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St. Paul Pioneer Press | 12/09/2006 | Deaf man says jail experience traumatic
Deaf man says jail experience traumatic
He wanted to contact worried girlfriend
BY MARA H. GOTTFRIED
Pioneer Press
In the 54 years Doug Bahl has been deaf, he said he never faced discrimination before he wound up in the Ramsey County Jail.
Stories about St. Paul police allegedly roughing up Bahl and photos showing Bahl with black eyes and blood on his shirt have been circulating for weeks by e-mail, but it was Bahl's account of what happened at the jail that he was talking about Friday.
"It was a very painful, very traumatic experience for me," said Bahl, a St. Paul College instructor and longtime deaf activist. "I can't begin to describe to you how discouraging and how demeaning it was."
Bahl ended up in the jail after police pulled him over Nov. 17 for allegedly going through a red light.
Bahl hit an officer on the arm and bit his thumb, according to a criminal complaint charging Bahl with obstructing the legal process with force. Police sprayed Bahl with a chemical irritant, a police report said.
Rick Macpherson, an attorney with the Minnesota Disability Law Center, said Bahl's "incident with a police officer … resulted in Mr. Bahl being very seriously beaten." But because charges are pending against Bahl, Macpherson said, neither he nor Bahl would be discussing the police matter now.
Police have launched an investigation into the arrest and aren't commenting while it runs its course, a spokesman said.
Bahl, who is 56 and became deaf at age 2 after a high fever, said he made repeated requests for an interpreter at the jail but didn't get one. Macpherson said state law is clear about a jail's responsibilities. "Thou shall provide interpreters," he said. "Period."
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said he believes the statute in question applies to the arresting agency. No matter the case, he said the sheriff's office has a contract with interpreters.
Fletcher has launched an investigation to try to find out what happened at the jail.
"We're taking the matter very seriously," Fletcher said.
Bahl said he asked to send an e-mail to his girlfriend, who also is deaf, on Nov. 17, but was denied. The jail doesn't allow inmates to use computers, Fletcher said.
Next, Bahl said he asked to use a special TTY telephone. Bahl said he was told he could use one the next day, a Saturday. That didn't happen, and Bahl said he inquired again but wasn't given access to a TTY phone until Nov. 20, not long before he was released from jail.
Fletcher said preliminary information shows Bahl was offered a TTY phone Nov. 17, but he didn't use it then.
"If he wanted to use TTY on Saturday or Sunday, he should have been allowed to," Fletcher said.
Macpherson said Bahl's ordeal wasn't the first time he has heard of problems at the Ramsey County Jail. Ten months earlier, a deaf woman also couldn't get access to a TTY phone or interpreter, he said. Fletcher said he wasn't aware of that complaint.
One of the worst parts of the experience, according to Bahl, was not being able to contact his family to tell them where he was.
When Bahl was arrested, he had been on the way to visit Sue Kovacs, his girlfriend of eight years, who was hospitalized for a blood clot.
"I was sure that someone had harmed him," Kovacs said. She checked local hospitals, called St. Paul police to find out whether he had been in an accident and wanted to make a missing person report.
On Nov. 19, an inmate offered to call the hospital on Bahl's behalf to get a message to Kovacs.
"I look at that person as sort of my hero, in the sense that it was the guards, it was the police, it was the people involved in law enforcement, who I expected to properly afford me my rights and to know about the laws, who were unwilling to allow me a call," Bahl said.
Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5262.
It makes me [bleep] sad! Because of Doug Bahl. I felt damn very-very
I am uncertainly until I would know.
