A Biker Grabbed A Police Officer’s Arm In The Middle Of An Arrest And Was Tackled And Cuffed Too — Then They Reviewed The Body Cam And Saw What The Man On The Ground Had Been Saying

Part 2

I need to tell you about Hope. And about a church basement on the Near East Side. And about a man I spent ten years meaning to thank.

Hope was born in January of 2008 at Riverside Methodist Hospital. Seven pounds, two ounces. Black hair like her mother. A grip like a vise.

She failed her newborn hearing test. Then the follow-up. Then the one after that.

Profound hearing loss. Both ears. Genetic, they said. Nothing anybody did.

Lena cried for two days. I didn’t cry. I went out to the garage and took apart a carburetor I didn’t need to take apart, and put it back together, and took it apart again.

That’s what I do when I don’t know what to do. I fix things.

You can’t fix this. That took me years to understand.

We tried everything the first few years. Hearing aids that did almost nothing. Speech therapy. Lip-reading drills. Hope was smart. You could see it in her eyes. But she was locked inside herself. She’d point. She’d scream. She’d hit when she was frustrated. By five, she knew maybe thirty words, and she could barely say any of them.

We were losing her. Lena and I both knew it.

We’d been told to try sign language. We’d looked into classes. They were expensive. Evening courses at the community college. I was working sixty hours a week at the truck shop. Lena was working nights as a hospital unit clerk.

Then a woman at Hope’s preschool told Lena about a man.

“He used to teach at the Ohio School for the Deaf,” she said. “He’s retired. He teaches families on Saturday mornings. In the basement of a church on East Broad Street. He doesn’t charge anything.”

I didn’t want to go. I’ll admit it. A man like me, in a church basement, learning to talk with my hands.

Lena made me go.

The first Saturday, there were six families in that basement. Folding chairs. A coffee urn. Construction-paper alphabet posters taped to cinder-block walls.

At the front of the room stood a small man in a tan cardigan.

Korean. Sixty, maybe. White hair already. Reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He didn’t say a word.

He couldn’t. He was Deaf.

He looked at each of us. The scared parents. The confused kids. Then he smiled, and he signed something slow, and a hearing volunteer at his side said it out loud.

My name is Harold Kim. I have been Deaf my whole life. I was eight years old before anyone gave me a language. I will not let that happen to your children.

Every Saturday for two years.

Nine to noon. That church basement on East Broad.

Mr. Kim taught the kids first. Then the parents. Lena caught on fast. I didn’t. My hands are big and stiff and covered in grease scars. He’d come over and physically move my fingers into the right shapes. Patient. Never once frustrated.

Again, he’d sign. Then he’d smile. Again.

Hope bloomed in that basement. Like somebody had opened a window in a room that had been dark her whole life. Within three months, she had a hundred signs. Within a year, she was signing full sentences. Telling jokes. Arguing with me.

She’d never been able to argue with me before. I loved every second of it.

Mr. Kim gave every child a name sign. A sign that means only that person. Hope’s was the letter H, tapped twice over her heart.

“Because she has the biggest heart in the room,” he signed to me. “Also because she bit my hand the first day. I liked that.”

The first full sentence Hope ever signed to me was in that basement.

Daddy, your hands are too big for talking.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the floor.

Then I went home and asked Lena to fingerspell her name for me, slow, so I could draw it.

The next week I got it tattooed across my knuckles. H. O. P. E. Plain letters, the way a hearing person reads them, so the whole world could see.

Mr. Kim saw it the next Saturday. He took my hand, ran his thumb over the letters, and signed one word.

Good.

I tried to pay him. Every week. I’d leave twenty dollars in the coffee can by the urn. Every week, the next Saturday, the twenty would be tucked into Hope’s coat pocket with a note in careful block letters.

FOR HER BOOKS.

In 2017, Hope got a spot at the Ohio School for the Deaf, full time. She didn’t need Saturday classes anymore. The church closed its basement for renovations that summer. Mr. Kim moved. Somewhere. I heard maybe to be closer to his daughter.

I always meant to find him.

I never did.

Part 3

Here’s what happened on the pavement.

I lay on my stomach with my wrists cuffed behind me and my cheek on hot asphalt that smelled like old oil. The woman officer had a knee in my back. Not cruel. Just firm. She knew what she was doing.

Her name was Sergeant Dana Okoye. Fourteen years on the Columbus police force. I learned that later.

