Police, Cultures in O.C. Don’t Always Mix : Outreach: Asian Americans’ mistrust of officers continues despite efforts to win their confidence.

It had been a long week for Community Services Officer Tek Yung Yu. He had begged and pleaded with Korean business owners to attend a round table discussion on police and crime prevention, and when they did, things heated up considerably for him.

“They were frustrated,” said Yu, explaining that his listeners felt that a man convicted of beating an elderly Korean had received far too lenient a sentence. “They asked me, ‘Why should we report a crime? The police won’t help us, so why should we? No! We won’t.’ ”

It was a typical day for Yu, a Garden Grove Police Department services officer. His experience mirrors that of the small but slowly growing number of Asian American police officers in Orange County who on a daily basis find themselves balancing gingerly on a cultural tightrope.

A recent Times Poll found that while 52% of the county’s whites have “a lot of confidence” in their local police, that number falls to 37% among Latinos and 27% among Asians, among whom one in six said they had “no confidence at all” in police.

This confidence gap is one which Yu and about two dozen other Korean, Vietnamese and other Asian officers in Orange County face daily. Several police chiefs say it is one of the most critical challenges facing their departments as the county’s Asian population continues to grow.

In Westminster, nearly one-fourth of the city’s 70,000 residents are Asian, most of them Vietnamese-born. Countywide, the number of residents of Asian ancestry has surpassed 250,000--10% of the total population, according to latest estimates.

To reach their residents, Westminster police tried to operate a substation in Little Saigon. But they found that shaking hands and increasing patrols in the area were costly and inefficient ways of breaking the cultural barrier and responding to the area’s crime, given the city’s tightening budget.

Now they help staff a community resource center--becoming part of a social service magnet at a Little Saigon office shared with Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., Social Security, a poverty law center and the Girl Scouts.

Strange office mates they are, but police chiefs are beginning to put a high premium on gaining the trust of Orange County’s growing Vietnamese, Korean and Cambodian communities.

“We just have to get more Vietnamese officers,” says Westminster Police Chief Jim Cook. “It’s one of our biggest concerns.”

As obstacles among Asian Americans to greater confidence in the police, authorities cite cultural differences, linguistic barriers, unpleasant experiences with corrupt police in Asian countries and an intense fear of retaliation by any criminal that might be denounced to police.

Westminster City Councilman Tony Lam spent two days knocking on doors in the Vietnamese neighborhood this fall trying to spark interest in a new community-police alliance among Vietnamese in the neighborhood surrounding Little Saigon.

Lam must have invited hundreds of Vietnamese, police said. But when the meeting took place, the only Asians present were Lam, his deputy and the department’s Asian officers. “Not one single Vietnamese resident came,” lamented one officer who was there.

For Lam, it was a personal blow.

In his eyes, the rising tide of gang violence and the growing number of armed robberies and home invasions--in which victims are tied up, occasionally tortured and always robbed--are the biggest problems facing his Vietnamese American constituents.

And the problem is made worse by the fact that Southeast Asians generally do not call police, cooperate with investigators or testify in court, unless delicately coaxed by officers schooled in their customs. Lam says sadly that they have unwittingly become perfect victims, especially the newly arrived refugees.

In an informal survey by Westminster police in 1991, Lt. Andrew Hall said police were surprised by opinions held by Vietnamese business owners toward police.

“They told us they didn’t like police around their stores, because ‘When you come, you’re rude.’ They told us, ‘You park your vehicle in front of my business with the lights flashing, disturbing everybody. You act rude and never return a call!’ ”

Among other things, Hall said, the survey pointed out that police need to hire more bilingual officers, pay more attention to their communication skills and be wary of “Westernized thinking.”

“Instead of coming in like gangbusters saying, ‘You need to give us the facts. Tell us what happened, it needs to be more contextual,” Hall said. “Try a ‘Good evening. How are you this evening.’ Explain why you’re there and what you’re doing.”

Hall said he is disappointed that police academies do not devote more time to teaching cultural diversity.

“You want to know what they taught us at the academy?” Hall asked, immediately dropping to his knees, and clasping his hands and placing them on top of his head. “We were told never to put a Vietnamese or Cambodian in this position, because they think they’re going to be executed. That is how the military executed them in their villages.

“That’s it. That was the extent of the training 15, 18 years ago.”

Officer Manh Ingwerson, one of two Vietnamese-speaking members of the Westminster force of 101, said he also had a rough beginning coming out of the police academy, despite his Asian heritage and upbringing.

