By year's end, more incoming inmates at the Lee County Jail with limited English skills will receive basic commands in their native language from a machine that resembles a high-tech, hand-held tape recorder.
The Phraselator P2 is equipped to store hundreds of phrases in five different languages. Lee County detention officials recently bought three of the machines at a cost of about $2,500 each, using money from the inmate welfare fund, said Lt. Tom Eberhardt.
Manufactured by VoxTec International, the Phraselator was first used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lee County is the first sheriff's office in Florida to get them, Eberhardt said. Right now, the machines are rarely used at the jail booking center in downtown Fort Myers because they contain only preprogrammed commands, said Lt. Edward Lewis, the intake supervisor at the jail. In coming weeks, detention officials plan to record useful phrases like "put your hands against the wall," "take off your shoes and socks" and "do you have a weapon?"
The machine also can convert some spoken phrases to other foreign languages. So far, only a handful of inmates have been greeted with the voice machine, jail officials said. Besides Spanish and Creole, other languages the sheriff's office is considering for the machines include German and Russian.
"It's a shock at first," Lewis said. "It's like 'Why are you coming at me with this object?
Eberhardt stressed the machines will never take the place of human translators in the sheriff's office. There are no immediate plans to expand their use to road deputies who frequently encounter language barriers on patrol, he said.
Hoda Hanna is the director of Hispanic Services of Catholic Charities of Lee County, which offers Hispanic and Creole social services to the community. She said the device seems like a good idea, but deputies should first warn the person verbally in their language that the machine will be used to communicate with them.
"This is a difficult time for someone who is going to jail," Hanna said. "A machine, especially if it's automated, may cause them more difficulty. If they don't react, it might come off as resisting officers."