Language Barrier

Hey everyone. Thankfully yesterday was a calm day that doesn't come along very often. I actually slept in to get ready for today's crazy day so this won't be as long as other entries. But I wanted to share an interesting encounter I had.

We've had a string of vehicle thefts in an area that has the other major mall that my zone handles and I was placed on a traffic detail at the end of my shift to help increase some presence in the area. I had a terrible headache at this point in the night and still had to catch up on a report from a vehicle break in. I decided I'd stop a car which had a brake light out and then try and take it easy for the rest of the night.

I start the stop and the vehicle didn't exactly stop right away. I saw a disabled veteran tag on the vehicle and decided right there and then I probably was not going to write a ticket. As I got to the car, I quickly realized why exactly the driver may not have stopped right away. The female driver quickly made it known she was deaf. She was trying to communicate with me via sign language and I was doing my best to try and mouth out and use my own basic hand gestures to get me through the stop. Eventually she pulled out a notebook and we essentially wrote out the dialogue to the traffic stop.

Now I'm a bilingual police officer and many other officers will joke that we speak Ebonics or street slang as a second language as well (it's often funny to see officers in field training come out to the streets and have NO clue what some people are saying and the more experienced officers can talk to them without a hitch) but I personally have never had a run in with American Sign Language.

I wrote down on the notepad to the lady that I was not going to give her a ticket and to be safe and continued along my way with a different outlook on that type of encounter. You truly do not have any idea of what you will run into on any given traffic stop.

Well, I have to start getting ready for this crazy day of New Years Eve. There will be plenty of gunshots and bullets flying around. Just last year, I had some rounds fired off in my direction. I hope all of you do your best to stay safe and please if you're going out tonight. Do not drink and drive.