Guess what?  Yeah, some people are deaf.  And yet, they’re still people, not some weird subhuman species to be ignored because they just don’t get it when you talk at them.  One of the most intractable problems with police is dealing with people who have a disability, and with shocking regularity, bad things happen. 

For somewhat obvious reasons, being deaf seems to bring out the worst, and stupidest, in law enforcement.  What happened to Timothy Siaki is a good example.  From  MSNBC by way of Turley :

Siaki does not speak, read, write or read lips and he and Moore communicate by American Sign Language, the suit states.

The couple were at a local motel on May 14, 2010, when they started to “verbalize sounds which … may sound like the deaf person is speaking loudly or abruptly,” the suit said.

Those sounds led to someone calling police about a disturbance. Two deputies dispatched to the scene broke down the motel room door and arrested Siaki.

And he sat in jail for the next 25 days because Adams County, Colorado, Sheriff Doug Darr didn’t bother to find an American Sign Language interpreter.  Siaki had no idea why he was sitting in jail, or what was happening to him.  No doubt someone told him.  If things went the usual course, they likely told him over and over, each time raising their voice a bit more, until they were screaming at him.  After all, if you scream at a deaf person, should they hear?

Disabilities make the job really difficult for cops.  Deaf, blind, developmentally disabled. Where does it stop? What are they supposed to do when they give a perfectly reasonable command to jump and a guy doesn’t do it?  Isn’t that what weapons are for?

Of course, it’s easy to say they could have done more afterward, but they make split second decisions, even if they take 25 days to make them. 

And hidden just below the surface of this crack police work is the question of why they arrested Siaki at all.  For making weird “deaf guy noises?”   There’s no fault for responding to a call of a disturbance. There isn’t even a problem with breaking down the door of the hotel room, likely after no one responded to their knocks or screams, “police, open up or we’ll kill you, you lousy commies.”  All completely understandable.

But once inside, did they observe anything to suggest a crime?  No one hurt. No blood. Not even a boo boo.  Where’s the offense?  While the article fails to speak to this aspect of the debacle, I’ll engage in some rank speculation.  Siaki was arrested for lack of obedience.  He assaulted the police with his deafness.  They demanded answers and action, and he didn’t comply. Deaf people can be so contemptuous.

How they explained this to the judge who had Siaki held is another curiosity, but why would a judge demonstrate any degree of recognition of a problem with a deaf man who fails to argue his cause or clearly explain his predicament.  It’s not like the judge is sufficiently educated to recognize and appreciate the situation. Plus, the judge was probably busy and preoccupied with more important matters, like lunch or golf or re-election.

In an excess of caution, it’s worth noting that deaf people don’t always make things easier for themselves.  There’s a militant wing among the hearing impaired that argues deafness is not a disability, but an alternate culture.  They refuse to acknowledge that they suffer from any impairment, and contend instead that they simply speak a different language and enjoy a world that the hearing can neither understand nor appreciate. These are the people who refuse to allow their children to get cochlear implants, as if it’s converting to radical Islam. 

Because they suffer no disability, there’s no issue to be resolved, no problem to be fixed.  Until they find themselves staring down the end of a cop’s barrel, and can’t manage to make their philosophical point quickly enough to beat the rush of the bullet.  At that particular moment, it likely seems that they would have done better to embrace teaching hearing people ASL rather than disdain their interest because the hearing are unworthy of participating in the joys of deaf culture.

So Siaki is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act for compensation for the 25 days spent sitting in a cell waiting for somebody to explain to him in ASL why he’s there. This suit would be novel, except for the fact that it’s anything but.  In Jefferson County, Colorado, the same thing happened, where Anna Orozco was twice arrested, but they had no one capable of communicating with her in ASL. 

One might suspect that the various sheriffs in Colorado would have gotten the message that they are required to provide a means of communicating with the folks they toss in the slammer, and they would have details like this all wrapped up ahead of time.  Maybe Sheriff Darr didn’t hear.