With less than 100 bilingual (Spanish-English) officers out of a total of 2,400 at the Police Department of Nassau County, where the Spanish-speaking population is 14.6 percent, the need for more bilingual personnel is evident, and was discussed at a community-wide forum that took place on June 18 in Hempstead, New York.

The organizers, from the Long Island Civic Participation Project, provided witness statements as examples of how the lack of bilingual police officers can have grave consequences. They highlighted the need to not simply expand the number of bilingual police officers, as much in Nassau as in Suffolk, but to require them to pass Spanish proficiency exams as well. Doing so would ensure fluent communication with community members that call on the police for help.

"Mistakes in communication could have serious ramifications, including life-threatening situations," said Angeline Echeverría, executive director of the Long Island Civic Participation Project, with headquarters in Hempstead.

Activists emphasized the need to hire bilingual police officers in areas with large Hispanic populations, like Hempstead and Freeport. Hempstead has a Hispanic population of 44.2 percent, while that of Freeport is 41.7 percent.

According to the testimony of some local residents, there have been cases where the absence of a bilingual police officer resulted in Latino crime victims not receiving the assistance they deserve as guaranteed by the American Civil Rights Act.

Elected officials were present at the forum including Village of Hempstead trustees Perry Pettus, Livio Rosario and Don Ryan; Village of Freeport trustee Carmen Piñeyro; and Suffolk County assembly member Phil Ramos, who is a retired police detective.

All of them agreed on the need to hire more bilingual police officers in their jurisdictions and to support activists' efforts.

Request for a special category

To enhance the hiring process of bilingual officers, the Long Island Civic Participation project together with local Latino organizations will propose a bill before the Nassau County Civil Service Commission that would create a special employment category for bilingual police personnel, similar to other categories that already exist for staff at hospitals, professional word processors and bilingual offices, and bilingual parole offices.

Activists are also requesting the creation of a separate list of candidates that are applying for positions as qualified bilingual officers, who have passed a Spanish proficiency exam.

Thomas Krumpter, the interim police commissioner for Nassau County, said that his department is looking into the possibility of creating a separate list of Spanish-speaking candidates. Suffolk County created such a list for the first time, for their civil service exam for police officers on June 11.

Krumpter called urgently on the county's Spanish-speaking residents to take the police academy admissions exam, as soon as Spanish news media announce registration for next year. Candidates must be U.S. citizens between the ages of 18 and 35. The last exam took place in 2007 and the list of candidates was created in 2009.

Secure Communities

When questioned about the federal Secure Communities program run by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently suspended in New York State, Krumpter said that police officers are not allowed to ask about immigration status when questioning or arresting people.

"We have an order from the County Executive, Edward Mangano, to not ask about the immigration status of people that are detained or reporting cases to the police, and stressed that above all, his department seeks the trust of the community.

According to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, while Secure Communities was still in effect, out of all the people arrested that were transferred to ICE custody in Nassau (84 as of February 22, 2011), 64 percent were not criminals, and 10 of those people were deported. In Suffolk County, where 81 arrests were made, 51 percent of those detained were not criminals, and 10 of them were deported.