Serve, Protect, Translate

It started with a lost man.

But what should have been a simple missing person’s case deteriorated into an LAPD debacle and a wrongful death lawsuit.

It also highlighted a growing problem faced by public safety officials not only in L.A., but in Orange County and throughout Southern California.

The December 1995 incident involved an elderly Korean immigrant who went for a walk and couldn’t find his way back home. Dong-Sik Chong, 81, who spoke no English and was hard of hearing, was eventually picked up by Los Angeles police officers.

He ended up being released alone to the streets, where he was beaten and robbed. Chong died of an asthma attack in his sleep a few months later. His family, which filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, said he never recovered from his traumatic experience.

Although the lawsuit was settled for a minimal amount, the incident proved to be a landmark case for the Los Angeles Police Department. Immigrant and civil rights advocates questioned why police never attempted to communicate with Chong in a language he could understand, although they apparently had the resources to do so.

Critics called for a comprehensive department language policy in a city where about half a million people speak little or no English.

After three years of discussion, the civilian Police Commission, which oversees the department, adopted its language policy in May. Its 20 recommendations outlined protocols for the department’s 12,000-plus force of sworn and civilian personnel in dealing with non-English-speakers. They also set guidelines for expanding the recruitment and compensation of bilingual employees.

Nearly a year later, LAPD officials say they have made significant strides in addressing a problem that is common to most Los Angeles County law enforcement agencies. Other police departments offer bonuses to bilingual officers and subscribe to a telephone translation service, but lack a formal policy.

In Orange County, departments have been striving for years to recruit officers who speak second languages, especially Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean, but they find it isn’t always easy.

“The demand is incredible, especially in Southern California,” said Garden Grove Capt. Dave Abrecht. “Obviously, we are constantly looking for the qualified bilingual candidate, and every agency [that covers large Asian communities] is looking for that same person.”

Garden Grove police have adopted a recruitment plan with a long-range goal of having the department’s ethnic and language makeup mirror the community’s, but they still have far to go, he said.

“It’s a constant effort on our part, a constant realization that we have to be able to communicate with members of our community,” Abrecht said.

The 159-officer Garden Grove department has four officers or civilians who speak Vietnamese, three who speak Korean and about 15 to 20 Spanish speakers. According to the last federal census, the city had more than 13,000 Vietnamese speakers and 23,000 Spanish speakers.

Language barriers are even more critical in the emergency dispatch system, police say. Even though dispatchers have access to a translation service, language problems can delay the transmission of critical information during an emergency.

For example, in Huntington Beach on Wednesday, when a 16-month-old girl drowned in a residential pool, witnesses who called police spoke only Spanish, according to Lt. Luis Ochoa.

The dispatcher, who did not speak Spanish, had to contact the translation service. The service is fairly quick, police say, but it can still delay the retrieval of critical information. In the drowning incident, however, Ochoa said there was no delay in sending emergency officials to the scene because the caller’s address automatically appeared on the 911 operator’s computer screen.

When dispatchers hear someone speaking frantically or screaming in another language, they send officers out first and then try to overcome language barriers later, police say. “Language issues like this do come up from time to time,” Ochoa said. “It’s particularly disturbing when there’s an emergency, and I’m sure the people who are calling are frustrated, and the people trying to take the information are frustrated.”

“I guess there’s two ways to resolve it. You try to hire people that speak the various languages. Also the people who are making the calls have to make an effort to learn English--or enough to try to make an emergency call.”

The 229-officer Huntington Beach department has 21 officers trained in foreign languages, mostly Spanish. Two speak Vietnamese and three know sign language, Ochoa said.

It is not just police who deal with this issue. “Our firefighters confront that almost daily,” said Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority. While the authority does have bilingual personnel, sometimes in an emergency situation, they’ve relied on police to translate for them, he said.

The authority is working with Westminster police to develop a program in which officers and firefighters would be outfitted with cellular phones, allowing them to call translation services directly while at the scene of an incident, he said.

Most police departments offer bonuses, typically 5%, to officers who speak second languages, but find themselves competing with other agencies for a relatively small pool of qualified candidates.

In Westminster--home to the Vietnamese community of Little Saigon--Chief James Cook goes on Vietnamese radio to try to recruit bilingual candidates, according to personnel director Robin Kapp. But many candidates are rejected because their English skills are weak.

The 102-member department has five Vietnamese speakers and at least five Spanish speakers, Kapp said. “You could always use more,” he said.

In Los Angeles, the police department has gone through a fundamental shift since the Chong incident, making officers responsible for serving all residents, regardless of whether they speak English. “The word has gotten out: There’s no excuse,” said Edith Perez, president of the Police Commission. Officers are now held accountable, she said, and have the tools to communicate with those who do not speak English.

In Orange County, the tiny city of La Palma’s 25-officer department has one Korean speaker and a few Spanish speakers. Several years ago, the department started relying on community volunteers to act as translators, said Sgt. Mark Yokoyama. “They’ve given us 24-hour phone numbers,” he said. “If we need help with Korean, we can call any time of day and night.”

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Police Interpreter

When a Los Angeles police officer is unable to communicate with a non-English-speaking person, he or she can use an AT&T; language identification card. In those cases, the person is shown the pamphlet, asked “to point to your language,” and an AT&T; interpreter is contacted.

AFRICA

Amharic

Arabic

Bambara

French

Hausa

Italian

Portuguese

Portuguese

Creole

Somali

Swahili

Tigrinya

Wolof

Yoruba

MIDDLE EAST

Arabic

Armenian

Assyrian

Dari

Farsi

Hebrew

Kurdish

Pashto

Turkish

ASIA

Cantonese

Chaochow

Fukienese

Mandarin

Shanghai

Taiwanese

Toishanese

Burmese

Cambodian

Hmong

Indonesian

Japanese

Korean

Laotian

Malay

Mien

Thai

Vietnamese

NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA, AND CARIBBEAN

French

Haitian Creole

Navajo

Portuguese

Spanish

EUROPE

Albanian

Armenian

Basque

Bulgarian

Catalan

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Dutch

Estonian

Finnish

French

German

Greek

Hungarian

Icelandic

Italian

Lithuanian

Macedonian

Norwegian

Polish

Portuguese

Romanian

Russian

Serbian

Slovak

Spanish

Swedish

Ukrainian

Yiddish

PACIFIC ISLANDS

Akan

Fijian

Ilocano

Indonesian

Malay

Samoan

Tagalog

Tongan

INDIA, PAKISTAN, AND SOUTHWEST ASIA

Bengali

Bhojpuri

Gujarati

Hindi

Malayalam

Nepali

Punjabi

Sinhalese

Tamil

Urdu

*

About 78% of all paid bilingual personnel in the department are Spanish-speaking. This is in line with the percentage of Spanish speakers in the area’s foreign language population.

About 40% of 468 calls referred to the AT&T; Language Line were for Korean interpreters, a recent audit showed. Out of more than 2,000 paid bilingual personnel in the LAPD, 42 (about 2%) are Korean speakers.