Gaining Something in Translation
One sign of the impact of minority residents was evident in the $77,953 grant from the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning that will enable the Garden Grove Police Department to hire two bilingual workers to act as liaisons between police and the city’s large Indochinese community.
It is the first grant in the nation to deal specifically with crime problems in an Indochinese community.
Police have more problems fighting crime in Asian neighborhoods because of language barriers and a basic distrust many Vietnamese have of police, a cultural factor because the immigrants didn’t trust Vietnamese police and don’t understand differences in the law here.
The liaison workers will try to facilitate crime prevention work and programs to deal with victims of or witnesses to crimes in the Asian neighborhoods. The object is to create trust that will bring police and Asian residents closer together.
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