Dallas Police Chief: Dozens of tickets written for not speaking english

[121Traffic]

OK, wait. Why are we crucifying these cops based on the news story alone? I'm reserving judgment.

I'll stipulate that the "prank" scenario is possible. Here's another scenario: ignorance of the statute. Who knows why, but maybe a lot of those cops writing them had the wrong notion of the taxi law. Especially cops in training. I don't know about you, but if my FTO told me something was the case, 99.9999999999999% of the time I took his word for it. If HIS FTO told him something was the case, maybe he took HIS word for it. So somewhere along the line, maybe someone misinterprets the law as meaning ALL drivers need to speak English, rather than taxis. Word of mouth travels that this is a citeable offense. Who knows, but I think this is a valid possiblity. If this is the case, I don't think we should be crucifying the cops the way some seem to want to. Are their actions slightly idiotic for not knowing the statute on their own? Sure. Are they racist? No. In fact, if ignorance is the culprit here, and the statute in question that was erroneously cited had nothing to do with language or culture but rather something innocuous like window tint, it wouldn't be a big deal in the media. But because race relations are an emotive topic, people are ready to have these cops drawn and quartered. I have a problem with that.

[Jks9199]

OK, wait. Why are we crucifying these cops based on the news story alone? I'm reserving judgment.

I'll stipulate that the "prank" scenario is possible. Here's another scenario: ignorance of the statute. Who knows why, but maybe a lot of those cops writing them had the wrong notion of the taxi law. Especially cops in training. I don't know about you, but if my FTO told me something was the case, 99.9999999999999% of the time I took his word for it. If HIS FTO told him something was the case, maybe he took HIS word for it. So somewhere along the line, maybe someone misinterprets the law as meaning ALL drivers need to speak English, rather than taxis. Word of mouth travels that this is a citeable offense. Who knows, but I think this is a valid possiblity. If this is the case, I don't think we should be crucifying the cops the way some seem to want to. Are their actions slightly idiotic for not knowing the statute on their own? Sure. Are they racist? No. In fact, if ignorance is the culprit here, and the statute in question that was erroneously cited had nothing to do with language or culture but rather something innocuous like window tint, it wouldn't be a big deal in the media. But because race relations are an emotive topic, people are ready to have these cops drawn and quartered. I have a problem with that.

It's possible it was a legitimate mistake. I don't know.

But even so, I'd have a problem with someone writing a cite without knowing what the code says. No matter what their FTO says... especially if they're off FTO. That's part of the job...

Let the department assess what happened. If there is an innocent explanation, I hope they don't throw the guys who did it under the bus in the name of PC.

[TXCharlie]

I'm still betting it was just a notation written below the real violations, to explain to the judge that they may not know what they were signing.

If that was the case, then the cops who did it may have thought they were doing the people a favor.