Why cops should learn Spanish

James Fulford:

Make no mistake about it, Hispanic crime is on the increase. A knowledge of Spanish will be as useful for an officer's personal safety as a knowledge of Arabic will be for an American soldier.

You can't take a translator down an alley with you, and even if you could, would you trust him with your life?

And English-speaking officers may need the language skills to protect their careers. I said I’d oppose forcing detectives to learn Spanish. But city councils don't listen to me, and eventually, detectives and patrol officers who can't speak Spanish may find their careers dead-ending.

Furthermore, if the English-speaking police can't learn Spanish that means that their departments will become controlled by Hispanic officers, which can lead to two problems; corruption, as seen in the Mexican police force; and disloyalty, expressed in an unwillingness to, for example, round up illegals.

As far as corruption is concerned, we've already seen incidences of it. The point here is that corruption is endemic to Mexico, and that therefore, more Mexican-born officers will mean more corruption.

As far as loyalty is concerned, I learned recently that the head of the Border Patrol, David Aguilar, is considered a "trusted spokesperson within the Hispanic community, communicating border-crossing policies that have a profound impact on Hispanic communities along the border."

That doesn’t give me a warm glow of confidence.

I only hope that the PR flack who wrote that was talking about the “Hispanic communities” on the American side.

Remember the Muslim FBI agent who said that "a Muslim doesn't record another Muslim?"

What will happen when a large proportion of police officers are Spanish-speakers who were born in Mexico? (And yes, I know that there are patriotic Hispanics, and heroic Latino police officers. This is not the place for their stories.)

So, yes, it's important for police to learn Spanish, for more than one kind of survival. But not for the feel-good community outreach reasons, to better serve "under-served" Hispanic communities, but to protect themselves, and the American public, from those Hispanic communities.

Alternatively, of course, the U.S. could always stop immigration.

Nah—that would be too easy.

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