The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Front : Bridging the Cultural Gaps in Glendale

The Glendale Police Department has one man assigned to reverse yesterday’s image while bridging today’s cultural gaps.

Chahe Keuroghelian, whose title is intercultural coordinator, floats easily among the city’s estimated 40,000 Armenians and Armenian-Americans, and other ethnic groups, department officials say.

In a population that is now about 65% members of various minorities, including 25% of Armenian descent, part of his task is to counteract memories of racist groups years ago, said Police Sgt. Lief Nicolaisen, a department spokesman.

“Chahe is helping to make our community work for all of us, but we still carry this image as a racist city” from the past, Nicolaisen said.

“I remember seeing a guy from the American Nazi Party standing on Brand Boulevard selling newspapers when I was a kid,” Nicolaisen said. The Orange County affiliate of the White Aryan Resistance keeps its phone bank here because there are those who still associate the Glendale telephone prefix with racial hatred, he added.

These days the city has appointed a committee to study hate crimes, which average about eight a year since the city started recording them in 1986--a rate substantially less than that of other local communities its size.

Keuroghelian’s $40,000-a-year job is connecting the department with all of the communities it serves.

“People think that because I’m Armenian I represent the Armenian community, but I represent all cultures,” said Keuroghelian. “I educate the officers and the public about different cultures because if the only time that people come in contact with police it is a negative experience, that educates no one.”

The differences are stark at times, he explained.

“In most Middle-Eastern cultures, when an officer stops you, as a courtesy, you get out of your car with your driver’s license and money and try to explain what happened and negotiate your way out,” Keuroghelian said.

“But it is a no-no in this country to get out of your car before an officer does and people get nervous when they’re told to get back in the car.”

Refugees from Eastern European countries controlled by the former Soviet Union, for example, are extremely suspicious of government in general because of past experiences, said Keuroghelian, who immigrated to the United States in 1980 from Beirut, where he was a newspaper reporter.

Nicolaisen described Keuroghelian’s function as the opposite of the community-policing efforts being tried in other local police departments--”a direct link between the chief’s office and indigenous community leaders” instead of relying on street-level police contacts.

He participates in ESL (English as a Second Language) workshops sponsored by the Armenian Relief Society and also makes himself available to organizations in the Korean, Vietnamese, Russian-speaking and Latino communities, said Sona Zinzalian, director of the society’s social services department.

Tark Nazarian, a social worker who deals mainly with Armenian refugees from all over the world, said Keuroghelian helps immigrants understand the rules of the game in the United States.

While some newcomers struggle to understand the language and customs of their new country, the Armenian community has been making inroads into new areas--like law enforcement. The Police Department’s Explorer Scout training program is now about 95% Armenian Americans.

But the city still suffers from ethnic-based crimes. A Boy Scout headquarters in an Armenian social center was vandalized in May, and last January a 70-year-old Armenian man was beaten by a man enraged that the victim was speaking Armenian.

And when a local newspaper asked readers if the city should establish a national holiday to honor the Armenian massacre in Turkey, many callers responded with anti-Armenian slurs, Keuroghelian said.

“The only way to deal with that is education, education, education,” Keuroghelian said. “The more people know about where other people are coming from psychologically, the more it will help them deal with each other.”