Following
is the Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s response to a July 15, 2016, press
conference alleging that the agency failed to provide
language interpretation in a timely manner during a Jan. 31, 2016, 911 call
relating to a knife-wielding subject at the intersection of North 3rd
and West Main streets in Immokalee:
Our
investigation into this incident remains active, but detectives have
determined, through evidence collected and interviews conducted, that it is
highly unlikely that the 911 call was related to the knife-wielding subject.
The dispatcher asked the 911 caller whether he spoke
English or Spanish. The caller replied that he spoke English. When the caller
did not provide the dispatcher with any comprehensible information she asked
him two more times what language he spoke, but was unable to obtain a response.
The caller ended the call before providing any actionable information. The
dispatcher exhausted all efforts to follow up and obtain information from the
caller. However, all of the responses the caller provided were unintelligible
to the dispatcher and to the professional language line translator that was on
the line with the caller and the dispatcher.
Detectives
have determined that deputies encountered the armed subject while on proactive
patrol, and despite being put in harm’s way, intervened quickly and were able
to save the life of an innocent victim that was being stabbed and attacked by a
subject with a knife.
The CCSO Communications Center has a 24/7 plan to assist
callers who don’t speak English. We have bilingual 911 operators, we connect
callers to interpreters of a wide variety of languages and have advanced
technology to locate callers as well as the capability to receive 911 text
messages. For many years our plan has met and exceeded emergency
communication standards established by the Department of Justice, the National
Emergency Number Association and the Commission on Accreditation for Law
Enforcement Agencies.
