翻訳お願いします。
翻訳お願いします。
ANTWERP, Belgium ー Sacha van Loo, 36, is not a typical cop. He carries a white cane instead a gun. And from the sound of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a Peugeot, a Honda or a Mercedes. Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism, drug trafficking 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, 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 So acute is his sense of hearing that Paul van Thielen, a director at the Belgia Federal Police, compares his powers of observation to those of a "superhero."
When police eavesdrop on a terrorist suspect making a phone call, van Loo can listen to the tones dialed and immediately identify the number. From the sound of a voice echoing off of a wall, he can deduce whether a suspect is speaking from an airport lounge or a crowded restaurant.
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.
Besides his keenly developed ears, van Loo is also a trained translator who speaks seven languages, including Russian and Arabic a skill that makes him indispensable, since his knowledge of accents can help him differentiate between, say, an Egyptian and a Moroccan suspect.
“At first when members of the police heard that blind people were coming to work here, they laughed and told me they were a police force and not a charity," said van Thielen. "But attitudes changed when the blind officers arrived and showed their determination to work hard and be useful."
A father of two, van Loo attributes his success to having parents who taught him at an early age to be independent. He recalls that as a young child, his father, a big movie fan, took him to watch movies. His father also taught him to drive a car by putting him on his lap and guiding his hands on the steering wheel.
My parents accepted my blindness, which also helped me to accept it," he said. "That they did not avoid risks also helped
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