Miss-Delectable
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Deaf students help to educate first responders
Leann Wadsworth was flipping over desks, tearing up pieces of paper, waving her hands in dismissal at her teacher and classmates and rolling her eyes when they tried to comfort her.
As Frederick police officers and fire and emergency personnel huddled around Leann in a classroom at the Maryland School for the Deaf last week, they had little at their disposal to help them communicate with or treat the 15-year-old freshman.
It was a set-up situation that police hope will prepare officers to deal with similar real-life scenarios in the future.
Fourteen officers from the Frederick Police Department, along with about a dozen officials from fire and rescue services, got a crash course Feb. 24 on how to effectively respond to calls for services or emergency situations at the Maryland School for the Deaf's Frederick campus.
The Frederick Police Department responded to 109 calls for service at the deaf school last year, and have responded to 18 calls for service so far this year, said Lt. Clark Pennington, department spokesman. In 2007, there were 75 calls for service and in 2006, there were 49.
The calls range from a request for an officer to give a speech to responding to criminal activity, Pennington said.
As a slight smirk formed across Leann's face, and her arms folded into a ball of defiance, the first responders knew they had only once choice: Figure it out.
After about seven minutes, officers and emergency response personnel did figure out the simulation that Leann was acting out. Through writing notes back and forth on borrowed paper from students, and through illustrative common hand movements, the officers figured out that Leann had threatened to harm herself, and had been very disruptive in class. After she got physical with a classmate, she was handcuffed so she could be transported to the hospital.
Sign language classes, informational courses and simulation exercises are part of a series of nine in-house trainings the police department has set up with fire and emergency departments and the Maryland School for the Deaf to expose law enforcement and emergency response personnel to the region's deaf community, and vice versa.
The series began Jan.13 and will continue through March 12. Forty-three Maryland School for the Deaf high-school students are participating in the courses, and earn service-learning hours toward their degrees.
"The point of this training is that we are trying to bridge the gap to get more officers communicating on a basic level, and not find it so hard to communicate with deaf students," said Cpl. Jay Brown of the Frederick Police Department's Training Division. "The biggest challenge is just the basic communication and not feeling like we have to rely on interpreters so much."
Each time one of the three groups of officers and fire emergency response personnel asked for an interpreter, Brown told them that one was not available.
"It was different — not frustrating because with this job, you don't get frustrated — but it was definitely challenging," said Robert "RJ" James of the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services.
James said that he tried to implement some of the American Sign Language skills he had learned earlier in the day during the scenarios, but found himself instead scrounging for any communication tool he could find — even a Blackberry.
"It's hard to remember that stuff, especially when it's in the heat of the moment — but we did it," James said.
When police officers entered the dorm rooms where simulations took place, they didn't hold back, wrestling rowdy students to the ground and handcuffing perpetrators in minutes.
During one scenario, Officer Robert Brown, a 19-year-veteran of the police department, tapped his wrists together to let a student know that he was being arrested.
Brown, who has experience dealing with deaf residents, said that he often uses his patrol car computer to allow deaf offenders to type out their recount of an incident. He said he appreciated learning new, innovative ways to communicate with the deaf community.
"No one is saying that all of these officers are going to remember every single sign or every single thing that they learned," said Erin Buck, outreach coordinator for the Maryland School for the Deaf.
"But, even if all they walk away with is an increased level of comfortableness and understanding of how to interact and communicate with deaf individuals, then we've definitely accomplished a significant portion of our goal."
Leann Wadsworth was flipping over desks, tearing up pieces of paper, waving her hands in dismissal at her teacher and classmates and rolling her eyes when they tried to comfort her.
As Frederick police officers and fire and emergency personnel huddled around Leann in a classroom at the Maryland School for the Deaf last week, they had little at their disposal to help them communicate with or treat the 15-year-old freshman.
It was a set-up situation that police hope will prepare officers to deal with similar real-life scenarios in the future.
Fourteen officers from the Frederick Police Department, along with about a dozen officials from fire and rescue services, got a crash course Feb. 24 on how to effectively respond to calls for services or emergency situations at the Maryland School for the Deaf's Frederick campus.
The Frederick Police Department responded to 109 calls for service at the deaf school last year, and have responded to 18 calls for service so far this year, said Lt. Clark Pennington, department spokesman. In 2007, there were 75 calls for service and in 2006, there were 49.
The calls range from a request for an officer to give a speech to responding to criminal activity, Pennington said.
As a slight smirk formed across Leann's face, and her arms folded into a ball of defiance, the first responders knew they had only once choice: Figure it out.
After about seven minutes, officers and emergency response personnel did figure out the simulation that Leann was acting out. Through writing notes back and forth on borrowed paper from students, and through illustrative common hand movements, the officers figured out that Leann had threatened to harm herself, and had been very disruptive in class. After she got physical with a classmate, she was handcuffed so she could be transported to the hospital.
Sign language classes, informational courses and simulation exercises are part of a series of nine in-house trainings the police department has set up with fire and emergency departments and the Maryland School for the Deaf to expose law enforcement and emergency response personnel to the region's deaf community, and vice versa.
The series began Jan.13 and will continue through March 12. Forty-three Maryland School for the Deaf high-school students are participating in the courses, and earn service-learning hours toward their degrees.
"The point of this training is that we are trying to bridge the gap to get more officers communicating on a basic level, and not find it so hard to communicate with deaf students," said Cpl. Jay Brown of the Frederick Police Department's Training Division. "The biggest challenge is just the basic communication and not feeling like we have to rely on interpreters so much."
Each time one of the three groups of officers and fire emergency response personnel asked for an interpreter, Brown told them that one was not available.
"It was different — not frustrating because with this job, you don't get frustrated — but it was definitely challenging," said Robert "RJ" James of the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services.
James said that he tried to implement some of the American Sign Language skills he had learned earlier in the day during the scenarios, but found himself instead scrounging for any communication tool he could find — even a Blackberry.
"It's hard to remember that stuff, especially when it's in the heat of the moment — but we did it," James said.
When police officers entered the dorm rooms where simulations took place, they didn't hold back, wrestling rowdy students to the ground and handcuffing perpetrators in minutes.
During one scenario, Officer Robert Brown, a 19-year-veteran of the police department, tapped his wrists together to let a student know that he was being arrested.
Brown, who has experience dealing with deaf residents, said that he often uses his patrol car computer to allow deaf offenders to type out their recount of an incident. He said he appreciated learning new, innovative ways to communicate with the deaf community.
"No one is saying that all of these officers are going to remember every single sign or every single thing that they learned," said Erin Buck, outreach coordinator for the Maryland School for the Deaf.
"But, even if all they walk away with is an increased level of comfortableness and understanding of how to interact and communicate with deaf individuals, then we've definitely accomplished a significant portion of our goal."