Police Find Little Things Mean a Lot to S.E. Asians : Cultural rift: Officers in Orange County’s Little Saigon must learn new system of values to be effective.

On the streets of Orange County’s Little Saigon, it’s the little things that can close the rift between an American police officer trying to get to the bottom of a crime and a Vietnamese-American caught between two cultures.

It is disrespectful to touch a Vietnamese man on the head, summon him with an index finger or show him the bottom of one’s shoe while sitting. So is shaking hands with a Vietnamese woman unless she is Americanized. If she is not, a simple bow will do.

“There are a lot of little things to be aware of with newcomers,” said Santa Ana Police Officer Di Au, a Vietnam War refugee. “In Vietnam, for example, it’s customary when stopped by police to get out of your car and walk to the officer. Here, you don’t do that. It can cause tensions if police don’t know what to expect.”

Today, peace officers assigned to Southeast Asian communities in Orange County and other parts of the nation receive cultural training to overcome a traditional mistrust of law enforcement that impedes efforts to protect Southeast Asian communities.

“As police officers, you have to learn to work in Asian communities in a different way,” said San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Perdue, of the city’s Asian gang detail. “You subtly approach people and learn to function from their perspective. Our concepts of right and wrong are the same, but we are 180 degrees apart in the way we act.”

Influenced by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucian thought, say Southeast Asian historians, Southeast Asians dislike confrontation, and often try to take an indirect approach to problems on their own. If a crime befalls them, they tend to blame themselves for letting it happen.

Southeast Asians also are less likely than other Americans to talk about their feelings in public or with someone they do not know, such as a police officer who tries to question them about an incident.

“Saving face,” the act of avoiding shameful or embarrassing situations, comes into play strongly when a crime has occurred. Police say Southeast Asians are especially reluctant to report or talk about drug use, gang involvement, child abuse, rape and other sexual assaults because of the risk of embarrassment to their families.

“They don’t volunteer things. They only answer your questions, so you have to dig a lot more to get any information,” said Thien N. Cao, a Vietnamese refugee who is now a police liaison officer in Garden Grove’s Vietnamese community.

Further distancing police from the Southeast Asian community are customs that are not accepted or legal in the United States, a situation that can lead to misunderstandings with law enforcement.

For example, “nickeling,” a Vietnamese home remedy in which a coin is rubbed hard on the side of a sick child’s neck, could be misinterpreted as child abuse by educators or social workers because it often leaves bruises.

Corporal punishment by parents is accepted as well, and many Southeast Asians believe domestic violence should be solved within the family and without the help of police or social service agencies.

The hesitancy to get involved, specifically for the Vietnamese and Cambodians, is exacerbated by their experience with law enforcement in their home countries.

Officers were often low paid, uneducated and corrupt. They often employed methods such as coerced confessions, beatings and immediate jailings. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, police were used by the communists to enforce the regime and to jail political dissidents.

“You need to sit back and ask, ‘Where do these people come from?’ You will see they were brought up in an era of violence and not knowing who to trust, not even the police,” Perdue said.

Police and sheriff’s departments have tried to close the culture gap with a variety of training techniques ranging from 45-minute videotapes to full-fledged classes at police academies.

In addition, the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., a social service agency that provides counseling and crime-prevention information, offers quarterly seminars to police, probation officers and schoolteachers to teach them how to cope with cultural differences.

“Law enforcement officials are becoming more effective in communications,” said Nhu-hao Duong, a refugee coordinator for the Orange County Social Services Agency. “They are now careful about body language, their voices and hand gestures.”

Duong said officers often misinterpret innocuous behavior, such as lack of eye contact, as indications of deceit. Vietnamese, she said, look at the ground to show respect and put their hands on their belts, one hand covering the other.

“Police feel this can be shifty. They ask more questions and things can get worse,” Duong said.

Similarly, Officer Au said he has seen police get upset with Vietnamese who were smiling when detained. The smile also can be a sign of respect. “ ‘What, do you think it’s funny?’ ” Au quoted officers as saying.

At the Orange County Sheriff’s Academy, Westminster Detective Marcus Frank, who specializes in Southeast Asian crime, teaches an eight-hour course. Videotapes also have been produced by the Anaheim Police Department and the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

Officers learn that they should, when practical, get permission from the head of the household before talking to anyone else in the family. Out of respect, men should be addressed as ong and women as ba .

“If you don’t see there is a cultural difference, you won’t get anywhere,” said Garden Grove Sgt. Frank Hauptmann, who is assigned to the Asian detail. “Just the way you summon people can get you in trouble. Don’t use your finger. That is how a dog is summoned in Vietnam.”

Westminster Officer Robert Trotter, who is assigned to the Little Saigon substation, said Vietnamese are more sensitive than others to being embarrassed in front of their friends. So he tries to separate everyone at a crime scene and question witnesses privately as much as possible.

Police officers in other communities have learned similar lessons over the years.

Officer Al Lotz, a Vietnam War veteran who specializes in Southeast Asian crime in Houston and teaches the culture to his fellow officers, said working in Houston’s Southeast Asian community demands patience and empathy.

“I have developed compassion for them,” Lotz said. “They are being ripped off by their own people, and they went through hell to get to this country, and all they want to do is live in freedom. In my class, I try to explain how lost they are and what it is like living between two cultures.”

Because Southeast Asians like to know whom they are dealing with, police soon find out that they have to spend a great deal of time getting to know victims and witnesses on a personal level before they will cooperate. On a social level, they must attend merchant association meetings and cultural events.

Many times, officers say, they have to serve subpoenas in person and then drive the witnesses to court to assure that they show up. Police also have to re-interview witnesses and victims repeatedly before they begin to get usable information.

On their rounds, officers try to explain that being a crime victim, even of rape or sexual abuse, is not something to be so ashamed of that nothing should done about it.

A few departments have created permanent community liaisons, usually a Vietnamese, who stays in constant contact with the city’s Southeast Asian merchants and civic leaders.

“If they don’t know you, they won’t talk to you,” Garden Grove Police Chief John Robertson said. “We try to make regular rounds, but it takes years and years to develop relationships. You have got to be in it for the long run.”

Cao, who fled Vietnam in 1975, has been the Garden Grove Police Department’s emissary of good will since 1981. Every week he goes door to door, covering miles of pavement at scores of strip malls that are home to the county’s Vietnamese retailers.

His weapons are crime-prevention pamphlets in English and Vietnamese. It is a treadmill of hair salons, groceries, bakeries, restaurants, jewelers, clothiers, billiard parlors and drug stores.

“This is like a sales job, only I am selling security,” Cao said. “At the beginning, it was really humiliating. They didn’t even want us in the store. They’d look away or ignore us or ease us out the door.”

Cao said he did not wear his white and blue uniform for a while to make merchants more comfortable when he dropped by to see them. Today, he leaves his uniform on, testimony to some of the department’s progress.

More Southeast Asians are reporting crime, but there are still difficulties getting them to testify in court and cooperate with investigators.

Robertson said he repeatedly gets critical mail from citizens complaining that the Southeast Asian community is getting special attention. He recently received a batch of letters after his department sent out a bilingual crime-prevention brochure in the city water bills.

“I call this bigotry,” Robertson said. “If people could only understand that everything is reversed for them--culture, food, speech, clothes. They don’t know what to expect. They are fearful and wonder why it is held against them for being here.”