2007-02-02 Committee on People with Disabilities Minutes

Home

L. Scadden reported that the only thing he was confused about the report is tying the statistics to six peoples badge numbers. Are there six trained volunteers now in the County? B. UPDATE FROM DCAB C. FLEMING/N. OLESEN/C. TOWNSEND The February report from C. Townsend, Program and Policy Unit Coordinator of DCAB, was distributed to MCPD members. C. ADA COORDINATORS REPORT T. SPINOLA-CAMPBELL T. Spinola-Campbell provided her report as the ADA Coordinator for January 2007. ADA Coordinators report attached. J. Souza said the big island deaf community is still not satisfied with the county police. Three years ago he requested police to meet with the deaf community to try to understand each other and hopefully build trust in each other. Sergeant D. Veriato was among the officers at the police function. It still didnt work, they continued to have problems with them. Also, at other times, he and some interpreters urged police to set up an emergency service to be able to contact interpreters. But they havent done anything since. After the December MCPD meeting in Hilo, Major J. Enanoria emailed him and informed him that an officer at the accident site was going to interview him with aninterpreteratalaterdate.HeemailedbacktoJ.Enanoriaandsaidwhywaituntil after the fact? They already sent the accident report to his insurance and they had not interviewed him and it didnt make sense. J. Enanoria also promised to set up emergency service to contact interpreters. J. Souza asked M. Dravis-Tucker if she heard from the police regarding the emergency interpreter service and she told MCPD she heard nothing about this. T. Spinola-Campbell responded that she and Major J. Enanoria are working on it and she suggested a meeting as well and Major J. Enanoria was very responsive. R. Wagner-Wright said he would like to ask T. Spinola-Campbell and MCPD if its possible to get involved in giving ADA awareness about blindness and seeing-eye guide dogs. He has found gross discrimination on this island. He has encountered many incidents where someone has come up to him and say are you blind? Some will say you cant bring that dog in here. There was another incident at a Hilo restaurant where he was denied entry because of his dog. He explained the law from the Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) and he was still refused entry. The police came down after 20 minutes and he showed them a piece of paper that says he is totally blind, he has a seeing-eye guide dog, and according to the HRS he should not be discriminated. The police responded by saying that this piece of paper does not tell you that you can eat at this restaurant. The police have no knowledge whatsoever of the law regarding a seeing-eye guide dog. The police officer had to come to his house and asked him to print out the HRS and the ADA statute. The police officer asked if there is some way that maybe they could both come to a compromise. As a result, nothing happened and the State of Hawaii has a statute of limitation for six months. Therefore, nobody took any action against the proprietor of the restaurant who made him feel totally embarrassed and feel so small in front of everybody else. Even though this situation happened a year ago, no one from the police department contacted him. 3