Edward Miller. John Williams. Errol Shaw.
Who are these men, and what do they have in common?
All three lost their lives when they were shot by police officers.
All three were deaf.
During a time that has seen thousands of people across the country marching in protest of police brutality towards persons of color, Deaf individuals are being painfully reminded of similar incidents within their own community – incidents which have occurred with alarming frequency when communication breaks down.
Edward Miller was the recent victim. The 52-year-old Florida man was killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Daytona Beach last September, just a few weeks after the shooting of Michael Brown. As reported by the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Deputy Joel Hernandez pumped six shots into Miller during a dispute outside of a towing company. The Volusia County Sheriff’s Department claims that Miller was “brandishing a firearm,” causing Hernandez to perceive him as a threat and fire his weapon. However, further information released by a local television station states that according to witnesses, Miller was shot as he sat inside his SUV, with windows rolled up and his gun tucked under his shirt, while his son repeatedly yelled to the officers that his father is deaf and can’t understand them.
Since the case is currently under investigation, there’s been little information shared since September, although in an article published by the News-Journal in October, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s office states that Hernandez only fired four times, and that contrary to earlier reports, there were no bullet holes in Miller’s car. Sheriff Ben Johnson continues to insist that Miller was brandishing a firearm, but refuses to discuss any further specifics – including any comments regarding Miller’s hearing loss or attempts to communicate with him. Much like Michael Brown, Edward Miller was portrayed as a violent dangerous criminal, even though his criminal record showed only a misdemeanor which occurred eight years ago. On the other hand, this is the second fatal shooting by Deputy Hernandez in two years, and he also has been reprimanded for using excessive force during an arrest.
The response to this fatal altercation between a police officer and a Deaf person has been outrage, prompting a response from the National Association of the Deaf’s Chief Executive Officer Howard A. Rosenblum:
(be sure to click the CC button for a translation of the signs, if necessary)
As CEO Rosenblum states, the Florida shooting is not the first example of such. Such incidents go back at least fourteen years to the case of Errol Shaw in Detroit, who was shot and killed by a police officer in his front yard in August of 2000. Much like the Miller case, the officers involved claim they shot in self-defense when they perceived a potential threat – Shaw coming towards them holding a garden rake over his head. Again, family members allegedly shouted out that Shaw was deaf, a statement the officers claim to have never heard. In this case, the man responsible – David Krupinski – was charged with manslaughter, and during a two-week trial in 2001, prosecutors argued that Krupinski had used excessive force, making himself Shaw’s “judge, jury, and executioner” when he fired his gun.
The jury deliberated for 41/2 hours before finding Krupinski not guilty.
Ten years later, in August of 2010, history repeated itself when Seattle police officer Ian Birk fatally shot and killed a Native American woodcarver named John Williams. After seeing Williams crossing the street holding a carving knife, which he was using on a piece of wood, Birk approached from behind and shouted out repeatedly to “put the knife down!” Family members attest that due to a significant hearing loss, Williams most likely did not understand the officer’s command. Birk claims he felt threatened and fired in self-defense.
The Seattle Police Department didn’t agree.
Birk was ordered to surrender his gun and badge, and following an investigation, top police officials concluded that the shooting had been unjustified and recommended that the officer be released of his duties. However, an inquest found the jury split on the matter and unable to agree on whether Williams actually imposed a threat. Birk was never formally charged for the shooting, although in the wake of the public outcry and the department’s findings he chose to resign from the force. The city of Seattle settled the case by paying $1.5 million to the Williams family.
One might consider three deaths in 14 years to be insignificant, but it’s three deaths too many. And there’s actually others – and not merely men, either. In April of 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department underwent investigation for the fatal shooting of a 57 year old woman whom family members stated was deaf.
These shootings serve to accentuate an on-going concern that many in the Deaf Community have – the actions of police officers in attempting to deal with deaf or hard of hearing individuals.
