Career Advice & News Center

Multilingual people interested in a career as a law enforcement officer may have a lot of opportunities available to them provided one of the languages they speak is Spanish.

More police departments around the country are having their personnel take Spanish courses in an effort to better serve the community. It is also proving to be useful to communicate to suspects, witnesses and arrestees who can only speak Spanish.

The need for officers who can speak the language is so high that it's forced some departments to retrain their officers.

The Demopolis Police Department in Alabama is currently hosting a weeklong workshop titled Survival Spanish where local law enforcement officers learn how to communicate with a society that is increasingly becoming multilingual, the Demopolis Times reports.

The officers reportedly learned how to give instructions to suspects of felony traffic stops in Spanish. Some of the phrases that were taught in Spanish included "get out of the car" and "lay down on the ground."
Alabama's Hispanic populations increased to approximately 100,000 by 2005, according to the article.

Growing population

Alabama's need for more law enforcement officers who speak Spanish mirrors the country's as it becomes apparent that Spanish is rising as one of the more common languages spoken nationwide.

The U.S. is home to more than 45 million Hispanics and that makes it the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking community. The only country ahead of the U.S. is Mexico. And in what may be a surprise to some people, the country has more Spanish speakers than Columbia, Spain and Argentina.

According to the 2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Spanish was reported as the primary language spoken at home by more than 34 million people aged 5 and up.

The emergence of Spanish as a common language in the U.S. can also be seen in various signs, pamphlets and aural instructions. Most of the time, these types of direction come with a Spanish translation.

Even customer service calls for various companies have an option for people to hear the automated instructions in Spanish.

While future generations may learn to be bilingual through better education, the current generation is in a transitional phase where some workers are asked to learn the language either midway through or late in their career.

Because of this development, it makes law officers who have Spanish language skills a coveted commodity for almost any police department in the country.

Some departments learn the hard way

Earlier this year Nashville, Tennessee, police discovered just how important having law enforcement officers who spoke Spanish could be in the field, ABC news reports.

After a van filled with farm workers that had crashed, the rescue workers that reported to the accident were unable to talk to the victims, all of whom only spoke Spanish, stated the news provider. According to those involved with the incident, authorities had to separate an injured mother from her newborn baby and couldn't tell her why.

Emitt Turner, the Nashville Metro Police Chief, admitted to the news provider that the department was lacking in bilingual staff members.
"Certainly, our efforts to recruit Hispanic officers have not kept up with growth in our community," Turner said.

However, not all departments are lacking.

The Chattanooga Police Department, also in Tennessee, recruited Anthony Easter who learned how to speak fluent Spanish in South America where his parents work as missionaries, according to the article.

In terms of communication, Easter said he's found his language skills to be "crucial" in the field.

"You don't know if they're scared of you, if they're hiding something, if they're a victim, or if they've just committed a crime," Easter said. "So a communication channel needs to be opened."