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  1. #1
    Senior Member BetsyRoss's Avatar
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    Police officer is saving grace (Immigrant culture conflicts)

    http://test.denverpost.com/news/ci_5723226

    Police officer is saving grace
    A DENVER COP OVERCOMES A CREEPING CRIME RATE AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BY HELPING IMMIGRANT FAMILIES ADJUST TO A NEW HOME.
    By Kevin Simpson,
    Denver Post Staff Writer
    Article Launched: 04/22/2007 01:00:00 AM MDT


    Denver police Officer Phil Epple welcomes Alia Aden, 1, and her mother, Bakhra Ali, to the "cop shop" at Grace Apartments in east Denver. (Post / Hyoung Chang)Late last summer, when the Grace Apartments on the city's eastern edge blistered into a crime "hot spot," Denver Officer Phil Epple wanted to know why.

    He found that the numbers didn't lie about the two white-brick structures in the East Montclair neighborhood. But they didn't begin to tell the whole story.

    The four-level buildings, run by nonprofit Mercy Housing, contain 53 apartments that serve 205 people from more than a dozen nations or ethnic groups - 65 percent of them political refugees from Africa.

    Ingrained elements of some residents' cultures - like physical force in the home - had crashed head-on into local law.

    "For example, hit the woman and hit the kids," says Adam Dagir, 50, a Sudanese refugee who, like many residents at the complex, can only estimate his age. "It's a custom of the people there. But police and others give us training about things that are against the law.

    "Now, we know that."

    A language barrier, an intricate internal hierarchy and a deep-seated distrust of police further clouded the solution.

    "In my country, police is no friend," says a Congolese woman known as Kayange, a 40-year-old widow. "If you see police, you run. Police can ask you for money. If you don't have money, they can kill you."

    Epple knew he faced a difficult challenge.

    "It was a shock to me," he recalls. "They wouldn't even look you eye to eye."

    Over the past nine months, the learning curve for both cops and tenants shot straight up as a police initiative, in conjunction with Mercy Housing, focused on helping the refugees adjust to a new set of rules - and tackling lawlessness that had seeped in from the Colfax corridor.

    Spirits rose. Crime plummeted.

    Since problems peaked last spring, calls for service have fallen more than 60 percent in the eight-month reporting period that ended last month. Domestic-violence calls, the most

    Boys play soccer behind Grace Apartments in east Denver last week. The soccer field and a planned garden plot got started after a crime-fighting initiative took a hard look at what was needed to ease refugees' transition. (Post / Hyoung Chang)frequent complaint in two reporting periods dating back to August 2004, disappeared altogether.
    "We're not having to spend nearly as much time at that property," Epple says. "Out at Grace, they were incredibly pro-active to decrease those numbers."

    Police haven't had to make an arrest there since starting the initiative.

    "In order for people to interact across cultural boundaries, they need a baseline of feeling safe," says Sheryl Johnson, Mercy's resident services coordinator for the complex. "The quality of life has improved so much that people are willing to trust their neighbors. This has changed the culture of the neighborhood."

    Crashing into gender roles

    About 1,150 refugees resettled in Colorado last year. About 40,000 have arrived here since 1980, according to the state Division of Refugee Services.

    Although refugees undergo several security clearances before becoming eligible for resettlement in the U.S., they get only a crash course on the laws and customs of their new home, state refugee coordinator Paul Stein says.

    For those who landed at Grace Apartments, transition has been slow and sometimes difficult.

    Domestic-violence issues tended to surface late at night, Epple says. Husbands accustomed to striking their wives quickly learned about the mandatory arrest policy that governs domestic-violence situations.

    "While they were subject to prosecution,

    Kayange, 40, says women's status in the U.S. complicates life for African refugees. Behind her, daughter Alice, 7, gives a friend a piggyback ride. (Post / Hyoung Chang)there was more of an educational piece for both officers and the community," Epple says. "We tried to be more patient with them, get hold of the elders who could provide translation. That communication helped quite a bit."
    Other domestic issues surfaced.

    "Most of the countries we receive refugees from are pretty patriarchal," Stein says. "To have a woman working outside the home is the exception, and often not encouraged in a refugee household. Yet frequently, they're in a situation where two parents need to work to become self-sufficient."

