What Works

By Amy Schapiro, Social Science Analyst, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing

As immigrant communities become more dispersed throughout the country, law enforcement agencies are struggling with the challenges of providing limited English proficient (LEP) individuals with equitable access to services. At the core of public safety are trusted relationships between the public and the police. But those relationships cannot be forged if the police cannot communicate with the populations they serve.

The first challenge for providing language access is to obtain an accurate demographic picture of the population served. This can be done by partnering with other agencies to mine data from local hospitals, schools, courts, community-based service providers, and other organizations that regularly come in contact with the public. It is not uncommon for schools to have student populations where dozens of students speak languages other than English in their native tongues. School districts often provide an accurate portrait of the diversity of languages spoken beyond English and Spanish. However, identifying language needs is only half the battle. The next step is implementing high-quality language assistance to bridge the gap. This phase is essential to strengthening and advancing community-police relations.

In an effort to improve language access services, Federal Executive Order 13166 was issued in 2000. This Executive Order requires that agencies receiving federal financial assistance take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access for LEP individuals. Recognizing this daunting task, the Coordination and Review Section (COR) of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice took the lead in providing guidance. Based on input from the field, they developed a resource entitled “Executive Order 13166 Limited English Proficiency Resource Document: Tips and Tools from the Field.” This document provides useful information to help identify language resources, ways to work with LEP individuals, methods to ensure quality control, and guidelines to conduct outreach.

In an effort to further assist law enforcement agencies in providing language access services, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services funded the Vera Institute of Justice to work with three law enforcement agencies with significant immigrant populations: Las Vegas (NV) Metropolitan Police Department, Anaheim (CA) Police Department, and Clark County (OH) Sheriff’s Department. Promising practices and lessons learned from these three agencies are captured in a recently released report entitled “Overcoming Language Barriers: Solutions for Law Enforcement.” It highlights a variety of ways law enforcement can narrow the language gap by collecting demographic data to determine languages spoken in a target service area, establishing language access policies and protocols, educating staff about language access, and identifying and training bilingual staff, often an untapped resource.

In Las Vegas, the police department developed the Hispanic American Resource Team (HART). The primary purposes of HART are to build trust with the community and to address rising victimization rates among Hispanics. The HART team also educates residents about police procedures and crime reporting processes. Because all HART members are bilingual in Spanish and English, they can provide more responsive services to the community. Bilingual staff are an important police department asset. Bilingual officers can enhance community policing efforts through outreach or defuse potentially contentious situations quickly. HART has been expanded to four area command stations that serve immigrant populations. The HART teams have enhanced trust with the Hispanic community. A HART phone line was established to fill a void in the community to answer nonemergency questions, filling an information void in the community. Monthly meetings geared toward the Hispanic population, conducted in Spanish, address community concerns.

One subject that has sparked controversy in some immigrant communities is day laborer sites. To address this growing concern, the COPS Office issued a new guide in its Problem-Oriented Police series entitled, “Disorder at Day Laborer Sites.” This guide includes information about the day labor market, the conditions of day-labor work, the laborers themselves, their employers, the places where they assemble, the link between day laborers and human trafficking, and a series of responses to effectively address the problem.

Maximizing all available resources to serve all members of the community regardless of language spoken is good policing. Overcoming Language Barriers and Disorder at Day Laborer Sites demonstrate what works in the field. For copies of these publications at no charge please visit www.cops.usdoj.gov or call 800-421-6770. For more information about limited English proficiency, visit www.lep.gov.