Post Date: 24th Oct, 2009 - 1:36pm / Post ID:
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Police Cite Drivers For Not Speaking English
What do you think about these police officers in Dallas who were giving out tickets to drivers that did not speak English? Personally, I do not like the idea of immigrants not speaking the language of the country they're living BUT it is not a crime.
QUOTE DALLAS - Dallas police officers have improperly cited drivers for not being able to speak English 38 times in the past three years, Chief David Kunkle said Friday.
The discovery came after a woman was pulled over earlier this month for making an illegal U-turn and was given a ticket for being a "non-English speaking driver."
The police chief said the citations are disappointing for Dallas, a city where the Latinos make up 44 percent of the more than 1 million residents and nearly 45 percent speak a language other than English.
"I was I guess surprised and stunned," Kunkle said. "We area very diverse community."
Kunkle said his department's computer system for citations has a pull-down menu that includes a law requiring drivers of commercial vehicles to speak English. The chief said he believes the federal law was misapplied to local drivers of private vehicles.
At least six officers wrote the citations, including one who wrote five of them, Kunkle said at a news conference. The officers and their commanders are under investigation, and Dallas police also plan to look beyond the last three years to see if other citations turn up, Kunkle said.
On Oct. 2, Ernestina Mondragon was pulled over by Officer Gary Bromley, a rookie who was still under supervised training. He gave her a ticket for not speaking English along with citing her for making an illegal U-turn and failing to carry her drivers license.
"I wanted to tell him," Mondragon told The Associated Press in Spanish on Friday. "I couldn't talk back to him out of respect."
Mondragon was driving her 11-year-old daughter to school when Bromley stopped her. She had forgotten her purse with her license in it while darting out the door that morning after her daughter missed the school bus...
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Post Date: 26th Oct, 2009 - 11:24pm / Post ID:
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Police Cite Drivers For Not Speaking English History & Civil Business Politics
From the article:
QUOTE The discovery came after a woman was pulled over earlier this month for making an illegal U-turn
So it seems they were given the tickets for a traffic violation but told it was because they didn't speak English? Now, that's weird.
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