The young officer was standing over both of us. Breathing hard. Talking into the radio on his shoulder. Officer Ryan Sullivan. Two years on the job.

Two feet from me, the old man lay on his stomach too. Cuffed. His face turned toward me. His glasses gone. A scrape on his forehead bleeding a little.

He was crying.

Not loud. Deaf people often cry silently. Hope does too.

His fingers were still moving behind his back. Small. Trying. But nobody could see them now.

I didn’t fight.

Not for one second. I let them cuff me. I let them hold me down. I’ve been on the wrong side of a police car before, a long time ago, and I learned one thing. You don’t fight. Not ever.

But I didn’t stop talking.

“He’s deaf,” I said. Into the asphalt. Calm as I could. “He’s deaf. He couldn’t hear any of your commands. Not one.”

“Stay quiet,” Officer Sullivan said.

“He was signing to you. Every time his hand came up. He was telling you he’s deaf.”

“I said quiet.”

“He wasn’t reaching for a weapon. He was reaching for a card. In his sweater pocket. Deaf people carry them. It says he’s deaf.”

Silence.

A crowd had gathered by then. A dozen people at the edge of the lot. Phones up. A woman shouting, “He’s an old man! Let him up!” A man shouting back, “That biker jumped a cop!”

Sergeant Okoye leaned close to my ear.

“How do you know he’s deaf?”

“Because my daughter is. Because I read what he was saying.”

“What was he saying?”

“Same thing over and over. Deaf. My car. Card in my pocket. Seven times. I counted.”

She was quiet.

I looked at the old man.

He was looking at me. Two feet away. Squinting without his glasses.

His eyes moved down. To my right hand. Cuffed behind my back. Turned so the knuckles faced him.

H. O. P. E.

His face changed.

He stared at those letters for a long time.

Then he looked back up at my face. Searching it. Like he was trying to see through ten years and a beard and forty extra pounds.

His lips moved.

No sound. He doesn’t use his voice.

But I can read lips a little. Hope taught me.

He was mouthing one word.

Hope?

Part 4

Sergeant Okoye got up off my back.

She walked around to the old man’s other side. She knelt down. She looked at the tan cardigan.

“Which pocket?” she asked me.

“Right side.”

She reached in.

She pulled out a small worn leather wallet and a laminated card.

The card had a blue border. White background. Large black letters.

I AM DEAF.

I CANNOT HEAR YOU.

PLEASE WRITE OR TEXT. I CAN READ.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

At the bottom, a small drawing of two hands.

She read it once. Then again.

She opened the wallet. Ohio driver’s license. HAROLD S. KIM. An address on the east side of town. Date of birth, 1953.

She stood up. She walked to the silver Honda. She looked through the driver’s window at the keys dangling from the ignition. She tried the passenger door. Locked.

She came back and called to the second unit for a lockout kit. Popped the door in thirty seconds. Opened the glove box.

Registration. Silver 2014 Honda Accord.

Registered owner: Harold S. Kim.

She held it up so Officer Sullivan could see it.

Officer Sullivan looked at the registration.

Then at the laminated card.

Then at the old man on the ground.

I watched his face go white.

Sergeant Okoye knelt back down next to Mr. Kim. She unlocked his right cuff. Just one hand.

He brought it around from behind his back. Slowly. Shaking. Waiting to be grabbed again.

Nobody grabbed him.

She looked at me.

“Tell me what he says.”

His hand came up.

He signed. Slow. Exhausted.

Index finger to his ear. To his mouth. Deaf.

Palm on his chest. Point at the Honda. My car.

Tap on the pocket. Card.

Then he did something else. Something he hadn’t signed before.

He held his hand out flat. Palm up. And brought it up toward the officers. Then he made a fist and circled it on his chest.

Please. Sorry.

He was apologizing.

To them.

I read it out loud. Every word.

When I got to sorry, Officer Sullivan turned around and walked to the edge of the parking lot and stood there with his back to all of us.

They uncuffed Mr. Kim all the way. Sergeant Okoye helped him sit up. Somebody found his glasses under the car. She wiped them on her sleeve and handed them to him.

Then they uncuffed me.

I sat up on the asphalt. My cheek was raw. My shoulder was screaming.

I turned to Mr. Kim.

He put his glasses on. He looked at me. Really looked.

Then he signed.

Slow. Deliberate. So I couldn’t possibly misunderstand.

The letter H. Tapped twice over his heart.

The name sign he gave my daughter. In a church basement on East Broad Street. Ten years ago.

