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

Susan Shah:
00.08   Hello. My name is Susan Shah, and I'm a program director in the Center 
on Immigration and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice.

In 2010, the Vera Institute and the COPS office partnered to produce a guide 
for law enforcement agencies that were 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 10 policing agencies from across the country. This 
podcast is part of a series of recordings that accompany the report. Each 
podcast is in a Q and A format and provides practical advice from agency 
personnel who have been involved in the promising practices featured in our 
report.

In this podcast, we are joined by Monique Drier of the Brooklyn Center Police 
Department in Minnesota. Monique is the department's community liaison and has 
worked on various aspects of the Joint Community Police Partnership known as 
the JCPP. She's here to talk about how to work with multilingual communities 
when you are not bilingual, and how to get officer buy-in when you're starting 
out as a civilian liaison.

Thank you for joining us today, Monique.

Monique Drier:
01.19   Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.

Shah:
01.21   Monique, can you tell us briefly about what the Joint Community Police 
Partnership is and also describe your role?

Drier:
01.29  Sure. The JCPP or Joint Community Police Partnership is a program that 
was designed to build bridges between our New American community and the 
police department in Brooklyn Center. The program achieves this through a 
three-pronged approach, if you will.

First we improve community members' knowledge of what the police do, or police 
procedures and laws. And secondly, we improve our patrol officers' knowledge 
of the New American communities.

In my opinion, most importantly, we provide that opportunity for positive 
interaction between our foreign-born and mainstream populations in law 
enforcement.

My role is to manage that program at the police department level and make sure 
that we accomplish the goals set forth in the program.

Shah:
02.09   For our listeners who might be unfamiliar with Brooklyn Center, 
Minnesota, could you tell us about the multilingual immigrant communities in 
your city?

Drier:
02.17  Well, we are very fortunate to have a melting pot of sorts. Our city 
has approximately 30,000 people, and, according to the 2010 census, 52 percent 
of that population is foreign-born. I'd say that the largest immigrant 
communities are from African, Southeast Asian, and Latin American countries.

To give you a real sense of how diverse our population is, our elementary 
school currently has approximately 80 languages that are spoken throughout the 
school day.

At one point, I had the opportunity to speak with a community member who had 
asked me, "How many times in a week do your officers have contact with New 
American communities?" I responded, "Hourly." The community member didn't know 
the demographics, but our department certainly is aware of them.

Shah:
03.02   So, I know that, given that you've got all of these languages spoken 
in Brooklyn Center, it may at first seem like it would be a challenge for 
someone who's been as successful as you in your position but doesn't speak 
another language. How do you communicate with community members who speak 
primarily a language other than English?

Drier:
03.22  Well, through the department resources, I have access to the Language 
Line, and I can use it as I need to without having to first get supervisory 
approval. At the police department, regardless of your position, you can help 
the community we serve by using the Language Line as the need arises.

I also rely heavily on the multicultural and multilingual cadets for language 
assistance. We currently have four officers, one cadet, and one records staff 
that is either bilingual or multilingual, and they have been extremely helpful 
with I have to go out into the community to give a presentation and/or need 
the live interpreter.

Sometimes, there is a community member that may even be bilingual and is able 
to interpret as well.

Shah:
04.05   So, those are some really important resources. Have you developed any 
other techniques to build rapport with community members who speak little or 
no English?

Drier:
04.14  I have found that simply smiling and using facial expressions show a 
sincere interest in the person; is universally understood across languages and 
cultures. If someone can speak some English, I've found that patience and 
listening very intently to what is said can be very valuable. It shows the 
person that you care and that you're making an effort to understand. I think 
people from various cultures can sense if someone's patient and interested 
based on their overall body language and demeanor.

We had a Hmong family, and in this family, Mom and Dad only were able to speak 
Hmong, and the victim was only able to communicate, because she was deaf or 
hard of hearing, by signing. So, by taking an officer, one of our 
multicultural cadets (now an officer) out with me to be able to meet with the 
family, we were able to get them the resources that they needed, not only as 
family, but also to be able to open up communication with the family, whether 
it be Mom, Dad, or the siblings, so that the victim was able to communicate.

Shah:
05.20   So, that's a really powerful story of how you really were able to 
break the ice, so to speak. What other advice would you give to a non-
bilingual person who's beginning outreach efforts in multilingual communities?

