11/9/03 Denv. Post A.27 2003 WL 5525105

 

Denver Post Copyright (c) 2003 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

 

Sunday, November 9, 2003

 

News

 

Police delete ethnic slights in transcripts Cops curb potential anger by dropping                  ethnic spellings

 

Jim Spencer

 

The Denver Police Department has put the ax to 'aks' and several other ethnic spellings in transcripts of witness interviews. Words such as 'aks,' 'poh-lice,'

'sumpin' , , 'baffroom' and 'hyxsterical' will no longer stud transcripts of witnesses, Denver Safety Manager Al LaCabe said Friday.

 

This will doubtless disappoint more than 100 readers who have railed at me electronically and telephonically since I broached this subject in a column three weeks ago. That includes one who casually tossed around the 'N' word in asserting the innate intellectual inferiority of blacks and another who suggested that a black 911 operator would not understand English well enough to save my life in an emergency.

 

Their bigotry notwithstanding, Denver police transcriptionists 'have been instructed not to phonetically spell words that have been mispronounced, but for which the meaning is clear,' LaCabe said.

 

Phonetic spellings of mispronounced words led some members of the city's African­American community, as well as academics, to charge police with demeaning blacks. The leader of the local NAACP, the Rev. Gill Ford, called the transcription policy insulting because it was impossible to apply to all ethnic and geographic groups.

 

State Rep. Terrance Carroll of Denver found it 'off-putting and unnecessary. '

 

University of Denver law school professor Tom Russell called it passive racism. Russell said he checked with other lawyers and professors and could find no legal reason to do it.

 

LaCabe, who is a lawyer, said the old transcription rules were meant to be accurate, not discriminatory. But after reading my column about witness transcripts in the fatal shooting of Paul Childs, a retarded black teenager, by a Denver police officer, LaCabe looked into the need for the policy.

 

'No one meant to offend anyone,' LaCabe told me Friday. 'But I can certainly understand how someone could read (the transcripts) and get that impression.

 

'When you raised the issue, I spoke to a number of judges and other attorneys I have worked with for years and to other transcriptionists. One thing of concern was whether phonetic spellings had to be used' to make transcripts acceptable in court.

 

They didn't. From a legal standpoint, said LaCabe, a mispronounced word spelled correctly in a transcript was OK.

 

What was not OK was perpetuating misunderstanding in a community already suspicious because the police killed a disabled child.

 

LaCabe and Police Chief Gerry Whitman agreed on the new rules.

 

'I can understand why people reading the transcripts out of context might be upset,' Whitman told me Friday. 'After I read your column, I wanted to see what the best practices in the industry were. It was a pretty weak standard and hard to explain. Our transcriptionists had the best of intentions. And I wanted (transcripts) to be acceptable in court.

 

The Denver city attorney, district attorney and U.S. attorney all have told Whitman that dumping the phonetic spellings will not hurt.

 

'If there's a confusing issue in terms of words' during interviews, Whitman said, 'the investigating detective should go back over it.'

 

Under the new policy, transcripts of witness interviews will not be sanitized, just more understandable. Slang and idiom that might identify witnesses racially will still be included in transcripts, LaCabe said.

 

If somebody tells the cops, 'I jet' or offers 'mad props,' that's going in the transcript. So, too, is butchered grammar. And it should.

 

As an aside, let me add that ethnic organizations that describe themselves as 'sistahs' or in other street slang invite the same stereotypes as the cops did.

 

But the police practice of interpreting dialect that unintentionally makes people look stupid is done. And not a minute too soon.

 

'I'm happy with the change,' said the NAACP's Ford. came up to begin with. '

 

'The ludicrousness is that it

 

Carroll praised police for their willingness to change course.

 

City Council President Elbra Wedgeworth scored it a victory for common sense in a diverse city.

 

'It's always important that people are culturally sensitive,' said Wedgeworth, who is black. 'It's a different world out here. People say to us, 'The police are supposed to represent us, but it seems they're putting us down."

 

In Paul Childs' killing, that was never so apparent as in the transcription of a young girl who spelled 'police' correctly in her written statement, but pronounced it 'poh-lice' when speaking.

 

This child did nothing to invite scorn, however unintended. She did what good citizens do in a crisis. She helped the police.

 

What she needed in return is what Wedgeworth said all city residents deserve:

 

'When a tragic thing happens, they want to be treated with respect.'