[lg policy] In Texas, Drivers Ticketed for Inability to Habla Ingles

[Harold Schiffman]

In Texas, Drivers Ticketed for Inability to Habla Ingles

By Ashby Jones

Question: When is it a crime to not know a language?

Answer: Over the last three years, when you’re pulled over for traffic
violations in Dallas.

It’s true. Late last week, the Dallas police chief David Kunkle
announced that Dallas police had, over the past three years, wrongly
ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English. Kunkle promised
to investigate all of the officers involved in the cases. He also
announced that pending cases will be dismissed, and those who paid the
$204 fine for the charge will be reimbursed. Click here for the story
from the Dallas Morning-News. The case that led to the discovery of
all the others occurred Oct. 2, when a woman was stopped for making an
illegal U-turn. An officer cited the woman for three violations:
disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver’s
license and “non-English speaking driver.”

In that case and perhaps the others, officials said, the officer was
confused by a pull-down menu on his in-car computer that listed the
charge as an option. But the law the computer referred to is a federal
statute regarding commercial drivers that Kunkle said his department
does not enforce. The citations amount to a small percentage of the
roughly 400,000 tickets issued by Dallas police each year. But the
total is large enough to have possible legal ramifications, said
George A. Martinez, a professor at the Southern Methodist University
Dedman School of Law.

“It sounds like a policy,” Martinez said. “Discrimination on the basis
of language ability, and that’s targeting Latinos, and so that sounds
pretty serious to me.” Kunkle, who apologized repeatedly, said he
recognized the incidents probably would damage the department’s
relationship with the Hispanic community. “When we deal with crime
victims … our interest is not their immigration status,” Kunkle said.
“It’s not something that we concern ourselves about. We want to serve
all people.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/10/26/in-texas-drivers-ticketed-for-inability-to-habla-ingles/

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.
(H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list