met a deaf person who could not read or write by the time they reached adulthood. I'm sure it makes the learning process much more difficult when you cannot hear, but because the vast majority of people do manage to do it suggests that this particular guy is outside the norm.

 

Something about this case smells funny. I don't believe that the police hold a person for that long on a whim. I'm sure they figured out right quick that he was deaf. It sounds to me like the guy and his girlfriend are also mentally disabled in addition to their deafness -- I mean, I can understand not being able to read lips, but can't speak, write or read? That's not a descriptor of a deaf person, it's a descriptor of someone with a mental or cognitive disability.

Before passing judgement, more facts need to be provided. Right nopw, it's just inflammatory, sensationalist shock value material.

 

Why are you all surprised that Deaf people can't read or write? There is still an attitude that Deaf people are stupid and a lot of them weren't taught to write (up until the 70's!).

There is also a huge Deaf community world-wide that don't lipread at all for pretty much the same reason that people in Pakistan don't learn Spanish unless they want to

 

Interesting point. I have yet to find a source that shows how old this guy is. I just assumed that he was in his twenties, but maybe not.

 

As I said, the lipreading thing is understandable. The rest of it, though, is troublesome. I'm working on the assumption that he's deaf and not stupid, so he had 25 days to make himself understood. As I said, cops aren't dumb, so they knew he was deaf. I do not believe that they kept him "just because he was deaf". They probably had another reason for doing so.

And as for his wife -- she was free and in the clear. She could have gone to a lawyer or SOMEONE in the deaf community and said "my husband is being held, can you help us?" and got him a translator. WTF was she doing for this time period?

My suspicion is that she indeed got him help, or he got help of some sort, and that the story isn't telling us all of what happened. Instead, selective facts are being pulled out and used to unfairly paint the police as horrid, insensitive thugs. They may well be, but more must be known before that determination is known.

 

LKD,
this is ludicrous. You can invent putatives (like the sensational but sadly secret justification for the police that neither the beleaguered police department (in light of the criticism as a result of the story, they can be counted on to have made such a justification public, if they had any) nor the news report (by the sensationalist, police hating liberal media) told us about) into the story all you like - but what about plausibility?

In contrast to your gut instincts, as the fact that no charges were being made strongly suggests, it is exceedingly likely that the man was simply innocent of anything remotely criminal (not even disorderly conduct), that the cops were just perfectly incompetent hicks with a ham fisted 'in doubt, for lack of a better idea, lock him up, let's sort things out later' attitude, in over their head with a novelty like a deaf person, or just sloppy, and that there is nothing else to it.

 

In a nutshell, what I find most concerning is that the Sheriffs, wanting to play it safe, treated the man as guilty until proven innocent, even though they had nothing on him.

For those slow to understand - the reversal of the assumption of innocence is a BIG problem in a criminal justice system. It what makes the difference between a citizen and a subject.

It is, sadly, somewhat pronounced in the US. The power of prosecutors, their ability to add charges, to coerce plea deals, and the erosion of habeas corpus, or more general, the phenomenons of Guantanamo and military commissions are indicative of that. Even more concerning is that Americans appear to be comfortable with it. I am not and certainly I wouldn't be if I was an American.

 

I was thinking of two things, and I am aware I'm getting off topic a bit:

For one there that egregious and shameful piece of legislation - the detainee provisions within the defence authorization bill that the Senate adopted last week. There is no outrage about it, despite it's appalling dimensions. That bill opens the door for wider detentions without due process including in the continental US, including military detention of US citizens without due process. I explain to myself the lack of outrage about that by that over the years, the general public in America has apparently been grown to accept the notion that those who are detained are necessarily guilty. Well, that is not so.

And then, there is LKD's odd notion, based on nothing really, that the story isn't telling us all of what happened, and that thus, he sure was guilty of something. I'd rather expected to have gotten that one, and the generous deference to authority, from Shosh.

It's basically an expression of the same mindset.

 

I usually try to refrain from blanket statements, but I agree with Ragusa about Americans apathy towards their erosion of rights. Certain activist groups might be latching onto it but other than that nobody really seems to care. I, for one, was outraged when I heard that they can now detain American citizens without trial, and especially when I realized it's gotten next to no coverage that I have seen in the media when this should be such a major issue. From the revoking of due process to the suppression of peaceful assemblers, most Americans seem to defer to authority as if the burden of proof is on the citizens to prove the authority is unjust, and not the other way around.

 

BTA,
one more thing - as for this happening in a backwater in America, and that it could happen in a backwater in Germany as well. I doubt it.

Our police is organised, and in particular trained, on a state level. They recruit competitively on a state level. We just don't have totally local hick police departments, to use that nasty words.

When hicks become police in Germany, they will have to go through the same 4 year training as the effete urban elite. I understand that the training processes for rural police departments and sheriff's offices in the US is, hmm, far more informal. We don't really have part time police either.

 

This is why I think sign language should be on every countries national curriculum

 

There is nothing wrong with my mindset, Ragusa. I just find it implausible that there was no other reason than redneck stupidity for what happened. I find it implausible that a lawyer was not immediately brought in on the case. Or the media. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Unlike some, I do not immediately jump on the "Police are Baaaaddd!" bandwagon -- I prefer to learn more about the situation before slapping down ther boys in blue.

It is possible that the sheriffs in question are total douchebags, I concede that. But that is most assuredly NOT the ONLY possibility here.

 

LKD,
and the only limit to the other possible possibilities is the horizon of your fantasy. Get my point?

When I see you over a prone body with a knife, stabbing it repeatedly, crying 'Die, die, die!' it is of course possible that it is merely a flashback of possible earlier LSD consumption on my part that I have so far been utterly unaware of - and that in fact you just were trying to give first aid, or something, with that knife, say, by relieving blood pressure, or something.

The key is plausibility, not possibility. What people are inclined to consider plausible is the result of preferences and of their mindset. Prejudice and giving authorities the benefit of doubt as a matter of course are part of that.

 

I admit that I am almost always willing to give law enforcement officers the benefit of the doubt.
I am not, however, prejudiced against deaf people. I believe that like any other person, a deaf person can also be a sack of crap.
I find it difficult to believe that in this day and age, knowing the flack they would receive, the cops held this guy for no good reason. I can imagine they might have had a good one but the optics were bad so charges were not laid. My central point remains the same: we do not have enough information to come to the ironclad conclusion that the cops were the evil redneck thugs you have so clearly labelled them as.
To be honest, the prejudice I am seeing here is an inordinately quick rush to vilify law enforcement.

 

To be fair, I don't think anyone was arguing otherwise, on either point. I don't think you are prejudiced, and I certainly do not think the group of deaf people, and the group of sacks of crap are mutually exclusive groups - and I don't think anyone was arguing contrary to that.