Police Bilingual Efforts Fall Short, Latinos Say

The police cruiser zoomed out of the darkness and screeched to a halt near Third and Lacy streets. An officer jumped out with gun drawn, yelling commands to Lalo Cervantes and two other men who were standing around talking on a warm summer evening last year.

Cervantes and his friends, all Mexican immigrants, froze, anchored to the spot by fear and frustration over their inability to understand the commands of the officer, who was shouting in English. Suddenly, another police car drove up and that officer yelled something at the first one, who jumped back in his car, and both sped away, apparently to wherever the real bad guys were.

The incident ended as quickly as it began, leaving Cervantes and the others shaken and wondering why the officer had pointed a pistol at them and what he was shouting.

“We all put our hands up, but one’s first reaction is to run. But instantly you realize that if you run, you’re probably going to get shot,” said Cervantes, who was interviewed in Spanish. “If that had happened, we never would’ve known why we were shot.”

The lack of communication between officers and immigrants is a problem that’s all too common, many in the Latino community say, despite the Santa Ana Police Department’s aggressive effort to recruit bilingual officers.

The issue resurfaced this month when Ulises Zambrano, 17, was shot in his house on the 1200 block of West McFadden Avenue. The teenager, who was asleep on the floor near the front door when police burst in, was killed by a Huntington Beach officer who was part of a multi-agency drug task force.

Police officials insist that the officer who fired the fatal shot had shouted commands to the youth in Spanish. But family members said the officer spoke only English, and Zambrano, according to an aunt, did not understand English.

Officials said that the officer, who has not been identified, shot Zambrano when he thought the teenager was reaching for a weapon. The raid led to the recovery of two pounds of ephedrine, a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine but which can be legally purchased. No weapons were found in the house, and police later said there was no evidence linking Zambrano, who worked as a night janitor, to the ephedrine.

Nativo Lopez, co-director of Hermandad Mexicana, a Santa Ana-based immigrants’ rights group, said his office has received a number of complaints from Latinos who said officers who had stopped them became angry and frustrated that the people they were addressing could not understand English. The complaints were directed at various law enforcement agencies, not just Santa Ana police.

“I hear these complaints consistently, and most of them originate in Santa Ana,” Lopez said. “It’s the No. 1 complaint from the Spanish-speaking community: police inability to make themselves understood. . . . We’ve also heard complaints that some officers who speak Spanish refuse to use the language in the community.

“The police put the onus on the public that they should understand the language of the officer. I’m not saying that the Latino community shouldn’t try to learn English, but the Police Department must be willing to at least go halfway in meeting the needs of the community,” Lopez said. “It is a new community.”

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Helton acknowledged that communication between officers and the immigrant community is still an occasional problem, because not all officers, including Latino ones, are fluent in Spanish. But he denied that the department is insensitive and said officers are working hard to adjust to Santa Ana’s changing demographics.

“We understand that our customer base is Spanish[-speaking]. We are aware and understand that even though we have a significant number of Spanish-speaking personnel, from time to time there are problems in communicating with citizens they have contact with. These problems occur either because the officer doesn’t understand the person’s dialect or our own employees aren’t as proficient as they should be in Spanish,” Helton said.

However, Helton said that the city’s policy for a number of years has been to hire only bilingual officers.

“This doesn’t mean that we’re only hiring Hispanic or Vietnamese officers,” said Helton. “We have a number of gringo officers who speak very good Spanish.”

Santa Ana police earn as much as $150 more per month if they pass a proficiency test in a second language. According to Helton, of the 373 sworn officers in the department, 141 are bilingual, including 134 Spanish-speaking officers.

Still, problems sometimes arise when officers who do not speak Spanish, or do not speak it well enough, stop immigrants who don’t speak English.

“There are some officers who don’t speak Spanish, and when they stop you they get very frustrated because we don’t always understand them,” said Roberto Sauceda, who was hanging out at a taqueria near Bristol Street and West McFadden Avenue with other young Latino men one recent afternoon. “Sometimes their frustration turns to anger and that’s when I get scared, because I’m afraid I’ll get arrested or shot for not understanding what they’re telling me.”

Helton said he did not doubt those situations happen. But he said it’s also true that some people pretend not to understand English.

“It’s a ruse that suspects commonly use, and it’s usually used when a suspect has something to hide,” Helton said.

Councilman Ted R. Moreno said the city “has gone to great lengths to hire bilingual officers.” Still, he said, “It’s obvious that the problem still exists.

“However, the fact is that we still have officers who were hired 15 or 20 years ago who are doing an excellent job but unfortunately aren’t bilingual. It will take a while to completely overcome the problem.”

Councilman Tony Espinoza said he was especially surprised by allegations that some officers who speak Spanish refuse to speak it on the streets: “We’re paying bilingual pay to these officers. If this is true, perhaps it’s something that we should look at.”

Helton said that accusation had never been brought to the department’s attention.

Espinoza and Moreno said they don’t think the communication problem is a serious one on the community.

“It’s not perfect, but it used to be much worse,” Moreno said. “I can tell you that we are making an honest effort to hire all bilingual employees in this city, whether we’re hiring police officers or park attendants.”

Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. declined to comment for this story.

Lopez said the city and Police Department “are only paying lip service” to the Latino community with talk of recruiting bilingual employees.

“They’re minimizing the problem. It’s a huge problem because there is an incredible resistance on the part of the Police Department to acknowledge where their officers work. They don’t have adequate cultural and language training. They have to recognize that we are now the majority and it’s the majority needs of the city that have to be addressed.”