Bridge

Growing up in a small Los Angeles County suburb and attending private school kept me from knowing what the real world was like. My parents ultimately made the metropolis in our backyard feel like another world. I only knew Los Angeles as a distant silhouette throughout my adolescence. After graduating from the academy, I was baptized by fire in what the real world was like. I was given a front row seat to what is by far, the most intense and dynamic environment to work in within the Los Angeles County jail system.

For the first three months after graduation, I trained to work in the suicidal and psychotic intake unit (Module 172) at Twin Towers Correctional Facility (TTCF). Any inmate who required additional forensic assessment due to mental illness was admitted to this floor; and required the most frequent security checks due (every 15 minutes) to their behavior and/or condition. While training in Module 172, I was required to provide my training officer to write an autobiography.

In the autobiography, I explained I knew American Sign Language (ASL) and had previous training and experience in working with people who were Deaf or hard of hearing. When my training officer learned of this, he made it a point to have me periodically work with the inmates who were Deaf in their designated housing location. When I began working where the Deaf inmates thought, that is where I started to realize I had my work cut out for me.

While there were many things that I knew I would need to address, I knew that I needed to build a bridge, and establish a rapport with the inmates who were in fact Deaf and communicated through ASL. While other personnel who had previously worked at TTCF might have been able to use limited signing to communicate with them, I believe I made an impact with these inmate and established a dialogue that was previously nonexistent. This bridge put me on what I felt was the right path.