No interpreter: Sheriff held deaf man for 25 days

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LKD,
you're missing my point entirely. I never accused you of being prejudiced against deaf people. If I see prejudice, it is against people arrested by authorities - with startling consequences.

The information we have from the article doesn't give us any indication to believe that the police had anything on him, leading to the conclusion that they were dolts or something.

You apparently don't like that outcome. Point is, you don't know whether the police was secretly justified. From all we know, it looks as if they weren't. Undeterred, you simply assume otherwise. Startlingly, you simply conjure into this world "unknown unknowns" (in von Rumsfeld speak) that secretly have been there and which, if it became public, would justify what the police did. Since it must not be that the cops were dolts, then it must have been different. Dissonance avoided.

Your argument, as far as it exists, is the rationalisation of a desired result. It is not a rational or sober analysis of the case. In saying that the police was probably right, based on "unknown unknowns", you simply creatively rewrite the case so you like it better, even when there is, based on what we know from the article, very little, if any, basis to that in fact.

 

The article is merely stating what the deaf couple claim for their lawsuit, it is not the facts of the case. I have trouble believing it to be frank. Whatever about the police, for this to be true the wife who was there when her husband was arrested did nothing for 25 days except twiddle her thumbs at home while her husband was in gaol. Fair enough she can't communicate but surely she could have gotten someone who could have in that time.

 

Déise,
why do you have trouble believing it? It is very probably that for the cops the guy was weird enough to not let him go, because they wanted to be 'on the safe side'. Being odd is under such criteria reason enough for arrest.

It's the same mechanics that put innocent people to Gitmo. Some junior NCO in AfPak or Irak faced someone who had been arrested for Lord knows what, often just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and didn't know what to do with him. So he sent him up for processing. That was beneficial on several levels: (a) He wouldn't risk his career by exercising discretion and perhaps 'letting slip through a big one' thus playing it safe - treating everybody like a big one (cook, driver and mastermind) all the same, and (b) it would be good for arrest quotas and (c) he could wash his hands in the knowledge that, having kicked the problem upstairs, it became their problem and not his.

I see a similar logic and similar incentives at work here. It's easily summed up: "First arrest, and clear up things later". Had there been domestic violence, and they had let him go and he would have done something to his wife, they would have come under criticism for 'missing that one'. So they brought him in 'to be safe', kicked the problem upstairs to HQ, who were just as clueless about what to do with a deaf person, and all together they screwed it up all the same.

The irony here is that a ham fisted 'better safe than sorry approach' is just as fraught with peril as a safeguard as exercising reasonable discretion at the scene. After all, there still is no way to have your cake and eat it too.

 

As I said it's the wife that I have trouble with. I understand she's deaf and wasn't able to communicate during the initial understanding. But surely she must know somebody who she can communicate with. She had 25 days to find somebody. At that stage that person could go to the police and explain things or get a lawyer if the police are acting unreasonably. The husband is saying he had no information until brought to court so his wife never visited him. Her behaviour seems bizarre, much more so than the police's. If my husband was dragged off in front of me getting him back would be my only concern until I succeeded.