I wrote an earlier blog on the dangers that my deafness had presented to myself.1 There, I mentioned my automobile accident and described my being assaulted by a gang of young teenagers, all of which occurred more than 30 years ago. I added I’d write a blog about a third event indicative of risks that come with my hearing loss because I felt it was a story on its own. Writing about the third event required me to refresh my memories, and this had unintentionally brought up a fourth event, which was almost an automobile accident by the hands of someone else, not mine, during my undergraduate days.
The third incident was another crime committed against me, two years after my assault. Since I didn’t want to forget any details of that crime, I wrote a report within two weeks after the crime. The report is included below with few minor grammatical corrections.
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DATE: November 9, 1991
TIME: Approximately 1 PM
PLACE: 430 South 44th Street, Philadelphia, PA
EYEWITNESS: Henry Adler
REPORT WRITTEN ON November 22, 1991
I was going to the 30th Street Station for an Amtrak trip to NY Penn Station for a brief family reunion. My train was supposed to leave at 1:58 PM. In order to get there, I had to take a subway from home. Carrying a very full Crimson knapsack, I walked to the subway stop at the corner of 44th and Baltimore Streets.
I was at the corner for only a few minutes, when I realized I had forgotten to put my jump rope in my knapsack. I knew where the jump rope was—it was lying on my bed. So, I thought it would take only a few minutes to go back to my house and then return to the corner.
I walked towards my house. As I came to the front door, I saw in the reflection from the front door window that a young man was looking at me and carrying a brick. I opened the door and went inside. The man seemed not happy and threw the brick at the driver side window of a red van in front of the house. I did not know why he would do that and did not think that anything else like this would occur. I went upstairs to my bedroom and found the jump rope. I placed it inside the knapsack and was ready to go back to the subway corner.
I went downstairs and walked to the front door. As I was about to open the door, I saw the same man carrying the same brick, and looking both ways. I could not walk out and stop him since he could then throw the brick at me. So he threw it at the big front window of the house, breaking it. Then he walked away.
I noticed what the perpetrator was wearing. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a green khaki jacket. Then I called the Pennsylvania Relay Center to dial 911. While I was on the phone, I kept looking out the broken window to make sure nothing more would happen. I reported the incident and gave my address. I was told that the police would arrive in a few moments.
While I was waiting for the police, I kept watching out the window. Some people walked past the window. Some of them, especially kids, were looking at the window for too long a time for my comfort. So, I went outside and told them quietly to leave. I then looked around the neighborhood and noticed a man carrying his walkie talkie. I guessed he was a policeman and was on the lookout for my own protection, but I could not be sure since he was not wearing a uniform.
Soon afterwards, two police cars arrived at my house. One of the cars came in one direction while the other arrived in the opposite direction. I noticed this because the street where I live is a one-way road. The police arrived within five minutes after my emergency call.
A white male and a black female officer came into the house. I described what happened and then told what the assailant wore. The white policeman asked me what complexion the man had. I replied that the assailant was black. He also asked me if I wanted to press charges. I nodded my head.
A few more cars came, but they were not marked. The guy who was carrying the walkie talkie was an undercover cop. He joined the two uniformed officers in our conversations. They were tough and streetwise, but they treated me fairly, considering that they had to deal with someone who is deaf. They probably had not met deaf people before, but they were professional in their work.
While they were talking with me, they saw a young man walking across from the house. He was black and was wearing a baseball cap and a khaki jacket. The undercover policeman had his back to the walking man, and pointed his finger at him so that the walking man did not see the pointing. At the same time, the cop asked me if the walking guy was the assailant. I replied ‘No,’ because the cap and jacket had different colors and the man’s face was not the same as that of the assailant. When the undercover cop asked the question, I looked at the black policewoman’s face. Actually, I saw a slight twinge in her eyes. I could only speculate that she felt a bit angry and helpless because I guess most of the arrests her fellow cops have made were black men wearing baseball caps. She was of the same race and she wished she could do something with those jerks, but there are just too many of them; or maybe the female cop was worried that other cops and/or crime victims would point at the wrong person, just because he was black.
The police told me that they had to take me to their precinct (the 18th Division) and I said, “First let me look for cardboards or wood blocks to cover the gap in the window.” In the meantime, other officers searched for the assailant because they thought he was still in the neighborhood. They were right. While I was still looking for the cardboard, the lawmen came to me and asked if the man they had just arrested was the assailant. I looked out through the door window, and I knew that he was the assailant. He had the familiar face with droopy, thin eyebrows and he was wearing the blue cap and green khaki jacket. The police were pleased with the arrest.
After the assailant was taken away and after I put in two wooden shelves to cover the gap in the window, the undercover officer and his partner took me to their car. As I was walking towards the car, I saw that lots of my neighbors were watching the whole scene. I also asked my next-door neighbor, who was carrying his daughter, “Please call my landlord Randy and tell him what happened.”
