Kristin Nelson, KY3 News (Springfield, Missouri), May 5, 2009
The city police department is having a problem communicating with its growing Hispanic population. Officers say the language barrier could lead to a dangerous situation with suspects and victims.
In those situations, officers sometimes have to wait for an interpreter to meet them. Not only is it costly but it’s also time consuming.
Officer Ralph Robinson’s limited Spanish sometimes creates confusion and frustration when he’s on patrol.
“You run into obstacles—them not understanding you, trying to communicate with them, with just basic, average things: license, insurance, things like that,” said Robinson.
Lebanon’s police chief says the city’s Hispanic population is growing. Out of the 16,000 people who live in the city, there are 338 Spanish-speaking families, but those are just the ones that police know about. With three major highways Lebanon gets a lot of traffic.
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So the police department is paying for three officers, including Robinson, to learn Spanish to try to eliminate problems and to better serve and protect the city.
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Officers will travel to Kansas to learn basic Spanish during the middle of this month and travel to Iowa for advanced Spanish in early June.
Original article
(Posted on May 8, 2009)
Comments
Southwest Missouri has been seeing a lot of Hispanic population growth in the last decade. Reason? Agricultural processing plants.
By and large they are wasting their time and taxpayers’ resources. Nothing short of medium term immersion (expensive) overseas language acadamies will bring your typical donut eating 35 something cop up to half-way speed in a foreign language.
The best thing they can learn is “hands up”, “don’t move”, “hands on the wheel”, “hands where I can see them”, “license and registration please” and “you’re under arrest”. And even then, their case can fall apart based on a defense that Juan doesn’t speak Spanish, he only speaks Triqui (daughter sellers) or Zapotec.
This is brilliant - and because of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity laws it is likely that Hispanics will be hired as bilingal candidates. Once the police have enough Hispanic sympathizers - who wants to bet that White crime stats go up and Mexican drug traffic increases?
If Missouri is anything like California, the Chief would do better to teach the officer languages the illegals actually speak like Mixtec, Nauhtl and something from the rain forest highlands of Guatamala, Tictoc.
More and more illegals don’t speak Spanish but some sort of tribal lanugage.
My mother works at a Detroit-area answering service and more and more she’s been getting Spanish-speaking callers. I’ve helped her out a bit with a few Spanish phrases, since I had six years of Spanish in school.
It’s just getting ridiculous. We really need to make English THE official language. Put it on record so it’s not just “de facto.” Last I checked, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written in English.
I don’t understand the need to teach Spanish. After all aren’t all Hispanics just honest hardworking folks that never break the law, even the illegal ones?
Its the Whites that are the ones that are the criminals and they all speak English.
“The report warned law enforcement agencies to watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers for third-party political candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. “
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=93067
Its interesting what is not mentioned is why 338 “Hispanic” families has such apparently frequent and extensive contact with police. I thought they were in the shadows.
Repeat as needed.
It’s the cops that ignore the big problem here. They should immediately deport any and all illegals they encounter, instead of padding their quotas with tickets written for people that effectively have no real identity and won’t show up in court. If a person doesn’t speak even basic English (enough to communicate with your average cop) then they have no right to be operating a vehicle. That vehicle should be confiscated along with any property contained within, sold at auction and the proceeds used to combat illegal immigrants.
More and more I see America heading down the same ‘language road’ Canada did in the 1960’s. It is a fatal mistake America is making. Having been an essentially unilingual country throughout the course of its history many American officials are quite naive about the dangers and consequences of having a large minority language group in their midst. As a Canadian I can only warn Americans that they are making a terrible mistake here.
First it’s Spanish, then which language is next? French, Russian, Italian or some third world language. This is a slippery slope and will never end. The more accomadating you are to one group, the next group will demand even more.
To help eliminate the confusion all we need to do is make English the official language, and anyone who doesn’t speak English will be taken to the police station until a translator is available and the confusion is gone.
There would then be a remarkable increase in the number of people who all of a sudden would understand enough English to communicate. Go to Mexico, break the law and act ignorant, see how that works.
Today’s Dallas Morning News had the announcement that a new public Charter School in the areawill teach Arabic - even scarier.
Hispanics will never need to learn English, especially illegals. They are coddled with Spanish translations on everything from voting ballots to the information on canned goods labels in the grocery store. Lou Dobbs took note of this last week when his question of the day was “Should Spanish be a co-equal language to English in the US?” The reply was an overwhelming “NO!” But thanks to our witless government, it already is.
Sooooo, you didn’t like my suggestion that the police spend 6 monthe in the “L.A. County Jail Spanish Language School of Higher Learning” One CAN learn Spanish there.
I live near Lebanon, I would dispute those figures, I think there’s lot bigger population in the city, and the surrounding area, it should be obvious why they have so much contact w/law, vehicles unlicensed, gang activity, public drunkeness, spousal abuse, they now make up about 75% of law enforcement calls. The really sad part is that they are gonna soon become voters under the Obama amnesty program.
No driver’s license exam should ever be given in any language other than English in the first place. Driving is not simply about recognizing signs. You have to be able to understand someone who asks for your insurance if you are ever in an accident, or pulled over by a police officer. It’s not fair that it’s the police officer having to learn a foreign language. Our system is basically taking upon its shoulders the burden that belongs on the drivers.
