Language and Police

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/nyregion/10police.html

This week, I read a very fascinating article entitled US Reviews New York Police Dealings with People Who Don't Speak English, published in the NY Times on April 9, 2010. This article details a very noteworthy attempt of New York to investigate the police's treatment of people who do not speak English. Primarily, the search aims to determine whether or not non-English speakers (or, people speaking a different language than the officer present) experience police-citizen interactions in a more negative light (are treated worse, understand less, etc) than those who encounter language-matching police officers.

I feel as though this effort is extremely important, as it recognizes the power of language in affecting everyday interaction, treatment, and experience. I also appreciated how officials (and the author of the article) framed the issue as a social justice, civil rights issue, as the treatment of people by police is a very slippery slope, with many examples of abuse and largely inappropriate behavior by the police. Since a common language is such a fundamental part of human communication, I can easily see how a language barrier may create multiple problems, such as severe miscommunications about actions, rights, and penalties, and the tendency for the officers to treat others more poorly. (There are studies and examples about how treatment of a person is worse when you don't identify with them or don't see them as fully "human" ("dehumanization"). Therefore, I can see lack of communication due to a difference in language as being a contributing factor to the potential for worse treatment of a person by a police officer).

At the same time, a very valid counter argument would be that police officers need to simply do their jobs, and in a time of crisis and potential imminent danger, there is little time to discern whether language barrier is at the root of the interaction. Sometimes immediate police action is required for everyone's safety, and it seems to be unfair to expect police officers to determine the language component of the interaction before acting in what they deem the best way. I feel as though a way to solve this problem would be to ensure that the court system and subsequent hearings take into account any language differences that existed during the initial interaction- which might have caused the police officer to misinterpret the person's silence or lack of obedience, for example. However, even if justice is later repaired surrounding this language barrier (which in itself may be very idealistic of me to hope for), police departments need to further develop programs and protocol for these situations, as one single action in a moment (with a language barrier) has potential for extreme harm.

This article also pointed out how valuable multilingual police officers are, as they have the ability to effectively communicate and interact with many more people who they may encounter during their jobs. Thus, multilingualism is an asset in the police force, as it is in many other sectors of society, in maintaining an equitable enforcement and justice system.

http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/16/6/829

In order to back up the stories that I have heard from the news (internet, TV, newspaper) and from community stories about police brutality and mistreatment of people, I read portions of article entitled "‘I’d grab the S-O-B by his hair and yank him out the window’: The fraternal order of warnings and threats in police–citizen encounters" that was published in the Discourse and Society journal (I found the article in the Ilumina database). Overall, this research study showed that between police-citizen interactions, there is no context when police force is not exerted and felt (even if the police did not intentionally cause harm). Simply due to the institutional power of police and the understood and enforced relationship between the two parties, police will inevitably exert various forms of power and authority over citizens, which in turn often transforms into inappropriate action and abuse. I believe these findings further reveal the need to investigate the role of language and language barriers in these interactions; if police officers are already inherently threatening and forceful against citizens (to varying degrees), a language barrier or inability to communicate has the potential to multiply the problem and the potential mistreatment.