April 22, 2004
Hablas inglés?
Translating Crime Reports by Cellphone
"The police officer's cellphone - which links her to 24-hour translation service in 150 languages - is part of a new effort aimed at one of the city's most intractable criminal justice problems: domestic violence among immigrants. The violence often goes unreported or unresolved, the police and prosecutors say, because victims cannot communicate with the police or fear reprisals by their own relatives, since many come from cultures where domestic abuse is tolerated by law or custom."
Well, that all changed recently.
"On March 18, phones with access to Language Line Services, a translation company, were distributed to patrol officers in the 115th Precinct, which covers Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona - perhaps the most linguistically and culturally diverse area in the city, with foreign languages spoken in 83 percent of the precinct's homes."
Pretty good idea. Nice to see it put into practice.
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posted by at April 22, 2004 5:53 PM