Then he pointed at me.

Her father?

I signed back. My hands were shaking.

Yes. Nolan. Hope’s father. Mr. Kim. It’s me.

He looked at me for a long, long moment.

Then he reached out and took my right hand in both of his. Turned it over. Ran his thumb across the four letters on my knuckles. The same way he did ten years ago.

And he signed one word with his free hand.

Good.

That’s when I broke.

Part 5

Sergeant Okoye was standing over us. She didn’t understand what had just happened.

“You two know each other?”

I couldn’t answer right away.

“He taught my daughter,” I finally said. “She couldn’t talk. Not to anybody. She was five and she had thirty words and we were losing her. He taught her in a church basement every Saturday for two years. For free. He wouldn’t take a dollar.”

I looked at Mr. Kim.

“Every word she’s ever said to me. He gave her that.”

Sergeant Okoye looked at Mr. Kim for a long time.

Then she crouched down in front of him. Eye level. She looked straight at his face. And she spoke slowly, clearly, so he could read her lips.

“I’m. Very. Sorry.”

Mr. Kim watched her lips. He nodded.

Then he did something that made her eyes fill.

He took her hand and showed her how to sign it. Fist. Thumb out. Circle on the heart.

She did it.

He smiled. And patted her hand.

Good.

Officer Sullivan came back from the edge of the lot.

He was twenty-eight. Two years on the force. His file was clean. I found out later he’d been top of his academy class.

He stood in front of Mr. Kim. His face was gray. His hands didn’t know where to go.

He looked at me.

“He signed it seven times?” he asked quietly.

“Seven.”

“And I didn’t know.”

“Nobody ever taught you.”

He swallowed.

“How do you say I’m sorry?”

I showed him.

He did it. Clumsy. Fist circling his chest.

Mr. Kim looked at him. Then he signed something back.

I translated.

“He says you were doing your job. He says nobody taught you his language. He says that’s not your fault. He says it’s everybody’s.”

Officer Sullivan had to look at the ground.

I asked Mr. Kim what happened. He told me.

He’d stopped at the pharmacy for his blood pressure prescription. Locked his keys in the car. It happens to him. He keeps a slim jim in his trunk for exactly that reason. The trunk was open.

He never heard the cruisers pull in. He never heard a single command.

The first thing he knew, he felt someone behind him and turned and saw a hand on a gun.

I reached for my card, he signed. The card says I am deaf. I always show the card. I have shown it to police many times.

He looked at Officer Sullivan.

This time I did not get to.

Sergeant Okoye’s body camera had been on the entire time. So had Officer Sullivan’s.

The footage was reviewed that night by a lieutenant at the Columbus Division of Police. Then by the department’s internal affairs bureau. Then by the city’s Civilian Police Review Board.

It showed everything.

Mr. Kim working the slim jim with his back to the street. The officers approaching. The commands. Mr. Kim never reacting. Never turning.

It showed him startle. Spin around. Drop the tool. Reach into his cardigan pocket.

It showed the takedown.

And from the pavement, again and again, it showed his hand.

Index finger. Ear. Mouth.

The lieutenant slowed it down and counted.

Seven times in four minutes.

It showed one more thing.

A big biker with a skull on his neck sprinting across Parsons Avenue. Grabbing an officer’s forearm with both hands. Not hitting. Not pulling. Holding. Yelling he’s deaf.

Then going down without a fight.

And then, cuffed on the pavement, saying the same thing calmly, over and over, until someone listened.

Part 6

On Tuesday, the Franklin County prosecutor’s office called me. The charge against me, obstructing official business, was being dismissed.

On Thursday, the Columbus chief of police held a press conference at headquarters on Marconi Boulevard.

Mr. Kim was there. In his tan cardigan. A certified ASL interpreter beside him.

I was there with Lena and Hope.

The chief apologized to Harold Kim by name. Publicly. She said her officers had responded to a reported crime in progress in good faith, and that the department had failed to give them the training to recognize a Deaf man trying to communicate.

“He told us seven times,” she said. “And we didn’t have anyone who knew how to hear him. That is our failure. Not his. And not our officers’.”

She announced mandatory training for every sworn officer in the Columbus Division of Police. All nineteen hundred of them. Communicating with Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Recognizing ASL. Recognizing a Deaf ID card. How to slow down. How to write. How to wait.

She announced who would design the program and lead the first sessions.

Harold Kim. Retired teacher. Ohio School for the Deaf. Forty-one years.

