In Europe, blind officers aid fight against terrorism
Unit successful in analyzing wiretaps
ANTWERP, Belgium - Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical police officer. He wields a white cane instead of a gun. And from the purr of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a
Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism and organized crime: a blind Sherlock Holmes, whose disability allows him to spot clues sighted detectives don't see.
"Being blind has forced me to develop my other senses, and my power as a detective rests in my ears," he said from his office at the Belgian Federal Police.
Van Loo, a slight man who has been blind since birth, is one of six blind police officers in a pioneering unit that specializes in transcribing and analyzing wiretap recordings in criminal investigations.
After the Belgian police recently spent hours struggling to identify a drug smuggler on a faint wiretap recording, they concluded he was Moroccan. Van Loo, who has a "library of accents in his head," listened and deduced he was Albanian, a fact confirmed after his arrest.
"I have had to train my ear to know where I am. It is a matter of survival to cross the street or get on a train," he said. "It is these details that can be the difference between solving and not solving a crime."
The blind police unit, which became operational in June, originated after Paul van Thielen, a director at the Belgian Federal Police heard about a blind police officer in the Netherlands, and was looking at ways to improve community outreach. He made the connection that blind people could prove more adept than the sighted at listening to and interpreting wiretaps.
That idea, he says, was given added impetus after the Belgian government passed a law a few years ago giving the police extended powers to use wiretaps in the investigation of 37 areas of crime, including terrorism, murder, and the abduction of minors.
Alain Grignard, a senior counterterrorism officer at the Brussels Federal Police, said wiretaps proved instrumental in the arrests of a large terrorist cell in Belgium.
Beyond his keenly developed ears, van Loo is also a trained translator who speaks seven languages, including Russian and Arabic, a skill Grignard said makes him indispensable.
"You need every edge in a terrorism investigation, and a blind officer with languages could be a powerful weapon." 