What can police departments do to overcome language barriers between residents and officers and enhance effective communication?
Police departments need to know and understand who they are serving. They need to know information about their residents along with the languages they speak (Shah, Rahman and Khashu 2007:10). Officers need to understand the background of their residents such as their culture. This will help the residents feel like they are understood along with officers feeling less on edge of something going wrong. The police department can use the US Census Bureau data to help aid them in figuring out how much their residents speak English at home, how good they are at speaking English, and how educated those residents and police …show more content…
“In fall 2006 the Storm Lake Public School System had a 62.9 percent minority enrollment” (Prosser 2016). “Police officers encounter a language barrier of some sort during 33 percent of street encounters and 24 percent in the station house” (Prosser 2016). Storm Lake has seen a changing population and a diverse group of people that keeps growing. The police department decided to help this problem by having multilingual employees, multilingual materials such as documents, cultural training that involved police officers to engage in training about the new cultures in Storm Lake, meeting participation which means that the police department attends all meetings in Storm Lake such as town meetings to school meetings, multilingual citizen academy, task force participation about sharing information on their growing diverse population, survival language skills for officers, volunteer interpreters, one non-enforcement contact on each shift, dispel myths, visit to countries of origin, volunteer programs, and that their city learns from mistakes (Prosser 2016). I believe that Storm Lake is doing a great job on enhancing their communication while creating a less significant language barrier. There will always be room for improvement, but I believe that they work hard to involve the community as well as themselves in hopes to understand and further their knowledge of their community and its diverse culture. The Storm Lake Police Department is involved with their community which is why I believe they are doing a great job at understanding their population’s
Police departments need to know and understand who they are serving. They need to know information about their residents along with the languages they speak (Shah, Rahman and Khashu 2007:10). Officers need to understand the background of their residents such as their culture. This will help the residents feel like they are understood along with officers feeling less on edge of something going wrong. The police department can use the US Census Bureau data to help aid them in figuring out how much their residents speak English at home, how good they are at speaking English, and how educated those residents and police …show more content…
“In fall 2006 the Storm Lake Public School System had a 62.9 percent minority enrollment” (Prosser 2016). “Police officers encounter a language barrier of some sort during 33 percent of street encounters and 24 percent in the station house” (Prosser 2016). Storm Lake has seen a changing population and a diverse group of people that keeps growing. The police department decided to help this problem by having multilingual employees, multilingual materials such as documents, cultural training that involved police officers to engage in training about the new cultures in Storm Lake, meeting participation which means that the police department attends all meetings in Storm Lake such as town meetings to school meetings, multilingual citizen academy, task force participation about sharing information on their growing diverse population, survival language skills for officers, volunteer interpreters, one non-enforcement contact on each shift, dispel myths, visit to countries of origin, volunteer programs, and that their city learns from mistakes (Prosser 2016). I believe that Storm Lake is doing a great job on enhancing their communication while creating a less significant language barrier. There will always be room for improvement, but I believe that they work hard to involve the community as well as themselves in hopes to understand and further their knowledge of their community and its diverse culture. The Storm Lake Police Department is involved with their community which is why I believe they are doing a great job at understanding their population’s