photo by David Snow

Officers put their newly-learned knowledge of Spanish to work in a felony traffic stop exercise at the city landing on Tuesday. Instructor Leon Stroud posed as a Spanish-speaking felon being pulled over as the officer gave him directions through the law enforcement vehicle’s speakers.

Area law enforcement taking advantage of Spanish workshop

By David Snow (Contact) | Demopolis Times

Published Tuesday, August 25, 2009

DEMOPOLIS — The Demopolis Police Department is hosting a weeklong workshop called “Survival Spanish,” where regional law enforcement officers learn how to do their jobs in a growing multilingual society.

The workshop began Monday with the 23 officers learning how give directions to Spanish-speaking suspects in felony traffic stops. Those directions include telling a suspect to put his hands out the window, get out of the car, lay down on the ground, put his hands behind his back and cross his feet.

“These guys are doing outstanding,” said instructor Leon Stroud on Tuesday. “We’re setting the standard pretty high. We are doing the two main things at 100-percent, and that’s officer safety tactics and pronunciation. Even if they only know five words, they’re going to say them right. There won’t be any watered-down Spanish.”

The officers include local law enforcement personnel as well as Alabama State Troopers. They are learning how to perform or gather information at felony traffic stops, answer domestic incident calls and traffic accidents, all in Spanish.

“The law enforcement coordinator’s position in the U.S. Attorney’s office does a ton of training for state, local and federal law enforcement in the district,” said Tommy Loftis, the law enforcement coordinator for the Southern District. “We keep our training confined to the Southern District. Border Patrol approached me about a year ago because they knew we had such an active training agenda for the Southern District and asked me if we’d like to do something like this.

“We facilitate everything. I contacted the chief (DPD chief Tommie Reese) and we set up the facilities. We contact APOST (Alabama Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission) and made sure the officers were getting their continuing education hours. All that Border Patrol has to do is send the instructors from their academy in New Mexico, and all they have to do is come in and instruct.

“There is also an element of officer safety involved,” he said. “As a former police officer, I remember stopping a Hispanic person, and when I got to the window and told me ‘No hablo ingles’ (‘I don’t speak English’), the traffic stop was over for me because the language barrier is there. You can’t get what you need.

“Plus, there are so many times when officers don’t pick up on words like ‘weapons’ or ‘guns’ and things like that. This class will allow for that.”

“We want to thank Chief Reese and his folks for the support that they’ve given us,” said acting U.S. Attorney Eugene Seidel. “He’s made his training room available to us and to local law enforcement.

“We are very pleased with the support that we’ve gotten from the community and from Chief Reese.”

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