Multilingual Police Unit Bridges Investigative Gaps
Duties of 10 Officers Go Well Beyond Interpreting

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 23, 2006

It was the kind of case that, in years past, might have flummoxed the Fairfax County police homicide unit: a Korean man found dead and an unidentified Latino suspect on the run.

Annandale in August: A contractor's body was found burned in the woods. The Korean community was upset and demanded answers.

Surveillance cameras showed the victim with a Latino day laborer. Distrust of police runs through both immigrant communities, compounded by the language barrier. And the county's homicide detectives speak only English.

Enter the newly formed police language skills support unit, whose 10 officers include fluent speakers of Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese.

Lt. Gun Lee, a native of South Korea, went to a community meeting of Korean residents to reassure them about the investigation and ask for help.

Officer Paul Marinero, a native of El Salvador, began showing surveillance photos of the suspect to wary day laborers outside a 7-Eleven in Annandale. One man's body language made the officer believe "he was hiding something. He wanted to tell me. I started to build a good rapport with him in Spanish."

Within minutes, the man gave Marinero a name. Police found the suspect that afternoon, and another Spanish-speaking officer questioned him. The suspect was charged with murder that night. The Fairfax homicide lieutenant, Bruce Guth, said his detectives wouldn't have been able to make the break that Marinero did.

Lee was pleased. "Everything just came together," he said. "I thought it was a sweet success."

The language unit was launched in late 2004 as a pilot project to replace the haphazard method of calling officers who may or may not have had the needed language skills. The unit has performed so well that County Executive Anthony H. Griffin cited it in his budget as an example of the police reaching out to a diverse community. Now, police commanders say, it's a permanently funded part of the criminal investigations bureau.

The unit isn't a full-time assignment, though police said there is probably enough work to make it one. The officers keep their normal posts -- Lee is in patrol, Marinero is a school resource officer -- and are available at any time. Each officer gets a $1,300 annual stipend.

The unit's members are not simply interpreters, said Maj. Robert Callahan, head of the criminal investigations bureau. They act on behalf of a detective or officer who needs their skills.

"There's no way you can have rapport with a person when you're talking through a third person," Callahan said. "That's really what we're trying to get at, to train our folks that have language skills to be good listeners, good interviewers, good note-takers -- good detectives."

The unit was a pet project of Lt. Richard Perez, a Spanish-speaking former homicide detective who was frequently summoned all over the county, at all hours, for all kinds of cases.

Perez studied the population and languages of Fairfax and determined that the greatest need was for Spanish, followed by Korean. Seven of the 10 members of the new unit are fluent in Spanish, two speak Korean and one speaks Vietnamese.

Recently released county statistics show that the need for other languages will grow. In 2004, more than 300,000 Fairfax residents -- close to a third of the population -- spoke a language other than English at home, and more than 80,000 lived in a home considered "linguistically isolated" -- no one 14 or older spoke English well.

Callahan said another goal is to hire foreign-language speakers as full-time detectives. "But let's face it," he said, "bilingual officers are needed on the streets, too."

Lee recalled the time he was dispatched to a traffic accident on Columbia Pike. An elderly Korean woman who spoke no English was involved. "She was steaming; she was so frustrated," Lee said. "She could not convey a simple message. The mere fact I was able to listen to her and get her side of the story, she was so relieved she shook my hand."

Perez said the frustration works both ways and was one reason he lobbied for the unit's creation. Detectives, under time pressures, hit walls "when the cultural barriers were erected before them," he said. But when accompanied by a trained interrogator who spoke the needed language, "those barriers go down. It's a big help to diminish that frustration."

Foreign-language speakers can also overcome a distrust of police. In Central America and Asia, police are often viewed as corrupt or authoritarian, Lee and Marinero said. Convincing someone from another country that American police are different is another crucial component of the unit's work, the officers said.

High-profile investigations aren't the only place where the unit is needed. Crash investigations, dealing with the public and the media, and recruiting for the department are other roles its members are expected to play.

Marinero said he attends job fairs for the department, trying to attract more Latino applicants. "I tell them, 'Hey, we need you, to be a better police department, to serve you better,' " Marinero said.