A Google search turns up more than a dozen incidents involving police brutality against deaf and hard of hearing people all over the country – all within the last decade. While fatal shootings are the extreme, there are plenty of reports of victims – both male and female – being beaten, pummeled, choked, tasered, or peppered sprayed. In more than one case, the victim was arrested and taken to jail without the services of a sign language interpreter. Such was the case of Douglas Bahl of Minnesota, who was held in the Ramsey County Prison for several days, with no effective way to communicate with jail staff or with worried family members, who had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. And just earlier this year, Abrehem Zemedagegehu, a Deaf immigrant from Ethiopia who cannot write English but is fluent in American Sign Language, spent six weeks in Arlington County Detention Facility in Virginia without an interpreter on suspicion of having stolen an iPad, which was later discovered to have been found by its owner. The National Association of the Deaf has filed a lawsuit against the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office for violating Zemedagegehu’s civil rights.
These stories highlight a problem that deaf and hard of hearing individuals have experienced time and time again – the lack of awareness about deafness, Deaf Culture, and communication needs by police officers. While the Americans with Disabilities Act states that deaf and hard of hearing people are entitled to the same services that law enforcement provides to anyone else, nearly twenty-five years later police departments continue to be woefully undertrained in how to provide such services in an effective manner. Many officers do not know how to appropriately interact with Deaf individuals, communicate properly with them, or how to secure interpreting services as needed. And likewise, many deaf and hard of hearing people do not know how to best deal with law enforcement in various situations, or are aware of their own rights when they encounter police officers.
It is for this reason that well-known Deaf actress Marlee Matlin, who is herself married to a police officer, decided to team up with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf) to create a PSA video to help educate Deaf people on their rights, and also what to do in various police situations such as traffic pull-overs or arrests.
Now the ACLU, HEARD, NAD, and local Deaf agencies – with assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice – are working with law enforcement agencies around the country to educate police officers on how to better serve deaf and hard of hearing people and to deal with potential communication issues. Videos and training programs are being created. Hopefully such efforts will help to prevent future shootings, unnecessary beatings, wrongful arrests, and the lack of communication access while incarcerated.
Most importantly, the goal of such trainings is to replace ignorance with knowledge, and to enhance sensitivity and understanding. As Marlee says, it’s time for the Police Community and the Deaf Community to work together to “bridge the gap” – a gap that has existed for far too long, and is just as significant to deaf and hard of hearing people as is the chasm that has created the tense relationship between law enforcement and people of color. While certainly the issues are different and must be addressed differently, the parallelisms between these two situations can be identified: the lack of trust, suspicion, animosity, fear, and outrage – all leading to a growing recognition of the need for change.
Hopefully with ongoing efforts, we can begin moving forward and making positive progress towards creating such change.
This sculpture shows the sign for "connect"...and that is what Deaf Pagan Crossroads is all about - making connections. Connections between Deafhood and Paganism, connections between the Deaf Community and the Hearing Community, connections between myself as the writer and you as the reader. I hope you will take the time to read my various posts, some of which are listed below. Welcome to the Crossroads, and I hope you make some connections here!
Deaf Pagan Crossroads 
It’s not that lives don’t matter, it’s the overwhelming fact that our police officers are acting more and more like they have the right to do whatever they want, abusing their positions as officers of the law. They are armed and dangerous because of that, but until our society demands that these men and women be held accountable for their actions, this kind of abuse will continue to get worse and run rampant.
Agreeing with the message of the post but there’s something I have to point out: All lives matter but currently black lives are extremely unrecognized as mattering and it is unfair to piggyback off of their protest and then erase their message with “all lives matter”. We can criticize the actions of police towards our own without erasing other protests, we don’t need to have only one protest at a time. There are deaf black people, mentally ill black people, gay black people, etc that suffer from both the racial stigma AND the “condition” stigmas. The protestors do not need to be reminded that lives matter it is the police and those in power that need to be reminded.
If we started a movement and then everyone else simultaneously coopted it and then erased our original message we would be angry, and rightfully so. Please don’t do that to someone else.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Uloboridae…and making some valid points.
However, we may have to agree to disagree.
