Police in Fairfax County are reportedly refusing a request by Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard to reissue ceremonial police academy graduation documents after they were signed in Chinese. English was declared the “official language of the Commonwealth” in 1996.
The graduation certificates were signed by Major Wilson Lee of the Fairfax County Police Criminal Justice Academy, who according to NBC 4 Washington is Chinese-American. Lee has reportedly held the position for more than a year, but the outlet explained the Herndon Police Department only recently received its first batch of new graduates from the academy since Lee began his tenure.
When DeBoard received the graduation certificates Lee’s Chinese signature, the outlet reported she sent an email calling them “unacceptable.”
“I just found out that the academy graduation certificates were signed by you in some other language, not in English. This is unacceptable for my agency,” DeBoard reportedly emailed Lee.
She said in a statement to the outlet, “Because we operate in our profession on a written common platform of English, I asked to have our officers’ certificates reissued to the graduates with the commander’s name written in English, as has always been the tradition.”
The station confirmed in a broadcast news segment that neither Lee nor the police academy in Fairfax County intend to comply with DeBoard’s request for the documents to be reissued in a signature understandable by English speakers.
Fairfax County’s refusal, and the preceding controversy, comes despite English being designated the official language of the Commonwealth of Virginia in by a 1996 law.
That law specifies, “no state agency or local government shall be required to provide and no state agency or local government shall be prohibited from providing any documents, information, literature or other written materials in any language other than English.”
The only exception for the English requirement in government documents occurs if another law allows the use of foreign language.
DeBoard told the outlet that after she requested the documents to be reissued with English signatures, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis “inappropriately accused” accused her “of being racist” in private.
“There was no intention of racial insensitivity on my part when I made the request to address this change, and it is quite concerning from a professional standpoint that he has chosen to raise this issue outside of our agencies and place judgement on my character,” she told the outlet.
Chinese characters used in signatures in the United States appears to be a murky area, with no jurisdictions expressly forbidding them.
The National Notary Association warns, however, that professionals should think twice before notarizing a document written or signed in other languages.
It explains, “depending on the circumstances, it may be inadvisable to notarize such foreign-language documents.” The association further elaborates, “The danger, of course, is that the document is being misrepresented to the Notary.” Should the notary decide to move forward in such a scenario, the notary certificate would nonetheless need to be written in English.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Police Chief Maggie DeBoard” by Maggie DeBoard, “Major Lee Wilson” by Fairfax County, and “NVCJ Headquarters” is by Northern Virginia Center for Justice.