The interpreter voiced Mr. Kim’s answer when a reporter asked if he’d accept.

Yes. On one condition.

The room got quiet.

Officer Sullivan sits in the front row. And I would like one more instructor.

He turned and looked at the back of the room.

At my daughter.

Hope is seventeen now. A senior at the Ohio School for the Deaf. She has hearing aids now, newer and much better than the ones she had as a baby. She can hear a little. She speaks. Carefully, but clearly. She signs like a poet.

She’s what the Deaf community calls bilingual. She lives in both worlds.

When she saw Mr. Kim look at her across that press room, she didn’t move for a long time.

She didn’t remember his face well. She was nine the last time she saw him.

Then he signed her name.

H. Tapped twice over the heart.

She put her hand over her mouth.

She remembered that.

That night at home, Hope sat at our kitchen table and practiced. For two hours. Mr. Kim signing on a video call on her laptop. Hope voicing his words out loud. Back and forth. Over and over.

Again, he’d sign.

She’d laugh. And do it again.

Lena and I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched. Lena was crying. So was I.

Ten years earlier, in a church basement, he’d taught my daughter her first words.

Now she was going to be his voice.

Part 7

The first training session was in November at the Columbus police academy on Groveport Road.

A hundred and twenty officers in a big classroom. Officer Ryan Sullivan in the front row, center seat. Sergeant Dana Okoye next to him.

The Scioto Riders took up most of the back row. Twelve of us in our vests. The academy staff looked nervous for about five minutes. Then they brought us coffee.

Mr. Kim stood at the front of the room. Tan cardigan. Reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

Hope stood beside him. Seventeen. A navy blazer Lena bought her for the occasion. Her hair pulled back. Her hands steady.

Mr. Kim looked at her and signed something small and private. I saw it from the back row.

Ready, Big Heart?

She signed back.

Ready, Teacher.

He started to sign.

She started to speak.

“My name is Harold Kim,” Hope said, her voice clear across the room as his hands moved beside her. “I have been Deaf my whole life. I did not have language until I was eight years old.”

He paused.

“Two months ago, I was lying on the pavement in a parking lot on Parsons Avenue. Two of your officers were holding me down. I told them seven times that I was deaf.”

He held up his hand.

Index finger near the ear. Then near the mouth.

Hope’s voice caught. Just slightly.

“This is the sign,” she said. “Today, every one of you will learn it.”

He looked out at a hundred and twenty officers.

“So that the next time someone makes it on the ground in front of you, someone will understand.”

They worked for three hours.

Mr. Kim taught. Hope voiced. The officers practiced. Basic signs. Deaf. Stop. Hands. Help. Wait. Write. Card. How to tap a shoulder. How to use a phone screen. How to face someone so they can read your lips.

Big men with crew cuts fumbling their fingers into shapes. Laughing at themselves. Mr. Kim moving their fingers into position the way he once moved mine.

Again, he’d sign.

Again, Hope would say.

At the end, Mr. Kim asked Officer Sullivan to stand.

Sullivan stood. Front row. Red in the face.

Mr. Kim signed. Hope voiced.

“Officer Sullivan. Please show your colleagues what you learned.”

Officer Ryan Sullivan raised his right hand.

He made the sign for deaf. Slow. Perfect.

Then he made a fist and circled it over his heart. Sorry.

Then he did one more. He’d practiced it, I could tell. He brought the fingertips of his flat hand to his chin and moved it forward, toward Mr. Kim. Like sending something from his mouth to the old man.

Thank you.

Then he added one more sign. Two flat hands, palms in, moving away from his forehead.

Teacher.

Mr. Kim looked at him for a long time.

Then he signed back. Hope voiced it softly.

“Good.”

The class was over. Officers filing out. Some of them stopping to practice a sign with Mr. Kim on the way.

Hope came to find me in the back row. She was shaking. Exhausted. Grinning.

She held up her right hand to me.

Thumb out. Index finger up. Pinky up.

I love you.

I held mine up. The one with H. O. P. E. across the knuckles.

Same shape.

Over her shoulder, at the front of the room, Mr. Kim saw us.

He raised his hand too.

Three hands. Same shape. In a police academy classroom on Groveport Road.

A hundred and twenty officers walking past.

Every one of them knew what it meant now.

👉 If this story stayed with you, follow our page for more stories from the road — and take one minute today to learn the sign for “deaf.” Someone may need you to know it. 🏍️