I don’t think I’m trying to erase anyone’s message. As I stated, black lives DO matter. So do deaf lives, gay lives, mentally ill lives. I don’t feel that pointing out how the concept can equally apply to other communities cancels out the original message. I believe that all of us can benefit from such a message. All of us can unite together to remind law enforcement agencies of this fact. And indeed they have – I’ve seen White allies at protests uniting with the Black Community in solidarity. Does their presence somehow minimize or erase the message? I hope not.
Nor do I think that “piggybacking” off the Black Community’s protest is necessarily unfair, or that it somehow minimizes their anger, etc. If anything, I think it helps to legitimize their cause, by showing that other communities share similar concerns. As I stated, there are many parallelisms, and I don’t think it’s inappropriate to point those out.
Yes, black lives are extremely unrecognized as mattering… but as I have demonstrated here, other lives have also felt the stigma of nonrecognition. Deaf lives are at jeopardy because deafness is an “invisible handicap” that many police officers are woefully ignorant of. And it’s not merely law enforcement. How many people in society are aware of these issues within the Deaf Community? When I shared these facts with friends of mine, they were shocked to discover that this kind of activity actually happens.
I would like to see the day when law enforcement is indeed held accountable for its actions, and police officers realize that they have a responsibility to protect and serve all of our citizens, regardless of race, religion, ethnic group, sexual orientation, economic status, mental health status, language preference, communication modes, or disability.
I would like to see all of us join together in collaboration to help make that day happen.
Yea, many of the white people who protested did actually derail and distract from the point of the protest, including with “all lives matter” signs and chants. This is not my opinion, this is coming from the black protestors themselves. Many white people did indeed get in the way.
It’d be like someone with a non-cancer disease going into a cancer-specific rally and saying “all diseases matter”. It’d be like saying “all sexualities matter” in a gay pride parade. There are times and places where more inclusivity is appropriate but a specifically black movement for black people and by black people is not the place.
You wouldn’t be saying “all lives matter” if they hadn’t come up with the phrase “black lives matter” and started a movement behind it. You’d be using some other words to mean the same thing. We can have our own words our own movement to hold the police accountable. We can even work in collaboration. But when black protestors are saying that “all lives matter” and similar diluted actions are takin away spotlight on the issues that they are trying to address on their own terms and being a distraction then it’s only fair to listen and do something else in true collaboration.
I’m not saying that we have to agree but I would encourage looking into other ways, other key words to use in order to reference our communities’ specific needs.
What other ways and other key words would you suggest?
You mentioned several, including the video PSAs and training sessions to address a communication barrier and fighting for interpreters to be made available. Making space for intersections, like gender*deafness or race * deafness, and making sure they have at least an equal voice in the movement (femenism for example suffers from being dominated by middle class white women, so many POC women, particularly black women, created their own space in “womanism” because their needs weren’t being addressed) are other things to keep in mind. As far as keywords I’m not good with language like that but maybe something like “listen” or “hear us”, maybe an ASL symbol (people ask what it means, people talk and that’ll spread the word in a way).
I’m a little bit confused, uloboridae. Just how is it that when Ocean paraphrases the same basic slogan, adding “too” at the end of it, mentions the Black Lives Matter movement and shows commonalities within the Deaf Community, and ends by showing how that anger, suspicion, and lack of trust within both communities is justified…
that this constitutes erasing the message?
Just because someone chooses to see the picture from a different angle and share their own viewpoint with others doesn’t negate the original image… it just gives another way of looking at it.
Ocean chooses to look at the message from the context of her own life as a Deaf person. I don’t think she means any disrespect to the Black Lives Matter movement… she’s just trying to apply the underlying concept in a manner that has meaning for her.
And in doing so, hopefully it makes the meaning clearer to others. Most of us have been impacted by the Deaf Lives Matter movement in some way. Now we can apply some of those same concepts to understanding the Deaf Community better, and hopefully helping them to bridge some of those gaps.
