Sign of the times
Tablets will help cops interact with deaf
THE NYPD is launching a pilot program to help police better communicate with deaf people.
Cops in the three precincts — the 9th in Manhattan, the 115th in Queens and the 121st in Staten Island — will be equipped with tablets to allow them to connect via video with a remote sign-language interpreter — if a live interpreter is not available to handle the call in person, the NYPD said.
There are more than 200,000 people who are deaf or hard of hearing across the five boroughs — and in the past NYPD has been slapped with some lawsuits for failing to properly communicate with them.
In 2009, the police department entered into consent decree to resolve Americans with Disabilities Act violations, and agreed to revise its handling of cases involving the deaf.
The NYPD promised special training for officers, including steps for taking a deaf person into custody — along with sign-language interpreters available 24 hours a day.
Yet in October 2015, a deaf Staten Island woman who sued the city for wrongful arrest after cops ignored her disability won a $750,000 settlement — one of the largest of its kind, her attorney said at the time.
The woman, Diana Williams (below), was able to communicate only through sign language. She called 911 using a telecommunication relay service for the deaf in September 2011 because she needed help evicting a tenant from her Staten Island home. Despite a note on the 911 log that clearly stated the caller was deaf, the cops who arrived didn’t have a sign-language interpreter — and instead of getting one, they arrested Williams and kept her in lockup in the police precinct stationhouse for more than 24 hours. Williams grew so panicked she scrawled the letters “HOSP” on the window of the dusty police cruiser, the suit said. She hoped by getting to a hospital she would find the sign-language interpreter she needed, according to court papers. “The NYPD needs to know how to treat deaf people,” Williams told the Daily News when she filed her lawsuit. Williams’ treatment was not an isolated case. In December, Tanya Ingram, a deaf woman who claimed NYPD cops wrongfully arrested her and denied her an interpreter, settled for $80,000.
The Deaf Justice Coalition, a New York-based alliance of advocacy organizations, said the pilot program was a good start for the NYPD — but more needed to be done.
“We shouldn’t be treated like second-class citizens — least of all by the NYPD,” said coalition member Chris Tester. “But that’s the reality when we’re left with basically no way to communicate with law enforcement. It’s humiliating.”
Susan Herman, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of collaborative policing, said the pilot program was developed in part with the help of the coalition.
“Our goal is to continue our relationship with them as we move beyond a pilot to citywide access to new services,” she said.
The advocacy group “has been instrumental in identifying best practices and preferred services.”