Pubdate: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2010 Miami Herald Media Co. Contact: http://www.miamiherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262 Author: James H. Burnett, III DEA SHOULDN'T PAY FOR HELP TO TRANSLATE 'EBONICS' I stand corrected on a claim I made seven years ago that Multnomah County, Ore., was run by the dumbest bureaucrats on earth, after they sought to hire a Klingon translator to communicate with mental patients who prefer the language invented for Star Trek. I stand corrected because the Drug Enforcement Administration is looking to hire people who can speak "Ebonics" in Miami and several other cities, and can translate it for agents who are having a hard time understanding what suspected drug dealers are saying on the business end of wiretaps. That's right, the urban, street-inspired slang that a group of numb-skulled, short-sighted California educators in 1996 insultingly deemed "black English," or "African American Vernacular English," rather than just another bastardization of English, is being given more undeserved credibility by one of the nation's largest law enforcement organizations. Apparently the chief agency tasked with curbing drug crime in the United States has met its Waterloo in the form of slang-talking suspected drug dealers in its Southeast Region, which includes Miami, the Caribbean, New Orleans, Atlanta and Washington. Seriously, it was supposed to be a joke back in the day, when actress Barbara Billingsley cheerily called out in the movie Airplane, "Oh stewardess, I speak jive!" Guess the DEA didn't get the memo. Understanding drug-dealer-speak? Sound, logical idea for federal agents. Putting someone on the payroll to help you understand? A waste of money, says Norm Gregorisch, a retired Miami-Dade Police Department lieutenant, whose experience is that local police officers know local slang. So DEA should seek their help. . . for free. Local officers tend to be from the cities and counties they serve, Gregorisch explained. "MDPD would not hire for this. It's not necessary," he says "I was assigned to the MDPD's Northside District for a total of seven years as a field training sergeant. I ran one of the squads that trains recruits after they graduate the academy. Northside is adjacent to the City of Miami's Liberty City and included the Scott projects, Larchmont Gardens, Brownsville, etc. It didn't take long for me to pick up on the slang. . . ." The DEA insists its intentions are being misconstrued. Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for the DEA, said in a prepared statement that Ebonics is one of "more than 100 languages, dialects, colloquiums, and idioms. . . generally referred to as 'languages"' in the job-posting, but that his employer "does not recognize or accredit Ebonics as a formal language." Whatever the DEA calls Ebonics, its offer of related translation jobs is a problem that goes beyond smart money management or catching drug dealers. Kids who live in drug-riddled neighborhoods in the agency's target areas already face an uphill battle against poverty and their circumstances. The last thing they need is the government telling them that committing linguistic and grammatical murder is something to strive for, like the elusive professional sports or music contract. These are kids who are more likely to find Big Foot under their beds and capture indisputable photographic evidence of him than they are to find success when they grow up speaking Ebonics. Only one kid I can think of ever found that success. And he was a cartoon character, whom comedian and educator Bill Cosby via Fat Albert called not Well-spoken Funny Guy With Great Prospects for the Future, but rather Mush Mouth. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D