A recurring conundrum involves police confrontation with disabled citizens.  It happens. Regularly. And the deaf are particularly problematic, as the first thing a cop does is shout a command.  There is nothing less useful when addressing a deaf person than to scream a command, but that’s invariably the first thing a cop does. The second usually involves pain.

The problem arises out of ignorance. A cop assumes anyone he confronts to be “normal,” in the sense that they have all senses firing as expected.  Certainly, there is nothing terribly out of the ordinary for a person to be deaf (or blind, or psychologically impaired, for that matter), yet cops presume everyone to be able-bodied and minded in all respects, upon pain of, well, pain. It may be wrong, but at least it’s somewhat understandable. 

When it came to Lashonn White, however, there was no excuse.  From KIROTV:

Late in the evening on April 6, White said she called for police assistance after a guest reportedly attacked her in her own apartment.

Deaf since birth, White used a special video-equipped phone, connected to a TV and a Web camera, to call 911. A certified American Sign Language interpreter on the other end verbally relayed White’s pleas for help to a Tacoma police dispatcher.

So which gave it away?  The special 911 video system? The ASL interpreter?

On the 911 calls, White herself made it perfectly clear.

“I’m deaf.  I can’t hear if they’re out front knocking or whatever … I can’t—are they going to the front or back? Where are the police at?”

Or maybe it was that White specifically advised the dispatcher that she was deaf. That should have nailed it down, and it did.

Computer-aided dispatch (CAD) logs show Tacoma police officer Ryan Koskovich and his partner, Michael Young, were outside White’s apartment complex in about six minutes. 

It also reflects that officers received texts along the way stating, “Person doing the hitting is a Sophia” and “Vict. is Lashonn White.”

In addition, it appears from internal police records obtained by KIRO Team 7 Investigators, Koskovich and his partner were repeatedly given information that the victim could not hear a thing.

Unlike the many instances where the police come in “blind,” unaware of a disability or otherwise unable to discern an issue that removes a person from the anticipated norm, the cops responding to White’s 911 call were expressly advised that their victim was deaf.  Short of dropping an ASL interpreter from the sky into the mix, there was nothing more the victim could have done to make clear that she was deaf. Nothing.

And still…

Within seconds of running outside to meet police, Officer Koskovich pulled his Taser and fired a two-barbed electric wire into White’s ribs and stomach.

“All I’m doing is waving my hands in the air, and the next thing I know, I’m on the ground and then handcuffed. It was almost like I blacked out. I was so dizzy and disoriented,” White said.

Witnesses said White began bleeding heavily from her knuckles and the right side of her face swelled up immediately after she hit the pavement following the Taser jolt.

As is required by CYA policy, the police having massively screwed up by nailing the victim, the deaf victim, having been told she was deaf, they arrested White for assaulting the pavement with her face.  The police then prepared official reports to justify themselves.

Officer Koskovich and his partner submitted nearly identical descriptions of the arrest in their reports.

 Koskovich wrote in part: “I yelled for White to ‘stop’ and held my right hand up to signal for White to stop. White ignored my commands.”

He added, “White was making a loud grunting noise, had a piercing stare in her eyes and had a clenched right fist in the air.” 

Ah yes, the loud grunting noise and piercing stare of the deaf. Reason alone to tase her.  After all, that clenched fist posed an immediate thread to their lives. Something had to be done.  And still, the problems for White weren’t over.

Tacoma police arrested Lashonn on two criminal charges, simple assault and obstruction of a public servant (law enforcement officer). Then they carted her off to jail. She spent 60 hours there – also without an interpreter- before a city prosecutor reviewed her case and asked that charges not be filed at all.

There is a clear duty to provide a deaf arrestee with an ASL interpreter as soon as possible, and White requested one to no avail. From what appears, White was never provided with an interpreter at all, and had the city prosecutor not determined that charges should not be filed, she would have remained detained in silence.  Why she was not arraigned on the requisite CYA charges within 24 hours remains a mystery, as does why it took 60 hours for a prosecutor to decide to toss the case, eventually causing her to be released.

On the one hand, this might be viewed as yet another example of why the victim of a crime might want to give serious thought to calling the cops. After all, isn’t it bad enough to be victimized once?  But the snarkiness aside, there are times when a person requires the aid of the police, and does everything within her power, and indeed effectively, to communicate to the cops that there is a special circumstance that alters the standard police operating procedure of shouting commands and expecting citizens to be obsequious.

There is absolutely no excuse for what happened here. No one should have to risk this treatment when seeking the assistance of the police, but that they caused such harm to a deaf woman, and then exacerbated their harm by lying and covering it up is utterly beyond comprehension.  They knew she was deaf, and couldn’t have cared less.