To Serve and Protect, With an Eye to Culture
Officers Reach Out To Asian Americans

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2008

Hwanhee Kim, who helps crime victims and witnesses for the Fairfax County police, recalled one woman of Korean background who said she had been beaten regularly by her husband since their honeymoon. For many years, she never considered reporting the abuse to the police.

After police intervened, Kim recounted, the woman said that "she felt like a human for the first time."

Fairfax Lt. Gun M. Lee said that in the mid-1990s, he was summoned to a fender-bender. One of the drivers, a woman of Asian descent, was practically hysterical because she spoke no English, couldn't give her side of the story and was fearful of the police, Lee said.

Countless officers in Northern Virginia have similar stories, facing language and cultural differences as they try to quickly help residents. In 2004, a group of officers formed the Washington area Asian Law Enforcement Society. The group tried for the first time Saturday to reach out to Asian Americans to discuss issues such as gangs and online crime, and maybe try to persuade a few people to consider donning the uniform themselves.

"There's quite a need for us to increase our diversity from a law enforcement standpoint," said Lee, who helped form the society and is its president. "Not just for Fairfax County but around the region. If we could have more officers communicate with Asian citizens, not just linguistically but culturally, that would be such effective policing for us."

Representatives of several law enforcement and public safety agencies set up shop Saturday at the Fairfax police academy. Some came from police, fire and sheriff's departments from Prince William and Loudoun counties, the District and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties. Some represented police departments in Fredericksburg, Roanoke and Chesterfield County. Recruiters said their cities and counties have growing Asian American populations that would be better served by more Asian American officers.

There is, of course, diversity among Asian American communities. In Roanoke, people of Vietnamese descent are the second-fastest-growing group, Investigator Darryl Rosser said. Prince William has seen "exponential increases" in residents of Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese background, Detective David Cho said, but about 10 Asian American officers are on the force of 568.

Fairfax, with 40 Asian American officers, has one of the biggest such contingents of area departments, but those officers are about 3 percent of the county's force. About 15 percent of Fairfax residents are of Asian background, census figures show.

Within Fairfax, about 30,000 people are of Korean descent, Lee said, the largest Korean community in the Washington area. And some Korean immigrants are hesitant to report crimes or work in law enforcement because of distrust of the police in their native land, Kim said.

In addition, some Asians encounter cultural pressure to "keep everything inside the family -- they try to hide it, handle it themselves," Kim said. And when it comes to domestic violence or child abuse, Kim said, "it gets worse and worse" as time goes by without authorities getting involved. As a result, many crimes go unreported, Kim said.

"This system can help them," Kim said. "We've got tons and tons of resources. The resources won't help everyone, but in a critical situation, we can make a difference."

Whether because of a lack of advance publicity, its location in a police facility or other factors, the event was not well attended. Lee said he hoped to conduct a similar session next year with Koreans, perhaps in Annandale.

The officers are taping public service announcements to air on local Korean television, urging residents to report crimes and cooperate with the police. "We're not necessarily recruiting," said Lee, who is a commander in the Fairfax criminal investigation bureau. "We want to share the resources we have, and we want to emphasize our accessibility to the Korean community."

Fairfax Police Chief David M. Rohrer stopped by the event and thanked the Asian American officers. "We're trying to demonstrate the value of policing and increase our diversity," the chief said. "We have to sell the integrity, the ethics, the character and values that are important to all of us."