Vietnamese Officer Opens Door to Closed Community

Last December, Westminster police officers heard rumors that a local fabric store was selling pharmaceutical drugs without a license. Normally, investigators would have had little hope of making any arrests because all the buyers were said to be Vietnamese. “There was no way I could go in and ask to buy some ampicillan,” recalled Sgt. Bob Burnett, commander of special investigations for the Westminster Police Department.

But a month earlier, the department had hired the county’s first and only Vietnamese-born police officer. So, even though it was his day off, Officer Manh Ingwerson went to the store and purchased the drugs as an undercover officer.

As a result, Burnett said, officers obtained a warrant, confiscated 200 capsules of ampicillan and arrested the shop owners. The case is now pending.

Though he has only recently finished his training as a patrolman and will be on technical probation until May, Ingwerson--one of only six Vietnamese-born police officers in California--is already in demand as an interpreter for suspects, witnesses and victims in Westminster and the neighboring cities of Garden Grove and Huntington Beach.

Immediately after Ingwerson was hired, neighboring police departments were calling “almost daily,” said Ingwerson’s training officer, Augie Martin. Last November, Ingwerson was labeled a “godsend” by Garden Grove officers after he helped sort out conflicting eyewitness accounts of a shooting in which two people died in a Vietnamese restaurant.

“I’m out there to help them (the Vietnamese) if they allow me to help them,” Ingwerson said.

Came to U.S. in 1971

Ingwerson, 27, was born in Dalat, a resort south of Saigon, and lived in Vietnam until he was 12. He came to the United States in 1971 with his mother and stepfather, an American who was then a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army. (He took his stepfather’s name.) He and his mother became citizens in 1973, he said. His wife Tammy is American-born. They live in Westminster and have three children.

Ingwerson joined the Army after high school, and was stationed in Korea, Kansas and Germany. He said he took college classes in law enforcement whenever he could, and five years ago, while he was on leave and visiting his parents in Westminster, he asked the police training sergeant for a job.

Westminster, which has a large refugee population, had attempted to recruit Vietnamese officers but had run into problems, Police Chief Donald Saviers said. It is difficult to verify backgrounds of Vietnamese-born applicants, since any information recorded before the fall of Saigon in 1975 is not available. In addition, for many Asians, police work does not offer the same prestige as professions in medicine or engineering, Saviers said.

Moreover, he said he worried that a cultural tendency toward heavy influence-peddling in government would make finding a trusted officer difficult.

‘Can’t Think Like Vietnamese’

Said Ingwerson: “I know I am Vietnamese, but I can’t think like a Vietnamese in this job.” Some Vietnamese have suggested that as a fellow countryman, he should not arrest them, he said. Once he pulled a car over for a traffic violation. A passenger asked whether Ingwerson could report that he was driving instead of his niece. “I said no, you can’t do that.”

Most people, Ingwerson said, have reacted with enthusiasm to seeing a Vietnamese patrolman. And residents and shopkeepers--including informants--”flock to him like flies to honey,” Officer Martin said. “It breaks down the ‘them and us’ thinking.”

Some gang members, however, perhaps confused by his American name, assume he is Mexican, Ingwerson said. He said he uses the confusion to his advantage. “I usually don’t speak Vietnamese. I want to find out what they’re saying and wait until they get in deeper trouble,” he said.

In the last five years, Westminster’s Southeast Asian population has jumped from 2.7% to 18% and is still growing, Chief Saviers said. The city’s crime rate has not increased. But the nature of crime has shifted in recent years toward car theft, extortion, fraud and tax evasion, and fewer crimes are reported, Saviers said.

Refugees Fear Police

Police, he said, have been frustrated by Vietnamese witnesses who see everything but say nothing. Many Vietnamese refugees tend to fear police--believing them to be brutal and corrupt, he said.

Saviers said he does not want to exploit Ingwerson and is concentrating on developing his police skills before using him as a community liaison. In the meantime, however, one of Ingwerson’s most important roles, he said, may be internal--teaching fellow officers about cultural and language cues they may have misinterpreted, he said.

In the past, for example, some officers have seen welts on a child’s neck and suspected child abuse. Later, they learned the welts were the result of “coin rubbing”--a practice among some Southeast Asian cultures of rubbing coins on the back and neck to let sickness out .

Some officers have also mistakenly thought Vietnamese drivers were reaching for a gun when they were actually reaching for their wallets, which many carry in their socks, Saviers said. In addition, Vietnamese army veterans may think they are about to be executed if they are handcuffed or asked to raise their hands in the air, Ingwerson said.

Reports Coaxed From Victims

Ingwerson said he hopes his presence in the community will encourage more reporting of crime by Vietnamese residents and shopkeepers. Twice, he said, a second party has called up to report a robbery for the victim. Ingwerson said he called the victims back and persuaded them to file a report.

In particular, he said, he hopes he will be able to elicit more complaints from beaten wives who, because of cultural training, tend not to report the beatings to police.

There have been some problems among the new Vietnamese police officers, according to Capt. John Robertson of the Garden Grove Police Department, who recently completed a statewide study on the impact of Indochinese refugees on law enforcement.

For instance, the officers share a fear that they or their families will be the object of retaliation by gang members, Robertson said.

Ingwerson said he has heard rumors that he may be killed by gang members who blame him for making them lose face in front of their girlfriends. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said, “unless they pull the trigger.”

Few Recruiting Efforts Made

Another problem, Robertson said, is that some Vietnamese officers he interviewed said that in pressure situations they often reverted to speaking Vietnamese, even though they speak fluent English.

Despite growing Vietnamese populations, Robertson said few police departments have made much of an effort to recruit Vietnamese officers. “I don’t know if it’s stereotyping or the fear of cultural conflict within the organization,” he said. He also noted that no affirmative action quotas have been set for Asians as they have been for blacks, Latinos and women.

However, he said, “It is my perception that there is a definite need for the Indochinese to get involved in not only police, but government-type positions, to give their children role models. From my perspective, it would speed the acculturation process and reduce the conflict, which would reduce crime.”

Ingwerson said he still has trouble with English and report-writing. But he hopes he will be promoted to detective in three to five years. So far, he says, “I’m average at everything. Just give me time.”