Voiceover: 00.00 This is The Beat - a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation Pradine Saint-Fort: 00.08 Hello. My name is Pradine Saint-Fort, and I'm a program associate in the Center on Immigration and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice. In 2010, the Vera Institute and the COPS office partnered to provide and produce a guide for law enforcement agencies looking to either begin or to enhance their work with immigrant communities. The guide is a national report titled "Engaging Police in Immigrant Communities: Promising Practices From the Field." This report profiles promising practices from about 10 policing agencies from across the country. This podcast is part of a series of recordings that accompany the report. Each podcast is in Q and A format and provides practical advice from agency personnel who have been involved in and working with promising practices featured in our national report. In this podcast, we're currently joined by officer Jesse Guardiola of the Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma. We'll be referring to this department as TPD in the podcast. Officer Guardiola is the Hispanic Outreach Relations Officer and has worked on various aspects of the department's Hispanic Outreach Program since April of 2010. He is here today to talk about how agencies can successfully include practical foreign language instruction in police training. Thank you for joining us, Officer Guardiola. Jesse Guardiola: 01.17 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Saint-Fort: 01.20 To start off, could you please share with our audience what the Hispanic Outreach Program is and how it's structured? Guardiola: 01.25 The Hispanic Outreach Program was started to improve communication between TPD and Tulsa's growing Hispanic community. We do this through six different initiatives. The first is through the commendation and complaint process, which Hispanic civilians can either praise an office or file a complaint about an officer. The second is through my position, the Hispanic Outreach Liaison, which is a liaison between the police and the community. Third, we conduct outreach through the Hispanic Spanish media. And fourth, we have a volunteer interpreter program as well the fifth, a helpline for Spanish speakers that call in. Lastly, we focus on education for both police and community. The Spanish language training at the academy falls under this. Saint-Fort: 02.15 Thanks for that context. So, let's talk a little about the Spanish language training. Could you tell us a little bit about why the department focuses specifically on Spanish and why that language skill is important to TPD officers? Guardiola: 02.28 Well, in the Tulsa Metro Area we have a large Spanish-speaking population: about 70,000 Spanish speakers. That means that every officer on the street will encounter a Spanish-speaker at some point. Some of our officers can speak fluent Spanish, but not all. Our department does provide an incentive pay to those officers and verifies their language proficiency through an outside testing agency for those officers that are bilingual. But the majority of our officers aren't fluent in Spanish. We focus on teaching them Spanish to help those officers communicate, on some level, with the Spanish-speakers that they would definitely encounter on a call in the future. Saint-Fort: 03.07 So, I understand the Spanish language in the academy focuses specifically on 27 key phrases. Can you tell us what the goal was behind creating and selecting those phrases? Guardiola: 03.18 We knew we couldn't make all our officers bilingual. We need to give officers phrases that they could memorize, use them quickly and effectively, and I selected 27 key phrases that would generate closed-end responses. What I mean by this is, when an officer uses one of the phrases or commands, the person should respond by doing an action. For example, when an officer yells, "Show me your hands!" to someone who understands English, the person either takes their hands out of their pockets or makes some movement to follow the orders. If the officer yells the same phrase in Spanish, the officer should get a similar reaction from a Spanish speaker. If not, then the officer could interpret that lack of response as an indication that the person is not willing to follow the officer's orders. The phrases also take into account different circumstances an officer might come in. For example, a few phrases help officers to ask Spanish speakers for their name, address, and then ask them to write it down as well. Saint-Fort: 04.19 That's extremely practical. When do the police academy cadets actually start learning these phrases? Guardiola: 04.25 The cadets learn the phrases throughout the 27 weeks that they're in the academy. I start out with a two-hour intro course at the beginning of the academy and introduce them to all 27 phrases and make sure that the cadets have the right pronunciation. They are instructed to learn five new phrases every four weeks until they have memorized all 27 phrases. Then I visit them every other week during morning formation and grill them on these phrases. Saint-Fort: 04.51 You test them during morning formation? How does that work, exactly? Guardiola: 04.56 Well, morning formation at the Tulsa Police Academy starts at 7:30 in the morning, in the gym, before the cadets' day starts. I come in, give each cadet a phrase in English, and the cadet has to say it back to me in Spanish. If they get it correctly, then I move on to the next cadet. If they get it wrong, then they owe me whatever amount of pushups they have built up to. When every cadet's had their turn, I go back to the first cadet and do it again. We go through this until each cadet has been grill-tested, about two or three times, with three different phrases. When I finish, I assign them the five new phrases for the next month. Then I release them to their first day of class. Saint-Fort: 05.37 So, for officers who have never had any foreign language training, that intro course in the morning, language drill, is probably their first experience with another language, right? Guardiola: 05.45 Yes; yes. Of course. Saint-Fort: 05.46 So, how do you motivate those officers and get them to really understand the value of those phrases? Guardiola: 05.50 Well, nobody at 7:30 in the morning, at least I have seen, loves doing pushups. So, for them, you know, not to do pushups early in the morning is a motivation. But I think; I really try to drive home the point that this is about officer safety. That, more importantly, we want these officers to be able to communicate to them at some level for everybody to be safe in the situation. For the officer to go home at night. For the Hispanic Spanish speaker to get the assistance that they need at that time, or to control the situation. So, it could be a life-or-death situation and that's what I try to bring across to them is it's not a matter of days or months before you come into a situation where you have to speak some level of Spanish. It's a matter of hours. Saint-Fort: 06.40 Is there some kind of culture component, also, to the training? Guardiola: 06.45 Yes, Pradine. That's a good question. Because before I begin the first lessons of the 27 phrases, I give the cadets an hour of cultural training on why they have to learn Spanish in the central U.S. which, historically, has been predominantly English-speaking communities. I explain to the cadets why immigrants come to the U.S. So, I talk about issues including poverty, other conditions that might make people leave their home country. The cultural training doesn't end with the first intro lesson to Spanish. I sprinkle some discussion about culture throughout the academy and talk about issues specific to the central U.S. and Oklahoma, and remind the cadets why they need to communicate and to learn this for emergency situations. Saint-Fort: 07.28 So, is there also some kind of final language test that the cadets receive or have to go through? Guardiola: 07.33 What we call the end of their academy training is situational exercises. And what I mean by that is that we have actors that come in and play a role. Whatever tactical situation that needs to be vetted, so that the training department knows that they've done their job correctly. Well, in my case, I want to make sure that they can use the 27 phrases while out on the streets and that they can apply it. So, I bring in my Spanish volunteers as actors to play the role in a domestic violence call. Or, we might switch it up to a prowler call. But my two cadet officers show up on my scene and they have to use the 27 phrases that they've been memorizing through this whole situational exercise, and my actors are instructed not to do, move, or anything unless they understand the Spanish that's been spoken to them. Because if they don't understand it, then what use is the memorization? I don't want to make it, you know, some sort of game in trying to mess up my cadets. I want them to use their 27 phrases and if the 27 phrases are used correctly, then that actor should do exactly what's being asked of them. And they get through the exercise using the 27 phrases and, of course, we're excited about that because I know that they can control the situation in a real life experience when they go out on patrol. But as well as if, you know, they suddenly fumble through it, well, I want them to experience what it's gonna feel like to not be able to communicate with the community. It could be hours before you would get a Spanish translator on your call, where, if you would apply these 27 phrases you could have gotten some information. Saint-Fort: 09.24 Wow. That's very useful information. I think our audience is definitely going to appreciate this podcast and the information you've shared, so thank you so much, Officer Guardiola. Guardiola: 09.32 Well, thank you for having me. Voiceover: 09.34 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. 5