New Middletown Police Department trains on effective communication with deaf community
The Easter Seals of Mahoning County led the training and all New Middletown officers received hand cards with the manual alphabet to carry in their citation books.

NEW MIDDLETOWN, Ohio - Effective communication between law enforcement and the community they serve could be the difference between life and death. That's why the New Middletown Police Department took the time for some special training Monday night.
The entire department learned best practices in effectively communicating with the deaf community. The training was led by the Easter Seals of Mahoning County.
"The holidays are coming up, families are visiting and the opportunity to encounter somebody with an impairment is gonna be significantly increased," said New Middletown Police Chief Vincent D'Egidio.
During the hour long training session, officers were given hand cards with the manual alphabet to carry in their citation books.
"We're not going to be sign language experts, but we'll be able to use the cards and formulate some different words and things along that nature," said D'Egidio.
They also learned the best way to handle different scenarios with people who are hearing impaired.
"If you don't communicate effectively with the person's that your dealing with you're gonna have a lot of problems," said D'Egidio. "Person that is hearing impaired, an officer may mistake them as trying to hurt the officer with a quick movement and knowing that this person has a hearing impairment, we can take a step back and deal with that a lot differently and make sure that person goes home safely."
Elexis Blake is a case worker for Easter Seals and helped lead the training.
"I want to make sure that the police and deaf community can work well together, smoothly with not having any confusion or something happen because of something simple that can be solved with educating everyone, both police and the deaf community," said Blake.
Blake encourages any profession that deals with people to learn sign language.
"ASL is the third used language and I think its important anywhere whether its hearing or deaf, if they have autism or anything or anyone, they should learn easy simple sign language for many reasons," said Blake.
The Easter Seals of Mahoning County received a grant to provide the training. New Middletown is one of the first police departments in the county to embrace the training and they hope others will follow.