http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdail ... uage.shtml

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006


Daily photo by Emily Saunders
Decatur patrol officer Alberto Ballesteros, who speaks Spanish, averages one or two calls a day to translate.

Beating the language barrier
Bilingual officers provide key link between area police, growing Hispanic population

By Chris Paschenko
chris@decaturdaily.com· 340-2442

Antonio Ramirez was tired of working for the equivalent of 50 cents an hour in his native Mexico.

He embarked on a two-week journey from Veracruz and stopped in Decatur in mid-October.

Decatur patrol officer Alberto Ballesteros surprised Ramirez while he walked in a Southwest neighborhood Oct. 26. Ballesteros, who grew up in El Paso, Texas, speaks fluent Spanish.

You don't need to understand Spanish to comprehend Ramirez's plight. Through Ballesteros' interpretation, Ramirez says he has no family here, doesn't speak English, lives with acquaintances and had not found work during his first week on U.S. soil.

Ballesteros explained to Ramirez that there is "no problema," perhaps alleviating the illegal immigrant's fear that after one week in America he's not about to be deported.

"It probably came across his mind," Ballesteros said. "After having spent all this money and time crossing the border, and his family depending on him."

By word of mouth, Ramirez learned of job opportunities in the Tennessee Valley, Ballesteros said.

"He had no idea there were Spanish-speaking officers in Decatur. I told him we were here to help him if he needed the police."

Seven bilingual officers, with Spanish-language skills ranging from rudimentary to fluent, provide a crucial link between Decatur police and the city's burgeoning Hispanic population.

Traffic officer Sal Jasso, a Chicago native who grew up in a Hispanic household, moved to Decatur when he was 12.

Both Ballesteros and Jasso said they use their translation skills on average two or three times daily. Hispanic victims of crime welcome their fluency in Spanish.

But Hispanic lawbreakers are less enthusiastic when they arrive.

"If they're getting pulled up for lying about a name, they're not relieved to see an officer of Mexican descent," Jasso said, noting that the Spanish language is no barrier to their investigation of crime.

More than Spanish

Patrol officer Dave Williams, who improved his Spanish language skills during his Army service in Central and South America, said not all Hispanics speak fluent Spanish. For some, he said, Spanish is their second language. For example, Guatemalans speak one of more than 40 Indian dialects.

"There was a robbery, and the Guatemalans didn't speak English and only broken Spanish," Williams said.

"I was trying to determine the description of the perpetrator by ascertaining the color of the suspect's pelo."

With his rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, Williams said he relied on the Guatemalans' broken Spanish, and a word became lost in translation.

"Pelo is the Spanish word for hair and pedo means to break wind," Williams said. "They thought I was asking the color of the suspect's fart. They laughed even in the midst of a crime."

While Spanish to English lessons are prevalent, Williams said he has yet to see a book translating the Guatemalan dialect.

If an officer doesn't understand Spanish, however, the Morgan County 911 center can help. Dispatch supervisor Kelly Armor said the center has been using a language line since the late 1990s.

She said the translation service costs about $2.50 per minute, and dispatchers use the line two or three times a shift.

"If we're able to tell an address, we start help in that direction," Armor said. "If not, dispatchers are taught to tell them in Spanish to hold for an interpreter. It's a three-way conversation to find out where to send police, fire or medical."

Although most of the callers needing translation are Spanish speakers, not all have an emergency, Armor said.

"Some call needing to find out if someone's in jail or where their vehicle has been towed," she said.

"We get a lot of calls because they know we have a language line. We get a lot of administrative-type questions, like, 'When is garbage picked up? When is the library open?' Someone even called to find out how to buy extra minutes on his cell phone."

If the dispatchers know the answers to the callers' questions, they usually help them, Armor said, but the non-emergency calls tie up lines needed for true emergencies.

Translators

Other Decatur businesses are helping Hispanics by providing translators, including many of the bail bonding companies.

Luis Reyes moved to Decatur in 1996 from California and translated for the court system and hospitals until going to work full time for 4-A Bail Bonds.

"One time the hospital called me at 2:30 a.m. and asked me to come translate," Reyes said. "The (patient) was Guatemalan. I asked him if he spoke Spanish, and he looks at me like, 'What?' "

Reyes said he knew someone who spoke both a Guatemalan Indian dialect and Spanish.

"I went to get him out of bed to come translate, and he wanted to know how much I was going to pay him," Reyes said. "I told him, 'I'm not making any money, and you should do it for your people. Maybe the (patient) is your family.' "

When they went to the hospital, Reyes said the doctor would ask him a question in English, which he would translate into Spanish for his interpreter to talk to the Guatemalan.

The patient had a high temperature, Reyes said.

Good reputation

Since joining 4-A, Reyes said he has developed a good reputation in the Hispanic community. He said he's trying to persuade Hispanics to use their real name when encountering police.

"I tell them, 'What if something happens to you, and you go to the hospital? It will take your family too long to find you,' " Reyes said. "Sometime when they get arrested for DUI or illegal possession of prohibited liquor, they ask if they'll be deported. I tell them as long as they don't have felonies that it's no big problem."

Reyes said Hispanics are no more likely to jump bail than any other group.

"The Hispanics, I tell them if they don't come to court, I could lose my job," Reyes said. "And then nobody's going to help you in the future."

When Hispanics, documented or otherwise, become the subject of criminal investigations, Lt. Col. Ken Collier, head of Decatur police investigations, said they generally aren't breaking the law disproportionately to their population.

"We began to deal with several instances of underage children being abused by close associates of family members," Collier said. "For a while, about 50 percent of cases of sex abuse were Hispanic."

Collier said the frequency of Hispanic sex crimes was likely an oddity or aberration. He said child molestation is no more a part of Hispanic culture than in the United States.

Misdemeanors

Compared to misdemeanor offenses, police saw few felony crimes permeating the Hispanic community in the early 1990s.

"By and large the first several years the influx remained low profile," Collier said. "What police had contact with was drunk and disorderly, DUI. It wasn't really impacting us then."

As the population grew rapidly in the late '90s, Collier said police dealt with more victims, at least from those reporting crimes.

"Most illegals didn't trust the police because there was an inherent fear based on the history of police in their country," Collier said. "There were more robberies, because Hispanics didn't use banks. It was known they carried cash, and they were easy targets."

Robberies to homicides

Collier said more robberies led to homicides.

"Victims were less willing to get robbed, and we started to see a sinister change with the type of Hispanic person, getting started with dope dealers, or gang members," he said.

"We're dealing with a criminal element that is a real concern."

The hard-working Hispanic population, which Collier said is looking for the American dream, despises dope dealers, but police are seeing examples of cartels, funneling marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine to the city and beyond.

"There was a guy shot in Limestone County, which was the culmination of a long-term investigation into a drug cartel," said Collier of the June raid.

"There were 30 arrests in Decatur, Limestone and Madison counties. We put many hours on that detail. It was a major success as far as Hispanic drug dealing, but someone will come and fill the void."

Immigration, citing law enforcement concerns, won't say how many enforcement officers they have in Alabama, however, The Daily learned there are seven, up from two a couple of years ago.

"We have to create an efficient process for local law enforcement to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a timely manner to deport people who are here illegally," said state Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur.

"I can't imagine that with the number of illegals we have here in Alabama that seven would be enough."

Also, the state is one of 26 without an immigration court. Atlanta and Memphis are the nearest locations for North Alabamians, legal and illegal, to do business.