Cities seek more bilingual police officers

March 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Police departments across the country are stepping up efforts to recruit officers who can speak more than one language, in some cases offering raises or even sending cops abroad as part of immersion programs.

Police chiefs hope the investment pays off by improving service to immigrant communities and easing fear of officers in those areas.

“To fight crime, you have to be able to communicate,” said Susan Shah of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, which used a federal grant to review the language practices of nearly 200 law-enforcement agencies nationwide.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has emphasized hiring bilingual officers — especially those fluent in languages spoken in countries with terrorist ties.

“It helps immensely working with the communities in the city, the most diverse city in the world,” Kelly said. “We can, in very short order, get someone on the scene who speaks the language.”

That’s what happened when a detective in Brooklyn heard shouting last week on a bus parked near an Arab- American community.

Ahmed Nasser, a native of Yemen, is one of roughly 11,000 members of the NYPD who can speak a second language. He found the bus driver accusing the passenger of not paying the fare and spitting on him.

The passenger, who was from Yemen, already had been handcuffed by a patrolman. He claimed the driver punched him, and his knee was bloodied.

Nasser spoke Arabic with the passenger, who also had a speech impediment. He was eventually let go, and neither he nor the bus driver was charged.

One-third of NYPD employees can speak a second language. Of those, 785 are certified linguists, or expert translators, in 63 languages, including Bengali, Dari, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu. Bilingual officers do everything from intelligence gathering to undercover work to community outreach.

In Chicago, the nation’s second-largest police force with roughly 13,000 officers, some 3,835 speak additional languages, most commonly Spanish, Polish and German. The department is also in its first year of requiring officers to take a 24-hour Spanish course during their academy training.

The Los Angeles Police Department gives raises to as many as 3,305 officers who become fluent in another language — one-third of the department.