By BURTON SPEAKMAN
GLASGOW — In the last month first-responders throughout Barren and Metcalfe counties have had a new tool to help them when they have a call involving a person who doesn’t speak English.
The county has recently started using the “Language Line” a service with about 200 different languages available. Police officers, fire fighters, medical personnel and dispatchers can now call the line and a translator will help in the communication.
The line increases officer safety, makes calls more efficient and allows officers to more quickly ascertain what’s going on in a situation, said Capt. Joey Crews, from the Glasgow Police Department.
Officers have the ability to connect to the line through dispatch or call it directly using their cellular phones, he said.
“There are situations where someone is trying to talk to us and we can’t understand,” Crews said. “There could be someone hiding in the house and they might have a gun.”
Communication is one of the most important things for an officer in the field, he said.
“So far we’ve used it once in three weeks,” said Beverly Harbison, director of the Barren-Metcalfe Counties Emergency Communication Center.
It was a Hispanic person who had been involved in a collision on Interstate 65. They were using a cellular phone and the translator was needed to determine the exact location of the crash, she said.
The expectation is Spanish will be the language most often used, Harbison said. Metcalfe County has a similar population to Barren and the expectation is that in that county Spanish will also be the most frequently used translation.
“We have some Chinese and Japanese speakers in the area as well, but most of them speak at least some English,” she said.
It can be frustrating for dispatchers to be attempting to help someone and not be able to communicate, Harbison said. It’s easier with land lines because the dispatch can send someone directly to the location to assess the situation, but more people are using cell phones and will mobile phones its more difficult to determine an exact location of the call without being able to communicate with the caller.
Crews agreed that mostly the police department will use the line for Spanish translations.
“Typically we’ve been able to find someone in the family or the neighborhood that can speak English,” he said. “There have been sometimes that we can’t.”
The line speeds up the process. Officers now don’t have to wait to find someone to translate. Also if the officer is not sure of the nationality of the person they are speaking with they can call the Language Line, which will determine the nationality and find a translator, Crews said.
This is a new tool that is definitely going to have a big benefit, he said.
The police department has used the line once thus far and had a very good result, Crews said.
The service cost $275 for its initial set up and then there is a minimum monthly charge of $100 a month. The cost of the service is based upon the number of minutes the service is used.
“I think its a great tool,” Harbison said.
