Signing Cops Will Not Save Us, Community Power Will #StopASLCopaganda

Signing Cops Will Not Save Us, Community Power Will #StopASLCopaganda
Community Statement on Police Department ASL Initiatives and Deaf “Sensitivity” Trainings

Summary

This statement discusses nationwide investments in policing, including police training. Police training has not proven to be effective in reducing violence, particularly against deaf/disabled communities. Efforts to teach ASL and deaf cultural norms to police officers claim to help facilitate peaceful interactions between police officers and deaf/disabled people. However, we have seen time and again that increased contact with cops leads to more violence to our community, rather than less.

HEARD highlights the cases of deaf/disabled people like John Wilson Jr. and Ricardo Harris, who were wrongfully convicted due to miscommunication with signing police officers. We emphasize that police officers cannot serve as qualified interpreters. We also reject “deaf sensitivity” training programs, which often arise after incidents of violence and do little to improve safety in our community.

Instead of investing in police training, we call for resources to be redirected to support deaf/disabled communities directly and for our community members to stop participating in/endorsing these kinds of trainings.^[1]

Introduction

We are in an era of unprecedented investment in policing, including police training. Recent examples include the development of multi-million dollar Cop Cities in Atlanta and around the United States as well as the Deadly Exchange of tactics and weapons between Israeli occupation forces and U.S. policing and military. In the aftermath of the 2020 uprisings in response to police violence against Black communities, the government sent billions of dollars toward policing.

In our own community, we’ve seen American Sign Language (ASL) teaching programs and related “deaf sensitivity” training programs for police officers promoted as a path toward reducing police violence against deaf/disabled people. These initiatives have occurred across the country, including in New York, Arizona, District of Columbia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, to name a few.

However, increased training does not change police behavior or stop police violence, including police violence against disabled communities. 

What We Have Seen: Signing Cops

For more than 13 years, HEARD has advocated alongside deaf/disabled currently and formerly incarcerated people. We have seen time and time again that signing cops lead to wrongful convictions, longer sentences, and worse outcomes for members of our community. Signing cops are police officers who know any amount of sign language, ranging from basic fingerspelling and vocabulary knowledge to full fluency.

People’s ideas about police, safety, and crime are influenced by pro-police messaging from media outlets, educational institutions, and the police themselves. This messaging is often referred to as “copaganda” and frames the police as friendly protectors, helpers, and peers. This framing can lead to a dangerous sense of familiarity and safety with police. When deaf/disabled signers encounter a signing police officer, they may feel a false sense of trust or believe that signing cops will be friendlier, more understanding, and/or more lenient because of a shared language. The presence of signing cops also often discourages deaf/disabled people from requesting the accommodations needed to preserve their rights. 

In many of the cases that HEARD has studied and provided advocacy for over the years, deaf/disabled people who communicate with the police have been wrongfully convicted. In all of these cases, there are recurring themes of  communication breakdowns and lack of qualified interpreters during police interrogations. HEARD has documented such cases in our community, like those of John Wilson Jr. and Ricardo “Rico” Harris.

In 1994, John Wilson and other Black deaf/disabled witnesses were interrogated by the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Even though Wilson and the other witnesses all used ASL as their primary or only language, there were no sign language interpreters present during their interrogations. Instead, Wilson and the other witnesses wrote notes back and forth with the interrogators, and a signing MPD officer was used as an “interpreter.”

Wilson tried his best to communicate through the MPD signing officer, but there were many miscommunications. These miscommunications were used against Wilson and he was found guilty, despite his innocence. John Wilson Jr. was incarcerated for 25 years before he was released on parole after over a decade of advocacy by HEARD and other organizations.

Rico Harris’s story is very similar. After being arrested and placed in an interrogation room, Harris requested an interpreter. Instead, a security guard from a local community college was called in to “interpret,” though she only had basic signing skills. This led to Harris’s words being misunderstood and misinterpreted. When a certified interpreter was later provided to Harris, he was better able to communicate clearly. However, there were differences between his comments with the security guard and his comments with the qualified interpreter. This led to investigators assuming Harris was lying during his interrogation because he was guilty. Thirteen years later, Rico Harris is still in prison, fighting for his freedom.

We uplift the stories of John Wilson Jr. and Ricardo Harris as two well-known examples of the dangers of signing cops, but HEARD has received reports of and supported many others in our community who have endured similar horrors.

It is important to note that, regardless of language fluency or completion of interpreter training, police officers are universally unqualified to interpret interrogations or witness statements. As required by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a qualified interpreter must be able to interpret effectively, accurately, and impartially, both receptively and expressively. Due to clear conflicts of interest, a police officer cannot be impartial in any interaction with a suspect, witness, or a person in police custody. It does not matter how well a police department trains its officers to be interpreters or to communicate directly in ASL; a police officer cannot serve as a qualified interpreter. 

The fact remains that, in an interaction where police have the power to arrest, injure, or kill with impunity in addition to the ability to control the narrative – there is no amount of language access that can neutralize this dangerous power dynamic. A signing cop is still a cop.

Deaf/Disability “Sensitivity” Trainings and Community Initiatives

On September 24, 2024, the NYPD unveiled a deaf awareness themed NYPD cruiser stating the “vehicle symbolizes [the NYPD’s] commitment to serving and protecting all New Yorkers.”  The cruiser was promoted 9 days after the NYPD shot Derell Mickles for allegedly evading the $2.90 subway fare, shooting and injuring two other subway riders in the process. We reject the NYPD’s attempt to use deaf/disabled communities to rehabilitate the image of police departments, especially while their violence is the focus of nationwide conversations.

