7201: DWSE—Driving Without Speaking English…?

From USA TODAY…

Dallas police dismiss 39 cases of ‘driving without speaking English’

Dallas police say they will dismiss 39 cases from as far back as three years in which police officers ticketed motorists for driving without being able to speak English, The Dallas Morning News reports.

The ticketing procedure came to light after 48-year-old Ernestina Mondragon came forward to complain after being stopped for making an illegal U-turn Oct. 2.

In addition to the moving (and speaking) violations, Mondragon, who has been a legal U.S. resident since 1980, got a ticket for not having a valid driver’s license.

Her daughter, Brenda, says that her mother in fact has a valid license, but had left it at home in a rush to get a second daughter, 11 year-old Vanessa, to school.

She says the officer did not speak Spanish and Vanessa was not asked to translate, the newspaper reports.

Dallas police say the linguistic charge is on a menu of the police department’s in-house computers, but applies only to commercial operators like bus, truck and limo drivers, the newspaper says.

This weekend, Dallas City Council member Steve Salazar thanked the Mondragon family for raising the issue and also apologized for the incident.

“Dallas is a diverse city with many languages,” Salazar said. “This was a charge that should not have been in the system.”

Update at 7:50 a.m. ET: The Dallas News says that records show that at least 20 Dallas police officers from five patrol divisions were involved in wrongly citing motorists for not speaking English since 2007.

The paper says almost all of the 38 people cited were Hispanic. The News says the officers involved ranged from rookie to a 13-year veteran.

The newspaper quotes Senior Cpl. Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, as saying the response from the public and the department is overblown.

“Now there is going to be a big internal affairs investigation into what?” he said, according to the newspaper. “They’ve corrected the problem; they’re going to make it go away or refund the money. It’s done.”