The police drove me to the precinct. Just before reaching the precinct, they stopped the car and asked me several questions such as, “Did he see you when he threw the brick at the window?”, “Did he see you when you entered your house?” etc. (The answers were no and yes, respectively, but that was my point of view). While I was sitting in the back seat, the partners were discussing what happened. They did not want to leave any gaps in the report they had to write, and I guess they wanted to add more charges. In addition to the usual vandalism charge, they wanted to make it harder for the assailant to commit any future crimes. I don’t think that this will work, but why not?
Once they were done with their discussion, they drove to the precinct. The partner named Tom took me to the room where visitors could come for some kind of inquiry. Tom told me to wait there. I waited for a long while. I walked around the room. I drank some water from a fountain located in the room. I read some signs. I observed the activity of some officers in the desk office. They seemed to be doing nothing but talk bullshit and laugh. I guess that’s why most cops hate office work.
Tom came to the desk room with his report and gave it to one of the desk cops so that he could type the report. Tom also told me to wait a bit more. I noticed that he tried to explain to the desk cop that I am deaf, but I don’t think he was that successful.
A black officer came and brought me home. I was wondering why I had to come to the precinct, then wait, and then go home without meeting any policemen for some further questions. I asked him what will happen next. He replied that a letter will be forwarded to me if the court needs me. I thanked him and went to the next-door house. The neighbor, still carrying his daughter, told me that he could not reach Randy.
I went inside my house and called Randy. I told him what happened. He said he would pay for the replacement. I told him if he wanted, he could get a copy of the police report for insurance purposes, i.e., he might be reimbursed for the window replacement. He said sure.
All of this shit ended at 3:30 PM, but I had to wait for one of my roommates to come home. Then I could leave home for New York. At approximately 4:30 PM, Jamie came home. We put plastic wrap over the window gap to keep the house warm, and I left home for New York. Finally!
Epilogue I: The window has not been replaced yet. We have been trying to reach several glass companies with little success. We reached one company and arranged a time for replacement. They never showed up not just once, but twice. It was their loss, but their price was not bad—it was $20 for replacement window and $30 for labor.
Epilogue II: I still have the brick.
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That was 29 years ago, meaning I was 28 years old when the crime occurred. Most importantly, I wasn’t hurt at all, unlike two years before when I was physically assaulted by a gang of young thugs.1 But you could imagine what would happen if the guy had hit me from behind with that brick. Same thing you could imagine if one of the gang members attacked me from behind with a dangerous weapon (there was none).
Or even a rushing police car could hit me from behind on a busy street at Harvard University, even with sirens on. It almost happened to me one Fall night when I was a sophomore or junior (at least six years before my misadventures at Penn) – I walked across Mt. Auburn Street, a one-way street, from Lowell House (my upperclassman dormitory) to Adams House, where I was supposed to meet friends. I thought I was safe when I looked in one direction and saw there was no vehicles coming in that direction. As I crossed to the other side of the street, two speeding police cars with sirens slightly swerved around me in the wrong direction. I felt a slight whiff of rushed air and circled around, feeling carefree with my coat being wide open. I did not fully realize that either car could have hit me because I didn’t hear the sirens and they were coming in the wrong way. My friends saw the whole thing but didn’t say much – they might have been shocked and scared deep down but were glad that nothing happened. That’s another danger to you about being not able to hear anything.
Well, let’s go back to the scene of crime near my graduate home. I was a fourth year graduate student at UPenn, doing research on inner ear repair in the acoustically injured bird. As I wrote above, I could have been hit with a brick and could have lost my consciousness or worse because I didn’t hear what the assailant said or wanted. Fortunately for me, he was nervous and hesitant – he might have hoped that I would have given something up before he could do something drastic to me. So, he didn’t go on full frontal attack behind my back. When he realized his missed opportunity, he was pissed and the rest was history.
What continues to pique me is how the police treated not only young black men but also deaf people like me. As nearly everyone knows, the police have been doing racial profiling on black people, especially black men, for many years, much too long than it needs to be. I was taken aback when the black female cop quickly rolled up her eyes when several white cops pointed at a certain black man in front of me, but I empathized with her because I could imagine her feeling that some, if not all, of her fellow cops were racist and because she was worried that I would be a racist as well by pointing out at the wrong person so that I (and even the police) could get it over with right away. But I knew what I saw. So I shook my head no, indicating that he was not the person who broke the window. Some minutes later, when the police arrested a different black man and brought him to my house, I immediately recognized him as the assailant, and the police whooped it up triumphantly.