“Instead of the abrupt, ‘Let’s get down to business’ with Vietnamese residents, I needed to pull them aside, talk to them nicely in Vietnamese, and show them that we’re here to help and not intimidate them,” Ingwerson said. “Even though I’m Vietnamese, I’ve become so Americanized that I really didn’t realize it, until I got on the street in uniform and my own people don’t want to talk to me.”

Being older helps, said Ingwerson, who has been with the Westminster police nine years and is in his early thirties. In the Vietnamese culture, you are taught to respect age, he said. He had to overcome Vietnamese residents talking about “this kid who is a cop.”

Ingwerson still takes time to explain the complex criminal justice system to Vietnamese. But he points to the Department’s recently hired public service officers, who wear police badges but do not carry weapons and cannot make arrests, as the ethnic vanguard for the force.

“They can sit down and explain to them. That frees me to do police work,” he said.

Westminster police gang squad member Mark Nye, 33, says investigators can suffer considerable aggravation in taking the time to explain the criminal justice system to Vietnamese victims only to discover, at the time of trial, that they still refuse to testify against the accused.

“We’ve tried to talk to them and tell them we’re on their side,” Nye said, “but unless you’re willing to hold their hands in court, it could be a lost cause.”

The dilemma is exacerbated by gang intimidation. Nye said it is becoming common for Vietnamese gangs to learn the identities of their victims, telephone them and threaten them.

“The victim tells us, I can’t testify in court because I’m afraid for my family, and if I testify I’ll have to move away,” Nye said. “They want us to handle everything because we arrested the people.”

Cook is disturbed about youth gangs that prey on newly arrived Southeast Asians, he said. They do not trust the banking system and many keep a lot of cash and jewelry at home, hoarding it for personal use or future visits to their native lands, he said.

When they shop in Little Saigon and flash a lot of cash, Cook said, it’s almost as if “they have targets on their backs.”

With a limited budget, Cook has begun a police internship program to hire young Vietnamese Americans and other Asian youths and introduce them to the “police culture.” Of some 20 interns, eight are Vietnamese. The department has seven persons who speak Vietnamese, and two more recruits in the police academy.

In neighboring Santa Ana, a growing number of Vietnamese and other Asian businesses are beginning to concentrate on the city’s west border. Santa Ana already has Orange County’s largest Cambodian and Laotian populations, said Santa Ana Police Cpl. Futi Semanu, who is part of the Department’s unit for Asian-Pacific affairs.

As much as police officers try, Semanu said, “many Asians still don’t trust us.”

“Part of our duty with the unit is to go out to immigrant centers and explain the role of police,” Semanu said. “We break it down to them what we do and explain a lot about the criminal justice system.”

The police uniform, which is a proud symbol of law enforcement to some, remains a social stigma to some Asians, who harbor memories of corrupt or abusive police in their native lands.

“Just going to the police, and seeking us out to come to your home is viewed as negative in some Asian families,” said Santa Ana Officer Melody Rose. “And, if it’s a family thing, well, it’s like saying you can’t control your own home.”

Garden Grove Police Officer Peter Vi, 28, is a member of the gang unit and investigates Asian youth gangs.

In the five years he has been on the force, he said, his experiences have mirrored those of Officer Ingwerson in Westminster.

“When you’re in uniform, and Vietnamese people look at you, you see there’s still a barrier there,” Vi said. “I’m fortunate that I can speak their language. Usually, they react positively and start talking to me. But with older people, it takes more time. I have had to go back to different residents and business owners and talk to them on a personal basis when there wasn’t any worry about time, and without pressing them for information.”

Garden Grove Police Chief Stan Knee said he realizes that one of the greatest needs in the city is the hiring of more Asian and bilingual officers, who can help continue building bridges to the ethnic communities.

“We make no bones about it,” Knee said. “We need to hire more bilingual police officers . . . without a doubt.”

Asians make up roughly 20% of Garden Grove’s population of 143,050 but less than 4% of the city’s 164-member police force, which has three Vietnamese-speaking officers and two who speak Korean.

The department has six vacant positions, and a federal grant signed last week by President Clinton will provide funds for another six positions, Knee said.

“I would be very disappointed if we didn’t fill six of those with minorities,” Knee said.

He added that the Department has put a lot of emphasis of recruiting minorities in the police cadet program. In this, Asians of ages 17 to 22 are paid $6.50 an hour in clerical positions, with the possibility of being hired on the force.

“It’s like an apprenticeship program and also helps demystify the Police Department for young Asians,” Knee said. “I think it will supply us with the bilingual minority officers we need to successfully police the city.”