Last week I wrote a blog post about a police officer in Dallas who gave a woman a ticket for not speaking English.
He used a citation normally reserved for commercial drivers and the ticket was later thrown out.
Now it turns out that the Dallas police chief acknowledged there have been 39 tickets issued to drivers who didn't speak English since 2007, according to a story in the Dallas Morning News.
This is ridiculous.
It looks like they need to so some sensitivity training in Dallas where the population is 44 percent Hispanic.
And the New York Times also wrote an editorial this week saying the Dallas police department should be embarrassed.
In Texas they do offer part of the driver's exam in Spanish. But almost all road signs are in the universal language of symbols. You don't need to know English to be a good driver.
I've driven in Austria, Germany, France and Italy and I don't speak
German, Italian or French fluently. I know some basic phrases in each of these languages. But I couldn't imagine a police officer there
ticketing me for not speaking the language.
As I've said before it's better if immigrants learn English as all people who are bilingual will have more opportunities.
But there's absolutely no reason to ticket motorists who don't speak English.
I hope in Dallas they will investigate what happened as it involved police officers and their supervisors.
¡Que vergüenza!
Filed under: Hispanic, immigration
Tags: Dallas, Dallas Morning News, English, New York Times, police, Spanish, tickets
