Robberies Targeting Latinos on the Rise

"Obviously the concern is someone might get killed," Colgan said. "And it's a concern that people get put in fear. We are attacking this."

In Prince William, where communication between an English-speaking officer and Spanish-speaking victim is often conducted with the help of a phone service, a concerted effort has been made to warn Hispanic neighborhoods. An interpreter was hired, brochures were printed in Spanish, and officers have been guests on the local Spanish radio station. The streets crime unit also has increased surveillance to stop robberies in progress, and police will offer personal safety protection training in Spanish next week.

Manassas police are also launching a special problems unit, which will take on this issue. The concern, both police departments said, is not only the cases they have seen, but also the ones they haven't.

On Tuesday afternoon, less than an hour after Prince William police released their crime statistics, four Hispanic men stood talking outside of Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge. Two of the men said they had been attacked, and the other two said they knew men who had been.

"They take everything -- money, shoes, everything," Jose Dimas Igraheta, a painter from El Salvador, said in Spanish.

Standing beside him, his friend Andres Torres, 21, said six or seven men attacked him on Occoquan Road about two months ago. They wanted money, but he didn't have any.

"He held a gun to my head," he said in Spanish, holding his fingers up like an imaginary pistol. "They hit me and kicked me. All I could do was . . . " he tucked his head under the shelter of his arms. He said he didn't call police.

" Por qué ?" he said. "Why?"

Yanette Herrera has lived in Manassas for 12 years, raising three children, and only recently has she thought of moving, she said. The modest homes on her block are increasingly getting security alarms, she said. She has one.

"They don't assault just men -- it's women, too," she said. "We don't feel safe."

She fears that if nothing is done soon, her Latino neighbors may soon retaliate, with the victim becoming the assailant.

"We are very patient, but when we see something not changing . . . ," she said. "You know how bad it is working 12 hours a day and someone just takes it in a minute?"

Staff writers Ernesto Londoño, Tom Jackman and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.