Now that I’m done discussing the arrest of the correct instigator, I’ve always wondered why this type of profiling has continued to this day. The police should have learned their lessons, but no, they continue to do racial profiling on blacks. It has cost too much blood and disruption on both sides of black lives and police lives. That’s why I support the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter,’ though I do not always agree with some of the people who are behind this all-important slogan. On the other hand, I’m a fan of a CBS TV series, Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck. A few evenings ago, I watched a rerun that had Michael Imperioli, a former star of HBO’s The Sopranos, as a guest star. Mr. Selleck, as Frank Reagan the police commissioner, argued with Mr. Imperioli, as NY Attorney General, that if the police treat minorities more favorably than whites, the police would have to sacrifice public safety. I don’t know if it was really convincing, because I will never fully understand what’s like to be a minority facing everyday risks and not getting full trust of the general public or the police, but I do understand the importance of the police being able to enforce the law and to protect the general public. I just don’t want the police to overstep their authority, and I am certain that most, if not all, of the police are true professionals. It’s just a few rotten apples that can make any public entity look bad on the whole in the eyes of the general public, especially the minorities. If those apples happen at government levels, we can always vote them out, but if they do happen at police levels, chaos can reign.
You ask me what the past two paragraphs have to do with my deafness, or deafness in general. Well, there have been several cases where the police have treated people with hearing loss with malice, whether or not it be intentional. Oftentimes, the root of such malice is a general lack of empathy on the police’s side towards people with hearing loss. By the lack of empathy, I mean that the police either do not understand or know (much less communicate) what to do with deaf people, especially those who communicate in American Sign Language (ASL). In order to communicate in ASL, one needs one’s hands. When one moves one’s hands, the police, especially those who are not understanding, become scared, defensive and/or nervous. They do not know what or how to expect the next movement by the signing person. Sometimes, it has led to disaster on the part of the person with hearing loss. At least twice, the police had shot and killed the person with hearing loss because they misinterpreted the movements of either person.2,3 Another time, when a deaf black driver was pulled over by a police car, one of the cops asked something. The driver did not understand what the police asked him to do, and he thought the police could see that he was deaf and unable to communicate by voice. So he moved his hand to get his driver ID from the glove compartment, but before he could reach it, the policeman punched his face and violently took him out of his car. He and his partner beat the driver up. They thought he disobeyed their orders, but they didn’t realize that he was deaf.4
As for me, yes, I have been pulled over a few times by cops, and I’ve always been respectful towards the cops. I would roll down the car window and would put my hands on my steering wheel. I would tell the cop that I am deaf and that I read lips. The cop would ask me for my driver ID and registration, and everything else would proceed smoothly as well as it could be.
However, when the crime occurred at my house nearly 30 years ago, it’s quite a different story. At the beginning, the police handled the scene professionally, though the black officer’s rolling up her eyes could forewarn me that things might not end well both for the instigator and for myself. It continues to irritate me to this day that the two cops talked back and forth (and they talked fast) in the front seat for a lengthy period of time while I sat in the back. I couldn’t read their lips and could only speculate what they were talking about. I believe if they had taken me to their office desks right after leaving the scene of the crime, we could have completed our process more efficiently and more quickly. I also would have felt much more satisfied that they not only made a successful resolution of the crime but also took good care of myself both as a victim of crime and as a human being. But no, after they were done talking in their car, they took me to their police station and left me alone in the empty lobby for another lengthy period of time. While I lingered in the lobby, I suspected they continued to discuss the crime. I had hoped to see some Wanted posters to keep myself entertained, but none was available. I was really irritated that the police left me out and dry. I had no idea what the police did whatever they needed for the process of charging the assailant for certain crimes he ‘allegedly’ committed at my residence.
After 30 years, I still don’t have any foggiest idea as to what had happened to the instigator, and I still feel disgusted about how things ended on the side of the police. What if the police decided to let the assailant go free (or at worst with a slap on the wrist) without ever letting me know, because they didn’t know how to deal with a deaf victim of crime and were worried that I might screw up my testimony because they thought I might not communicate well enough or intelligently enough in the courts?!?! Or they thought a deaf person, much less one with aspirations for a doctorate in neuroscience, was dumb and not worth further communications. If that’s the case, well, screw ‘em! The police need to find a way to efficiently AND respectfully communicate with a witness or victim with hearing loss during and beyond the scene of any incident that warrants police and law presence.
Postscript: I no longer have the brick.
Postscript 2: The broken window was eventually replaced, just a few weeks longer after I wrote the original report.
Postscript 3: Some of you may ask me why I’d feel that a jump rope was so important to take home. Well, I had developed a habit of doing four or five sets of 100 jumps a day, and I would have gone crazy if I didn’t have my jump rope with me. It’s so strange that a minor object like my jump rope could lead to a major and potentially dangerous event in my life.
References
1Adler, H.J. (2021) Deafness can be hazardous to life – Welcome (the-eagle-ear.com)
2https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deaf-man-shot-dead-oklahoma-city-police-neighbors-scream-horror-n803031
3https://abcnews.go.com/US/video-shows-beginning-chase-police-shooting-deaf-man/story?id=41670698
4https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pearl-pearson-police-brutality_n_4603445