Drier:
05.35  I've found that to build real, meaningful relationships I had to be 
humble enough to tell people when I didn't know or understand something. I 
would ask a lot of questions to learn about the cultural do's and don't's. 
Building relationships is not an easy business. It is not accomplished 
overnight. I would follow up with people on a regular basis and make good on 
the promises that I would make to them, and also provide them with the needed 
information that was culturally appropriate to their specific concern or need. 
It takes a lot of conversations, education, and follow-ups, but in the end, it 
is totally worth it.

Shah:
06.14   So, now I'd like to switch gears and talk about how you gained the 
trust of another group that you work very closely with: police officers. You 
know, police officers sometimes joke that they're taught to trust no one, 
especially a non-officer. When you first started out in this position as a 
civilian liaison, how did you get officers to trust you?

Drier:
06.34  Well, initially, I was given a blank slate to develop the program so I 
had to develop a program from the ground up that involved not only getting to 
know the community but also getting to know the officers. In the first year, 
it was my goal to know one personal thing about each officer.

You know, it's ironic that a former lieutenant used to say that officers 
weren't born in their police uniforms. You know, I made sure to acknowledge 
that, and I made sure that I remember that officers have wives, kids, and 
families just like I do. And I knew it was going to be hard in the beginning 
to do trainings for officers and give them feedback if I didn't know who they 
were and what they were all about.

So, I went out into the streets and spend a lot of time in their squad cars; 
essentially their offices, getting to know them, because I knew that I had a 
lot to learn. I spent time doing ride-alongs, as I stated, into wee hours of 
the morning, and started to get to know the police culture. I asked a lot of 
questions, sometimes perhaps too many, and had to be OK with telling them I 
didn't know things, and asking them to explain things to me. I did a lot of 
listening as well.

Shah:
07.43   These are great strategies, and it seems like what you really are 
focusing on is how important it is to have a personal approach when you're 
working with, not only community members, but also officers. What other advice 
would you give to someone who would be in your position in a newly hired 
civilian liaison role on how to get police officer support and buy-in?

Drier:
08.05  In order to get buy-in from the line officers, even the command staff, 
I needed to be able to provide a tangible or something they would be able to 
use on the streets. And it really helped to be able to get a cultural toolbox 
of sorts, if you will, and I think it would be important to state that I was 
very respectful and did a lot of listening, as I stated before, and 
participate in roll calls and do as many ride-alongs as possible.

The more time that I was able to spend with them, the better that I was able 
to get to know them and then, also, for them to get to know me. If you can, I 
think it's important to have a resource guide or a cultural toolbox, as I 
mentioned a little bit earlier, for officers to be able to use when they are 
out on the street.

Shah:
08.52   So, what was is this resource guide?

Drier:
08.55  Well, anything from, maybe it's a food shelf, if they come in contact 
with an individual, they may need a food shelf. Maybe it's a domestic violence 
shelter. Anything that an officer might come in contact with.

Shah:
09.06   So, you basically provided them with all these resources they probably 
didn't know about, in a lot of ways, that you were learning about from the 
community?


Drier:
09.13  As I would learn things, I would share them with the police officers, 
and we try to update that as often as we can, and currently we now have a 
resource guide that is designed for domestic violence specifically. And we've 
been able to break that down into the different categories, so there's one in 
the command area and the shift sergeant's area that they can have readily 
available to them as the need arises.

Shah:
09.38   I can see it being useful to command and also to patrol. Was there 
anything else that you did specifically to get command staff buy-in?

Drier:
09.47   Well, I think attending meetings as requested by either the chief 
and/or the command staff, but also be able to offer, maybe, input in areas 
that are appropriate such as crime trends. I would also attend the Crime 
Reduction Strategy; what we refer to as the CRS, which is a weekly meeting 
where command staff come together and they review the crime data and see if 
there are any trends and brainstorm ideas.

Sometimes I would just go to hear about what the concerns were. It may not 
even be an issue that I would be dealing with, but found that when it was 
helpful I would speak up about my experiences, perhaps even in the meeting or 
away from the meeting on a one-on-one basis, however I felt that it would be 
helpful.

I've helped out in various sensitive cases where both the community and the 
department's trust in me have allowed me to truly serve both groups. I think 
it's important to know, in a position like this, that you have a foot in both 
worlds, and once the command staff and your patrol officers see that you do 
have a foot in the community, as well as the department; it bodes well for 
you.

Shah:
10.54   Thank you very much for these great tips on working with two very 
different groups: multilingual communities and police officers.

Drier:
11.02   Thank you so much for having me.

Voiceover:
11:04	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. 




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