Texas Police Hires First Deaf Female Officer

A Texas woman is making history after being sworn in as the state's first Deaf female police officer.

DALHART, Texas -- History is made in the Lone Star State. The newest recruit for the Dalhart Police Department becomes the first Deaf female police officer.

Her name is Erica Trevino and she's dreamed of being an officer since she was in kindergarten. But growing up, people told her she couldn't achieve her goal because of her disability. Today she proved them wrong as she was officially sworn in with Dalhart Police Department.

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"I'm ready to get to work," said Ofc. Erica Trevino after her swearing-in. It's that same drive and tenacity that led Chief David Conner to look past her disability and discover her special qualities. And that list is a long one.

"I believe she can do the job just like any other other police officer," said David Conner, Dalhart Police Chief. "She has proven time and time again that she can and will overcome those obstacles. She has her bachelor's degree in forensic science, she graduated 3rd from her class in the Academy, she's very intelligent and articulate."

Despite speaking English, Officer Trevino speaks some Spanish and is able to sign in five different languages including Spanish and Japanese. But there's one word she didn't pick up.

"People told me no because I was deaf," said Ofc. Trevino.

"So we've learned a long time ago not to tell Erica no," said Cindi Trevino, Erica's mom.

"She hasn't let life stand in her way, so who am I tell her she can't do it. Give her a chance," said Chief Conner.

Despite her impressive set of skills, the critics and naysayers remained. But so did Erica's resilience.

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"I just realized I'm not going to let anyone tell me what I can do and what I cannot do. So I decided to become a police officer. It's been a long, hard path, but here I am," said Ofc. Trevino.

Her first day is April 14th. Chief Conner said he's created special procedures to help Trevino with communication. She is able to hear calls over the police radio but dispatch will also text all calls to her phone.

The department bought a special cell phone to help with that. Plus, Trevino will also have a partner during her shifts.

Officer Trevino has been Deaf her entire life and has had to overcome stereotypes. She made history today, but she's just getting started. She said her next goal is to join the department's Criminal Investigation Department.

SOURCE - MyHighPlains.com

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Deaf Police Officers Fight Crime

Deaf officers step in where police work counts on eyes more than ears.

OAXACA, Mexico -- When the police officer spotted the man acting suspiciously, pacing erratically with an odd look on his face, he immediately called for backup. That is, he spun around in his chair at the police command center here and rapidly motioned to a colleague in sign language.

The officer, Gerardo, 32, is part of a cadre of 20 Deaf officers formed several months ago to help keep an eye on this tourist hub. The suspicious man that he spotted on a security camera turned out to be a prime suspect in a murder.

“Even though we can’t hear, we can undertake any role,” Gerardo said, speaking through an interpreter. More than 200 cameras watch over this city, one of several in Mexico that have installed such security systems in recent years to fight street crime.

While raising some privacy concerns, the systems are celebrated by police officials for giving officers an extra tool to reduce response times and document crimes.

Officials here concede that getting units quickly to the scene is only part of the struggle. Crime victims often decide not to file complaints, lacking faith in the justice system.

Visitors to this colonial city, famed for its art and food, seem reassured by the cameras as well as by accompanying signs warning that the area is under surveillance.

Though Oaxaca is not known for high crime, tourists can be targets for purse-snatchers and pickpockets, and the more working-class neighborhoods have their share of drug dealing, auto thefts, fights and violent crime.

The state refurbished its police command center this year, but found it needed extra help monitoring the 230 cameras, a time-consuming, monotonous task. There was another problem: because the images lack sound, officers had trouble determining what people were saying.

“We could not read lips, so it occurred to us to use Deaf people since many of them can,” said Ignacio Villalobos, the public safety under secretary here.

He said their heightened visual attention had enabled the deaf officers to see trouble developing on the screens faster than other officers who can hear and speak but are frequently distracted by the buzzing of phones, police scanners and chatter in the command center.

Mr. Villalobos said the deaf officers - “our silent angels,” he called them - had helped solve or assisted in several cases, though he declined to provide specific data, pending a future evaluation of the program. He called the murder case, from last summer, the biggest success... Read The Full Story.

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Deaf Police To Monitor Security Cameras

Deaf police to monitor security cameras in Mexico.

OAXACA, Mexico -- The Oaxaca government has invested 56 million pesos ($4.4 million) to place at least about 230 security video cameras in the downtown historic city of Oaxaca and the suburbs that are monitored by Deaf police.

The camcorders are 15 meters (49 feet) high and can reach various points simultaneously with an infrared camera. Ignacio Villalobos Carranza, Deputy Secretary for the Ministry of Public Security of Oaxaca, said most of the monitoring of the 230 cameras is done by law enforcement officials that are hearing or speech impaired.

He noted these police officers have a very strong Deaf and visual sense and can better detect what is happening in different places where the cameras are located; they can often remotely read the conversations of people, to the benefit of this security system that operates 24 hours a day.

Spanish-language video from BBC Mundo Deaf police to monitor security cameras in Mexico - The ability to lip read conversations is a fantastic advantage, but the project raises the question of whether Deaf people would actually be better at security monitoring in general. As far as I know, there are no studies comparing hearing and Deaf people on specific monitoring tasks but there is evidence that Deaf people have certain advantages in visual attention.

This isn’t vision in general, such as having sharper visual acuity where there seems to be no difference, but there is good evidence that Deaf people are better at noticing things in the periphery of vision and detecting movement. This potentially makes them perfect for the job and likely better than their hearing colleagues. So the project turns out to be a targeted way not of recruiting ‘disabled people’ into the workforce, but of recruiting the ‘superable’. In fact, turning the whole idea of disability on its head.

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