Sacha Van Loo is not your typical cop. 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 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 pick up clues other 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, where a bullet-riddled piece of paper from a recent target-shooting session was proudly displayed on the wall.
"Being blind also requires recognizing your limitations," he said with a smile, noting that a sighted trainer guided his hands during target practice "to make sure no one got wounded."
Van Loo, 36, a slight man who has been blind since birth, is one of six blind police officers in a pioneering unit specializing in transcribing and analyzing surveillance recordings in criminal investigations.
An accomplished linguist who speaks seven languages, including Russian and Arabic, he laments that he is not entitled to carry a gun on the job or to make arrests.
But his sense of hearing is so acute that Paul Van Thielen, a director at the Belgian Federal Police, compared his powers of observation to those of a superhero.
When the police eavesdrop on a suspected terrorist making a telephone call, Van Loo can identify the number instantly by listening to the tones. By hearing the sound of a voice echoing off a wall, he can deduce whether a suspect is speaking from an airport lounge or a crowded restaurant.
After the Belgian police spent hours struggling to identify a drug smuggler on a faint wiretap recording, they concluded he was Moroccan. Van Loo, who says he has a "library of accents" in his head, listened and deduced that the man was Albanian; the arrest proved him right.
"I have had to train my ear to know where I am," Van Loo said. "It is a matter of survival to cross the street or get on a train. Some people can get lost in background noise, but as a blind man I divide hearing into different channels. It is these details that can be the difference between solving and not solving a crime."
Grappling with his blindness, he says, has also given him the thick emotional skin necessary for dealing with stress.
"I have overheard criminals plotting to commit murder, drug dealers making plans to drop off drugs, men beating each other up," Van Loo said. "Being blind helps not to let it get to me because I have to be tough."
The blind police unit, which became operational in June, originated after Van Thielen heard about a blind police officer in the Netherlands and was looking for ways to improve community outreach. He hoped that blind people would prove more adept than the sighted at listening to surveillance recordings and interpreting them.
The police also recognized that officers like Van Loo could be valuable in counterterrorism investigations because surveillance recordings are often muffled by loud background noise, requiring a highly trained ear to discern voices.
Alain Grignard, a senior counterterrorism officer at the Brussels Federal Police, noted that wiretaps proved instrumental in the recent arrests of a large terrorist cell in Belgium that was recruiting for the insurgency in Iraq.
The Belgian police said they were amazed at the number of qualified blind applicants for the six posts in the unit. Scoring high on a hearing test was a prerequisite, as was being at least 33 percent blind. Van Thielen said he had to turn away dozens of applicants whose sight was too good, including one "blind" man who shocked recruiters by driving to his interview.
Recruiting blind people posed other challenges. Van Thielen, a no-nonsense police veteran, had to deal with officers who feared that having blind colleagues would be a burden. Others felt awkward about how to behave in front of blind people and wondered if saying au revoir -- literally "see you again" -- would give offense.
To assuage their concerns, Van Thielen arranged for sensitivity training sessions with blind volunteers. The hints included this one: Don't leave computer cables trailing on the floor where blind officers can trip on them.
"At first when members of the police heard that blind people were coming to work here, they laughed and told me that we were a police force and not a charity," Van Thielen said. "But attitudes changed when the blind officers arrived and showed their determination to work hard and be useful."
It was not only attitudes that needed updating. In addition to installing elevators with voice-activated buttons at the police station, the force issued each blind officer a special computer equipped with a Braille keyboard and a system that translates images on the screen into sound.
As Van Loo transcribed a wiretap recording on a recent day, he wore earphones and passed his index finger over a long strip of Braille characters on the bottom of the keyboard. When he goes outside, he carries a compact police-issued global positioning system device with a voice that directs him to his destination, street by street.
A father of two, Van Loo attributed his success to having parents who taught him at an early age to be independent. He recalled that when he was a young child, his father, a film buff, took him to movies. His father also taught him to drive a car by hoisting him on his lap and guiding his hands on the steering wheel.
His ability to adapt, he said, was reinforced by attending a regular high school. He also attended a school for the blind, where he learned to maneuver with a cane and to read Russian in Braille. To relax, he skis, rides horses and plays the Arabic lute.
"My parents accepted my blindness, which also helped me to accept it," he said. "That they were not risk averse also helped."
Van Loo said he remained determined not to let his disability overwhelm him.
"Being blind isn't always very easy," he said. "I don't focus on it. I don't deny it. But it is rather tragic that a blind policeman is still viewed as an exception."
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