Hello all,

I'm an interpreting student in Sudbury (Canada) and I would like to thank
all of you that responded to the question I put out on the list last month
regarding Interpreter Safety when working with the police. This list is
where our real education on the matter came from. Perhaps we should have
called the Ontario Provincial Police for a guest speaker for our class
rather than the City of Sudbury Police but, no matter, here is what came of
it.

My classmate Alicia and I went to the police station to speak with the two
officers who would be coming to talk to our class one week before their
scheduled presentation. We went over scenarios with them that we had gotten
both from the list and from our professors. Their answer always seemed to
be "You would never be in that situation."

Apparently, we would never be called to an accident scene, we would not be
called when they would be serving warrants, we would not be there when they
are making arrests, we won't be called if they have to go into a home with
the Children's Aid Society, etc, etc.

Oh, and absolutely no exception, handcuffs would NEVER be removed.

We told them that all of the scenarios we had gotten were actually real life
experiences from other interpreters who had been in these various
situations. Apparently, neither police officer assigned to our class had
ever worked with an interpreter before. And in reality, only one police
officer had actually been assigned to us, the other volunteered to speak to
us because of a vested interest she has. She has a three year old deaf
daughter with a cochlear implant. Interesting.

So a week passed and our guest speakers did not do any research other than
the information we gave them and did not prepare a presentation but would
take questions. Things only started to get interesting when our program
coordinator (who is Deaf) finally arrived and started asking questions.

After a while, it was the police officers who were asking us questions.
Apparently, their Police force has absolutely no policy when dealing with
deaf individuals. The presentation ended with the officers suggesting to
our professors that they arrange for a workshop for the police department so
that they can learn how to effectively use interpreters when working with
the Deaf commuity.

After the presentation was over, our professors had a private conversation
with them both. (Have no idea what it was about but I'm sure it was
interesting)

The whole situation really impressed upon us the need to educate the public
on the use of interpreters.

Thanks again to all those of you who enlighten us.

Mary Zaiser
ITP student
Cambrian College
Sudbury, Ontario Canada

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