Police forced a deaf Black woman’s children to communicate their commands to her after they pulled her out of her car and handcuffed her last week in the Las Vegas area.
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Andrea “Dre” Hollingsworth was going to her old landlord’s to pick up some money she said she was owed after moving out early. But apparently, the landlord called 911, and the police showed up.
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She started recording after the responding officer demanded she get out of her car. He also told her 11-year-old girls to get out as well, so that they could interpret.
It wasn’t long after that that the officer pushed Hollingsworth to the ground and handcuffed her, effectively cutting off her ability to communicate and causing her to drop her still-recording phone.
But the audio continues, and Hollingsworth’s daughters can be heard crying and upset for several minutes. At one point, the cop tells the children to “talk some sense into” their mother.
Throughout the video, the officer continuously talks to Hollingsworth as if she can hear him, and appears to get frustrated when she doesn’t immediately comply with his verbal requests.
The entire situation has caused an uproar on the behalf of both Hollingsworth and her children, who she says are “traumatized” by being put in that position.
“My kids are afraid because of all the incidents that have been happening recently,” she told KVVU-TV. “They are raised Black in this community, so when they see a police officer, they are also on high alert.”
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There has also been major concern about how the officer opted to deal with a deaf woman, putting the children in the middle of it and not making an effort to communicate properly.
“I’m saying, ‘Look at this. We need to text, we need to write,’ and he just kept on talking,” Hollingsworth said of the encounter.
Deaf rights lawyer Andrew Rozynski also told KVVU-TV that forcing scared “11-year-olds to interpret in a police situation is against the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
“There are regulations in there that expressly prohibit children from being used as interpreters,” he said.
It is unclear at this point why the officer did so little to accommodate Hollingsworth, though the North Las Vegas Police Department has reportedly already “investigated” the situation, passing the blame to Hollingsworth with the claim that she “initially refused to comply with requests and was briefly detained until police completed their investigation.”
*First Published: April 19, 2021, 7:28 am
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