[lg policy] St. Kate’s students help change the way St. Paul police make arrests

Wed May 30 14:32:27 UTC 2018

 St. Kate’s students help change the way St. Paul police make arrests

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By Mara H. Gottfried <https://www.twincities.com/author/mara-gottfried/> |
mgottfried at pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: May 29, 2018 at 5:37 pm | UPDATED: May 30, 2018 at 8:07 am
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What started as a class project for three St. Catherine University students
led to St. Paul police changing its policy on how St. Paul police officers
are to communicate with people who are deaf.

The students, who just completed their second year in the St. Paul
university’s American Sign Language/interpreting program, raised their
concerns in a letter to the police chief at the end of December.
[image: Undated courtesy photo, circa May 2018, of Catherine Fensom, one of
three students in the American Sign Language/Interpreting program at St.
Catherine University who wrote to the St. Paul police chief about their
concerns about the department's policy for communicating with people who
are deaf. The police department met with community members and recently
changed their policy, as a result of the letter from the students.
(Courtesy of Catherine Fensom)]St. Kate’s student Catherine Fensom

“Interactions with the police can be stressful and difficult, and clear
communication is important,” wrote students Catherine Fensom, Liza Leja and
Pat Schmatz. “The potential for misunderstanding is high when the
interpreter has limited language skills.”

Deputy Police Chief Paul Iovino said they immediately got to work after
hearing from the students. They met with an official from the Minnesota
Department of Human Services’ Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, along with
representatives from six associations who work with deaf people, to discuss
policy suggestions. They implemented many of them this month in a revised
policy <https://www.stpaul.gov/books/40901-persons-disabled-communication>,
Iovino said.

The previous policy said an officer must make a “qualified” interpreter
available before taking a statement from a deaf person who is under arrest,
but the revised policy specifies the interpreter must be nationally
certified. Officers were previously required to provide victims or
witnesses with a pen and paper or other way to communicate. The new policy
says they may provide them an interpreter.

Iovino applauded the St. Kate’s students for taking their classroom
learning and applying it to the community to bring about change.

“It’s not always flattering to read that we have an outdated policy that
deserves and needs immediate attention, but we immediately wanted to be
very good stewards with the policy,” he said. “… “We do want to make sure
we’re providing trusted service with respect to all communities and this
gets us closer to continuing to do that.”

One of the groups involved in providing feedback to police, Helping Educate
to Advance the Rights of the Deaf (HEARD), said in a statement Tuesday they
“have a number of concerns with the policy and are working with our
communities to develop a public response.”
PREVIOUS LAWSUIT

The police department agreed to change its policy in 2013
<https://www.twincities.com/2013/05/08/deaf-motorist-who-got-93k-from-st-paul-hopes-police-learn-from-arrest-incident/>
as part of a $93,450 settlement in a federal lawsuit filed by Doug Bahl,
who was deaf
<https://www.twincities.com/2014/01/23/doug-bahl-63-remembered-as-strong-advocate-for-minnesota-deaf-community/>
.

In 2006, a St. Paul police officer pulled Bahl over for a traffic violation
and Bahl requested to communicate with him in writing. Bahl said in his
lawsuit that the officer sprayed him with a chemical irritant, dragged him
out of his car and beat him.

Bahl’s attorney, Rick Macpherson, said Tuesday he noticed the newest policy
change emphasizes using certified interpreters. That issue is at the center
of a federal lawsuit Macpherson filed on behalf of Catrina Hooper, who is
deaf, against the St. Paul police department last summer.

Hooper asked for a qualified American Sign Language interpreter when she
attempted to file domestic assault charges and was provided with an officer
who is not certified in ASL, her lawsuit says.

Requiring that police use a certified interpreter is “a good step forward”
in the policy, Macpherson said, but he said that was supposed to happen
after the Bahl settlement agreement.

“Perhaps if they had adopted this policy after the Bahl agreement … Ms.
Hooper might not have had the problem she experienced,” said Macpherson,
who is with the Minnesota Disability Law Center.

Hooper’s lawsuit with St. Paul is ongoing. The city denies that the officer
who was provided to Hooper was not qualified as an interpreter, according
to a filing in the case.

Hooper also filed suit against Ramsey County and the sheriff’s office,
saying she was not provided an ASL interpreter in the jail when she
requested one, and they reached a $40,000 settlement last year. She had
been arrested on a misdemeanor warrant, according to the city’s legal
response to the suit.

Iovino said the policy change wasn’t related to the Hooper case, though
“the timing was certainly appropriate.”
COMMUNITY INVOLVED

For a project for their deaf culture class, Fensom said she and her
classmates decided, “with the climate in today’s society regarding police
officers, we thought it would be interesting to look at relations between
police and the deaf community.”
[image: Undated courtesy photo, circa May 2018, of Liza Leja, one of three
students in the American Sign Language/Interpreting program at St.
Catherine University who wrote to the St. Paul police chief about their
concerns about the department's policy for communicating with people who
are deaf. The police department met with community members and recently
changed their policy, as a result of the letter from the students.
(Courtesy of Liza Leja)]St. Kate’s student Liza Leja

To begin with, Fensom, Leja and Schmatz told the police department in their
letter that the name of the policy — “Persons Handicapped in Communication”
— was “startling” and “(m)any people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing do
not consider themselves handicapped.”

Iovino said they didn’t realize the wording was outdated. The new policy is
called “Effective Communication with Persons Who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing,
Deaf/Blind, Have Hearing Loss and/or for Whom English is a Second Language.”

People from the deaf community weren’t involved in the policy change last
time, according to the police department. The students wrote they had
“learned about the long history of hearing people making decisions for and
about deaf people” and they urged the police department to seek the
community’s input.

Marie Koehler, Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Deaf and Hard of
Hearing Services regional manager, said her agency helped connect the
police department with people in the community and co-hosted a meeting.

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“St. Kate’s students started a conversation that will make our communities
safer by improving understanding between police and people who are deaf,
deafblind and hard of hearing,” Koehler said.

The group HEARD met with St. Paul police in mid-March and provided some
feedback. The police department said they would follow-up and provide
opportunities to comment on the draft policy, according to HEARD’s
statement, but they were surprised on May 15 to see an email from St. Paul
police with the final policy.

“The version as it stands has a number of deeply concerning issues that
will lead to miscommunication and rights violations,” HEARD said in a
statement on Tuesday.

Iovino said last week that the document is “fluid” and “if things evolve …
we’re going to change it again.”

The police department has distributed information department-wide about
their revised policy.

Fensom said she and her classmates weren’t expecting anything to come from
their letter.

“All change starts small,” said Fensom, who is from Moorhead, Minn. “It’s
really exciting that the police department took our suggestions and
implemented them, and hopefully this will be the start of more connections
between them and the deaf community.”

   - Tags:
   - Education <https://www.twincities.com/tag/education/>
   - St. Paul <https://www.twincities.com/tag/st-paul/>

[image: MaraGottfried]
Mara H. Gottfried <https://www.twincities.com/author/mara-gottfried/>
Mara Gottfried has been a Pioneer Press reporter since 2001, mostly
covering public safety. Gottfried lived in St. Paul as a young child and
returned to the Twin Cities after graduating from the University of
Maryland. You can reach her at 651-228-5262.
Follow Mara H. Gottfried mara.gottfried
<https://facebook.com/mara.gottfried> Follow Mara H. Gottfried
@MaraGottfried <https://twitter.com/MaraGottfried>
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-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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