    And the newcomers' it-takes-a-village approach to child rearing bordered on the local definition of child neglect.

    "I saw a lot of misunderstanding with the laws regarding children and communal parenting," Johnson says. "We had children running around with no parents attached."

    Some issues grew out of a new sense of freedom for the African women, many of whom hold jobs or spend the day in classes to learn English. Traditional divisions of labor shifted.

    And conflict followed.

    "If the wife say, 'I'm tired, can you prepare food for the children?' the man say, 'Now you begin to change. You are now American, not African,' " explains Kayange, the Congolese widow. "Is big fighting."

    Epple, the Police Department's special projects coordinator for District 3, noticed the spike in domestic-violence and child-abuse calls, "but the officers coming out here were not understanding the dynamics of what was happening."

    So he arranged a meeting with residents, more than a dozen officers and police Cmdr. Tracie Keesee. He saw looks of amazement on the men's faces when they met Keesee - an African-American woman.

    Still, as they were warned about the consequences of domestic violence, they frankly asked what they were supposed to do when their wife wouldn't have sex with them. Or why they couldn't have two or three wives.

    "And I realized," Epple recalls, "that we had a problem."

    The 30-year-old former paramedic and six-year police veteran pulled in department experts on domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse to explain state laws that might conflict with residents' customs.

    Instilling community pride

    Meanwhile, Mercy Housing installed new locks and security cameras and set aside one entire apartment for a combined "cop shop" and resource center to be staffed part-time by both Denver and Aurora police.

    A series of informational meetings included training that helped residents repel outside troublemakers. Strangers routinely had followed residents through the security doors into the buildings, sometimes bringing drugs with them. The residents didn't have the words, or the will, to keep them out.

    Now they do.

    "We found the police here, they teach us how to save our children, our building, our apartments," says Sudanese refugee Dagir. "The police here are our friends."

    Today, they hang photos of themselves posing with police officers at the "graduation" for their training course.

    "The community here is like sponges," Epple says. "They soak up whatever you give them. They want to be functioning members of society as a whole."

    In at least one case, the adaptation went a little too far.

    Realizing the instant, serious implications of the mandatory-arrest domestic-violence policy, some women used the threat of a bogus call to keep their husbands in line.

    "It was empowering," Epple says, "but now we've got to go back to the women and say, 'You can't do that - it's reserved for times you're in physical danger."'

    At first, only men attended the meetings between police and residents. But in the past several months, women have appeared in increasing numbers, and now the mix hovers around 50-50.

    "We want them to give us training so we can understand more about the culture and laws," says Dahir Rasulo, a 29-year-old Somali refugee whose earlier life was stolen by warlords. "Many of us want to adapt to the culture. We are still trying."

    Now, on a cool spring evening, children play soccer in a field adjacent to the apartments. Soon, an urban garden will be reborn - featuring some native African crops - and a mural will splash across a nearby wall.

    Both jobs will get done with the help of students from the University of Colorado at Boulder, who have contributed artwork and raised money to buy supplies for refugees over the past year. CU reports that the Refugee Welcome Project has attracted by far the most interest among several offered during a week dedicated to volunteerism.

    And the cop shop has opened.

    Grace residents welcome all the attention.

    "Last year, we have a lot of difficulty in these two buildings," Rasulo says. "But since Officer Epple is here, everything is fine."
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  2. #2
    Senior Member txkayaker's Avatar
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    About 1,150 refugees resettled in Colorado last year. About 40,000 have arrived here since 1980, according to the state Division of Refugee Services.
    Someone tell me again why we are bringing these people to america. There seams to be a reason they are not welcome in their own country.
    <div>If you love this nation, please stop illegal immigration.</div>

  3. #3
    Senior Member SOSADFORUS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by txkayaker
    About 1,150 refugees resettled in Colorado last year. About 40,000 have arrived here since 1980, according to the state Division of Refugee Services.
    Someone tell me again why we are bringing these people to america. There seams to be a reason they are not welcome in their own country.
    Pressure from the UN. more global interfering.
    Please support ALIPAC's fight to save American Jobs & Lives from illegal immigration by joining our free Activists E-Mail Alerts (CLICK HERE)

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