Police Learn Cultural Sensitivity

After 34 years on the beat in San Fernando, Police Officer James Ramsey figures that there probably isn’t much he doesn’t know about the streets in the 2 1/2-square-mile city.

But that didn’t stop the veteran beat cop from going back to the classroom Wednesday to take part in his department’s first “cultural awareness and sensitivity” training program.

In part spurred by incidents in much larger departments--such as the Rodney G. King beating by Los Angeles police officers in the neighboring Foothill Division--the small San Fernando department became part of a growing trend in law enforcement to provide officers with increased instruction in dealing with ethnic cultures different from their own.

“I don’t know if it can teach me anything,” Ramsey said during a break in the daylong class at Mission College. “But anytime you think you can no longer learn something new, then that’s the time to quit because you’re in trouble. So the way I look at it, this can’t hurt.”

Half of the department’s 50 officers and staff went through the training program earlier this month. The other half--including Chief Dominick Rivetti--got their turn Wednesday.

Rivetti said the program was not given because of a problem in the department. The training may help his department recover some of the public trust that has been lost in the King case, he said.

Though the King incident involved Los Angeles officers, it occurred only a mile from San Fernando, and in the aftermath the small town’s officers shared some of the brunt of public outrage.

“Law enforcement as a community has suffered,” Rivetti said. “We got calls from around the world here because people thought it was our department. We got death threats, a bomb threat. . . . We have to build the public trust back piece by piece, brick by brick. . . . A program like this gives us all another tool with which to do our job better.”

Wednesday’s program was given by Santa Clara County Assistant Sheriff Ruben Diaz, a former national president of the Latino Peace Officers Assn., and tailored specifically to San Fernando, where 80% of the residents--but only one-third of the police officers--are Latino.

“I am here to inform you of differences within Hispanic culture,” Diaz told the class. “It’s not to criticize. It’s to inform.”

Diaz stressed that officers must be accepting of different cultures and must also attempt to learn about them.

A problem that leads to perceptions of police as insensitive in largely Latino communities is that officers--even Latino officers--often reduce their willingness to serve immigrants who have entered the country illegally.

“The perception is, ‘If you don’t like it, go back,’ ” Diaz said. But citizenship “makes no difference because these are people you have to serve.”

Rivetti said officers will probably be required to participate in sensitivity training annually.

“We would like to think we have an excellent department . . . but by exposing the entire department to this program, it couldn’t hurt us,” he said. “People are different and we need to be sensitive to this. If we walk away with some added sensitivity and are not so fast to pass judgment on people, we will have benefited.”

Among the officers who work the streets of San Fernando, the program was viewed positively, but most agreed that cultural sensitivity was not something learned in a classroom.

“It’s a learning process,” Sgt. Kenneth Belden said. “You have a spectrum of different officers and you have to lump them together to deal with a spectrum of cultures” in the community.

“It’s not as simple as sitting down for eight hours in a classroom and telling them how to do it,” Belden said. He said cultural sensitivity comes with on-the-job training.

Ramsey, the 34-year veteran on the beat, agreed.

“You learn that you have to treat people fairly--the way I’d want them to treat me,” he said. “You learn what works with people and what doesn’t. And if you keep doing what doesn’t work, then shame on you.”