No Hablas Inglés? Ticket For You!
There is a federal law that states drivers of commercial vehicles must be able to converse in English. However, in Dallas, Texas, a few officers have decided to apply this law to drivers of private vehicles.
The federal law, 49 CFR 391.11, states that a driver
Can read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records
For some reason, some Dallas police officers have decided to apply this regulation to private drivers in a county where nearly 39% of the population is of Latino/Hispanic ancestry. (Whites top out at 35% in Dallas). In a three-year period, six officers have incorrectly 40 citations for being “a non-English speaking driver”.
A Dallas Police spokesman said,
We regret this happening, and although we believe this is a sincere mistake, there’s no excuse for it.
A linguist would be hard pressed to call the grunting, guttural, dialect of the Dallas Caucasians English.
This reminds me of the English-only ordering policy of Geno’s in South Philly — presuming that what South Phillian’s speak is actually English. A interesting task would be for someone to track down all of those ticketed for their stories. Writing a ticket for not speaking English sounds like lazy policing.
If you actually look at what happened, it appears to have been mainly due to a software glitch.
What? The computers were writing citations? Dude, can’t u just say they cops f’up? Man.
Nemski, they never say that. Its always “He ‘exited’ the car” or “He was ‘observed’ to have walked with a limp”. Its a cop-speak thing. You feel like yelling sometimes, “Orally ejaculate in English, dude!”