See my response above. The concerns i expressed were not my own, they were from black protestors themselves who had problems with “all lives matter” mentalities interfering with their particular message. My point is that there is a better way to go about this than saying “hey wait what about us we matter too”. It’s not about who matters, it’s about telling a society that already puts black people on the lowest totem pole that they are not to be ignored and that they do matter, ON THEIR OWN TERMS. Being deaf has different terms and different solutions for understanding who we are and how to interact with police because senses are different than racial construct. Our interactions with the world are different. The title of the movement “black lives matter” is the main reference point that encompasses all the specific issues that the community is trying to address. Turning to “all lives matter” erases those specific issues. Black lives matter acts as a keyword. We can be inspired to make our own keyword that encapsulates our communities specific issues that aren’t all shared by other groups.
“All lives matter” by definition includes groups that are not at risk for police brutality on basis of their race, condition, whatever. Rich able bodied white men are by definition included but they already matter. They don’t need a movement for them, they are often the demographic being protested against because they’re the ones in power that enforce the status quo.
It is clear that this is a very sensitive subject for you, uloboridae, and one that you feel strongly about.
Thank you for sharing your views. You have given me something to think about.
However, your comments do have something of a “shoot the messenger” feel to them. They come across almost as an attempt to derail my own message simply because I chose to innocently and naively utilize language that seemingly conflicts with the Black Lives Matter movement.
In much the same way that the Black Community feels strongly about its own issues and the need to address them…
the Deaf Community feels equally strongly about the issues of communication, access, etc. They seek understanding and acceptance, they seek to feel that their lives do in fact matter also.
Perhaps it was unfair to make such a comparison. You are correct that the issues are different, and that they need to be addressed on different terms. Certainly our interactions are different. And yet, as I was attempting to say – the feelings could possibly be seen as comparable.
No – I cannot claim to understand what it feels like to be black, to feel like you are on the lowest totem pole, to feel like you are judged and treated in a certain manner for no other reason than the color of your skin. But I would like to hope that I can at least empathize… if for no other reason than because I too have been unfairly judged, I too have been left to feel like I was nothing, I too have been ignored and made to feel like I didn’t matter.
Perhaps we are comparing apples and oranges here.
But at the same time, I’m sitting here feeling like it was somewhat unfair of you to use this as an opportunity to climb on your own soapbox and divert attention away from what was an honest mistake in attempting to educate and advocate on a very real issue – an issue that goes far beyond merely interactions with ignorant police officers. The struggles of the Deaf Community to deal with Equal Communication Access, lack of understanding and appreciation of Deaf Culture, and the challenges of hearing privilege are ones we deal with on a daily basis on many levels.
Again, I appreciate your expressing your thoughts on this matter. However, as I said earlier, could we simply agree to disagree, put aside this debate, and look at this blog post for what it attempted to be – an effort to educate the readership on the issues of Deaf People and Police Interaction, and the sometimes unfortunate consequences of such?
In light of your comments, I have edited my original post and made some changes to the end, removing the “All Lives Matter” comment and replacing it with something that hopefully would be viewed as less offensive. I cannot and thus will not be changing the title of the post, but hopefully I have minimized any unintended insult to the “Deaf Lives Matter” movement.
Thank you.
Just a few observation from reading the post and the comments both. First and foremost it is not just the Police which need to be reminded, but everybody needs to be reminded lest the protest becomes a violent mob. We can not lay the blame just at the foot of Law enforcement or the prevailing political powers at the time, it is all inclusive because we are a community and to single out one segment and “Educate” them, is just as bad as excluding one population from the next. I feel somewhat offended that the blog had to be reedited to make it more politically palatable and acceptable to some readers. There was nothing wrong with it in the first place. As a father whose son is Autistic, Who works as a Mental Health Counselor with Incarcerated individuals, Who is Hard of Hearing, one of the things which has soured me over the years in dealing with issue specific groups is they become egocentric overtime, as well intentioned as many are, the become the very thing they protest against. Exclusive and Entitled and view human rights as a competitive endeavor as opposed to a collaborative effort which includes EVERY member of the community, no matter how painful or distasteful that may be. I understand all too well inequalities exists in way too high proportions, but I don’t believe one group has the monopoly on it over another, therefore it involves us all at all levels. If that includes Piggy backing on someone else’s message, So be it because the message is not an exclusive one and doesn’t pertain to one community alone but to the world as a whole. Dr. King would agree as would Helen Keller and Temple Grandin and many others.