‘Long Overdue’ Program Aims To Improve How NYPD Deals With The Deaf

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A program to give deaf citizens access to on-call sign language interpreters when they deal with police was launched this month, nearly seven years after advocates began pressing the NYPD to improve how it deals with with the hearing disabled.

The program, which launched last week in three police precincts throughout New York City, was welcomed by advocates who called it an important step but questioned why it had taken the NYPD so long to get the pilot program off the ground.

Nearly 200,000 residents in New York City are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Deaf New Yorkers have repeatedly struggled to communicate with police officers, according to advocates and lawyers who spoke with Patch about their work.

The police department has also faced a string of lawsuits from deaf citizens accusing the NYPD of failing to provide them with sign language interpreters while keeping them in custody.

The new pilot program, which launched on April 17, is running in the 9th precinct in Manhattan, which includes the East Village, and in the 115th precinct in Queens and the 121st precinct in Staten Island.

It will provide those precincts with on-call sign language interpreters who can respond if a deaf citizen is stopped by police or comes to an officer with a problem. If more immediate assistance is needed, officers in those precincts will also have tablets that use a video-conferencing system to connect them with licensed interpreters.

The policy comes after nearly seven years of consulting with the Deaf Justice Coalition.

“We think that this is long-overdue,” said Antony Gemmell of the DJC. “We’re happy that this is now happening. It has been a very long road and it has taken longer than we hoped and longer than we expected but we’re happy now that it’s started and anxious for it to roll out as quickly as possible.”

Gemmell told Patch it had taken seven years of conversations with the NYPD to develop this pilot program. In that time, deaf New Yorkers have been wrongfully arrested, detained for long periods of time and refrained from reporting crimes because communication with police officers is so challenging, he said. Tina Kopic, the advocacy content specialist at the Ruderman Family Foundation, told Patch that standard-operating procedure for officers making a street stop clashes with sign language.

“A person who is deaf or hard of hearing or uses sign language needs their hands to communicate,” Kopic explained. “But the number one thing that police officers to do feel safe is restrain hands.”

This inability has led the NYPD to pay out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits filed by deaf New Yorkers.

Eric Baum and Andrew Rozynski have represented three deaf New Yorkers in lawsuits against the NYPD.

“The decisions were made in those cases by NYPD not to provide proper communication,” Baum told Patch of their clients’ cases. “There’s no excuse for it.”

Baum and Rozynski represented Staten Island resident Diana Williams in her suit against the department, which resulted in a $750,000 settlement. Williams, who is deaf and unable to speak, was handcuffed in 2011 and remained in custody for nearly 24 hours without being provided access to an interpreter. The city did not admit to violating Williams’ civil rights as part of the settlement.

The NYPD pilot program will run for 12 weeks, and a department spokesperson said in an email that the program will be evaluated upon completion.

Lead image courtesy of Toper.