ODESSA, Texas — Officers at the Odessa Police Department got some important training on Friday: how to interact with the deaf community.
This was thanks to the Highland Council for the Deaf, an agency that provides several services, including interpreting and advocacy. Those services are important for the deaf community, according to President Jeff Anderson, who is also deaf himself.
This includes training police officers on how to interact with them, because this community gets pulled over every once in a while as well.
Anderson and the council gave the officers several questions to think about going forward.
"[...] How to work with the deaf community? How to approach and interact with them? How to call for an interpreter if needed if working with a deaf person? Also, how to be respectful and working with the deaf community, understanding their culture and their language and the differences they're in, and understanding basic or essential skills in working with individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing," said Anderson.
Officers got to act out role-play scenarios and interact with deaf and hard of hearing people, some of them for the first time.
Anderson said one of the reasons this training is so important is because safety is at the forefront for these communities.
"We don't want people to feel alarmed as to what to do," Anderson said. "We want them to understand what resources are there or who to contact and how to call for an interpreter or an advocate, so that they know what to do and helping resolve a situation as opposed to escalating it, or even that sometimes homicides occur."
There was also a training for the deaf community later in the day that taught them how to keep themselves and officers safe, along with understanding their rights.
The Highland Council for the Deaf was recently a recipient of the TEGNA Foundation grant and is very grateful for the recognition.