Similar to the NYPD “deaf awareness” cruiser, police training programs about deaf/disabled communities often emerge after police violence impacts our communities. This training typically includes a “sensitivity” or “anti-bias” component, which is framed as a way for police officers to learn about deaf/disabled cultural norms and familiarize themselves with our community. However, increasing engagement between police officers and deaf/disabled community members through the use of these training programs or community affairs initiatives puts our communities at further risk. More contact with police leads to more police violence, not less.

For example, in 2017, Magdiel Sanchez, a Latino deafdisabled signing man in Oklahoma, was murdered outside of his home by Oklahoma City police officers. Despite the fact that neighbors and family members were yelling that he was deaf, officers shot him. Sanchez was the 712th person in the U.S. to be killed by police that year. The officers involved were cleared of responsibility for the murder three months later. Oklahoma City police recruits already received four hours of training on deaf and hard of hearing people at the time of the murder. Sanchez’s death was one year after two other deaf men, Darnell Wicker and Daniel Harris, were murdered by police.

More recently, on August 19, 2024, Tyron McAlpin, a Black deafdisabled man, was arrested in Phoenix, AZ after he was beaten by an officer and shocked with a taser. One of the officers involved said he tried to arrest McAlpin because McAlpin did not respond to the officer’s verbal commands. This arrest comes just months after an investigation by the Department of Justice determined that the Phoenix Police Department systematically uses unlawful force, especially against non-white people.

The body camera footage of McAlpin’s violent arrest sparked new conversations about the role of police training in reducing violence against deaf people. However, since 2018, the Phoenix Police Department has worked with the Arizona Commission for the Deaf (ACD) to create specialized training for officers to learn how to handle interactions with deaf community members. This program was expanded in 2021 to implement the training across the state.

We refer back to HEARD’s Statement of Police Killings of Deaf Men in August 2016 – Darnell Wicker & Daniel Harris which reminds us that the true function of training programs and community initiatives is to make police appear better or more capable of protecting our communities. In reality, these programs have very little impact on reducing violence, all while spending money that could be invested directly into improving resources for our communities.

Conclusion

Disabled people, and especially Black disabled people, experience high rates of incarceration, including youth incarceration, criminalization, and violence at the hands of the police. Deaf/disabled communities cannot continue to endure this level of targeting by and violence from police. Giving more money, power, and legitimacy to the very institutions that are harming us will never get us the safety that we are seeking and that we deserve.

HEARD dreams of a world where deaf/disabled people have the resources, safety and love they need to thrive and live self-determined lives. We know that this world is not possible if we continue to depend on police and prisons for safety and protection. Our community is safer when we invest in and empower ourselves, not when we encourage the growth of police power and control over our communities. The resources allocated to police department ASL initiatives and deaf cultural sensitivity training programs must be redirected to address the genuine needs of deaf/disabled communities. This includes investments in education, language acquisition, employment, language access, food stability, and housing to support the well-being of our community members.

We call on our community members to resist uplifting or participating in these training programs in your local police departments, and to share this message if it resonates with you. #StopASLCopaganda

Acknowledgements

This statement is informed by the stories and lives of countless deaf/disabled incarcerated and criminalized people and their loved ones. We also uplift the work of one of HEARD’s founders, Talila A. Lewis, whose offerings and mentorship have been foundational to the development of this statement, particularly:

• Concerns re Disability/Deaf Rights Communities’ Responses to Policing Systems’ Violence 
• Disability Justice Is an Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons
• Disability in the Age of Mass Incarceration

This statement also serves as a continuation of HEARD’s previous statements and resources:

• HEARD’s concerns about NYPD’s Deaf Driver Cards & Media Coverage of Deaf Driver Cards
• HEARD statement on the August 2016 Police Killings of Two Deaf Men Darnell Wicker and Daniel Harris
• HEARD Statement on Wrongful Conviction of Black/Disabled Deaf people
• ASL Translation Police “Reforms” You Should Always Oppose by Mariame Kaba | Dec. 2014
• Community Statement on Louisiana Department of Correction’s Use of Hearing Imprisoned People as “Interpreters” for Deaf Imprisoned People

HEARD and the undersigned organizations condemn these programs and all forms of exploitation of our already multiply-marginalized community members.

Signatories

• Queer Access
• DeafHope
• ProjectLets
• Still Current
• Fund for Empowerment
• Crip News
• All Kinds Accessibility Consulting
• The Black Deaf Project
• SURJ Toronto
• People’s Filter: Philly Clean(er) Air Mutual Aid

Translation Appreciation and Recognition

• COCOA LLC
• Talila L.
• Leang N.
• Erin S. S.
• Jerrin G.
• Kah M.
• Franly U.
• Gloshanda L.
• Alison A.

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[1] This statement was written in response to long-term ongoing police violence in our deaf/disabled communities. HEARD is against all forms of investment in policing and prison systems, which includes police training programs and initiatives. However, we recognize that in the current political landscape, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) programs and policies are being targeted and shut down. This statement should not be misunderstood or misconstrued as being anti-DEIA. Rather, it clarifies our fundamental beliefs as an abolitionist organization that refuses to support state-sanctioned violence and oppression.

Published May 2025