Monday, January 28, 2008
Growing impatient, she repeated herself, trying to explain in Spanish that her former boyfriend, the man she feared would hurt her, was behind the West Side apartment building where she lived. The officers didn't speak Spanish.
He got away that day last summer, eluding Columbus police for a month before they arrested him.
Police in central Ohio have made some strides in trying to communicate with immigrants who speak limited English. Columbus officers have interpreters available by phone at all times, and they've held workshops to help police and immigrants better understand one another. Other departments now also use the telephone service. But there are gaps.
Most times when the woman has called 911 about her volatile former boyfriend, the dispatcher connected her to a Spanish interpreter on the phone. However, when officers showed up at her house, they didn't speak Spanish and didn't telephone an interpreter who can, she said. Details got lost.
"Without having an interpreter there … you're not getting the right story. Cases are being dismissed because of lack of evidence," said Kathryn Gomez, domestic-violence coordinator for the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.
Police officers don't always call an interpreter when they consider the case minor, said Columbus Police Cmdr. Jeff Blackwell, who has worked with the city's Community Relations Commission. Using an interpreter by phone can be time-consuming, and it's even tougher to find one available to come to the scene, he said. "Clearly … that needs to be improved on."
Police departments in Franklin County have few, if any, officers who speak Spanish or Somali. Franklin County's immigrant population grew 158 percent between 1990 and 2004, according to U.S. Census data. A large portion of that population is made up of Somalis and Latinos.
Just last year, 911 dispatching centers across Franklin County were linked into a language-interpreting service for non-English speakers. Columbus has been tied into the service for more than a year.
The service is only part of the solution, however. Columbus police need to hire more Spanish- and Somali-speaking officers, Blackwell said. Currently, the force has no Somali speakers and only four who speak Spanish fluently, according to police records.
It takes about two years to screen and train new officers before they are ready to join the city's police force.
In the suburbs of Columbus, many departments aren't aiming to hire more Spanish-speaking officers.
"Ideally, it would be a nice thing to have," said Reynoldsburg Police Officer Scott Manny, who heads the community-relations department. "I think they're just concentrating on getting qualified people."
Three of Reynoldsburg's 53 officers and two police dispatchers have recently taken a basic Spanish course.
Officers in some departments are encouraged to take Spanish courses, but it takes a lot of practice before an officer can understand someone speaking Spanish quickly during an emergency.
The Franklin County sheriff's office, which dispatches for 12 townships and suburbs, does not use telephone interpreters often. Only 27 of the approximately 12,000 emergency calls into the sheriff's office 911 center in December were hooked into an interpreter.
By contrast, Columbus' 911 dispatchers referred 100 to 200 calls a month last year. More than 80 percent of the calls were Spanish speakers; Somali was the second-most common language.
The service costs $1.50 per minute. Columbus-area police departments aren't tied into a 24-hour service offering interpreters who will go to the scene of a crime, so they often use fellow officers or people they know who are bilingual. Sometimes, police officers rely on English-speaking family members or bystanders to interpret rather than call in a professional, said Gomez of the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.
That can lead to distorted stories. There are least three recent domestic-violence cases in which a police officer asked a perpetrator or the victim's children to interpret, Gomez said.
"I think it's a community-safety issue. They're obviously not protecting the residents who are living here," she said.
The Mexican woman who tried to tell police that her boyfriend was around the corner is growing increasingly fearful and frustrated that she can't get her story across to police.
"This crazy guy could do something to me one time and they won't know what he did," she said through an interpreter. She didn't want her name used, because she fears reprisal from him.
Source: Columbus Dispatch, Jan 28, 2008