Spanish class helps cops

Just three simple Spanish words—¿Alguien esta herido?— could help a police officer save a life.

Translation: “Is anybody hurt?”

As the number of Spanishspeaking Californians continues to climb—32 percent of people living in the state are Hispanic, according to census figures— police officials recognize the need for more Spanish-peaking officers.

For nearly a decade, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has been working on a program called “Spanish for Law Enforcement” to help give deputies the language skills they need to communicate when out in the field.

Headed by David Dees, the program offers three course levels. Each course requires 33 hours of class time.

The program focuses on simple phrases and words so a deputy can take a field interview in order to obtain a suspect’s description or the nature of a crime.

“The goal of this course is to give officers the skills they need so they can go out and meet the community and speak with a limited but clear vocabulary,” Dees said. “They can go do pedestrian stops. They can do vehicle stops. They can take a field interview by taking basic information.”

Recently, the Thousand Oaks Police Department invited Dees to start teaching classes to help the city’s deputies more effectively communicate with the growing Hispanic community in Conejo Valley.

“It creates a comfort zone for people when the officer can speak their language,” said Cmdr. Dennis Carpenter.

“We’re not always stopping people for speeding or dealing with them in a criminal aspect,” Carpenter said. “It’s often traffic accidents or they call us because someone is injured or sick.”

Carpenter was a student in Dees’ first class in 1996. “I was captain in charge of the narcotics unit at the time,” Carpenter said. “We had nearly 35 narcs and only a couple spoke Spanish. . . . So I made the class available to anyone who wanted to take it. Nearly two-thirds of the narcs took the class.”

Dees, who’s been teaching Spanish to both police and fire personnel throughout Southern California for more than 16 years, said anyone can take his class.

Dean Cook, a 15-year veteran and a senior deputy with the sheriff’s department, said he didn’t know any Spanish before he began taking the course nearly eight weeks ago.

Cook admits he’s far from fluent in the language, but said the class has taught him a number of new words that he believes will improve his ability to communicate while on patrol.

“We work bike patrol and deal a lot with people on a oneon-one basis,” Cook said. “We can get our point across a little better now.”

There are other deputies who’ve taken all three courses and have even gone so far as to spend time living in a Spanishspeaking country in order to fully learns the language.

Sgt. Tim Hagel said he took the course in the mid-’90s and has since spent time in Ensenada, Mexico and Bogota, Columbia.

“I didn’t speak a word of Spanish when I first took the class,” Hagel said. “But I realized immediately that it made a world of difference.”

Hagel said spending time abroad helped him better understand what it’s like living in a country and not knowing the language.

“There’s no better cultural awareness class that I’ve ever seen,” Hagel said.

Now a member of the search and rescue team, Hagel said his Spanish is invaluable when helping people who’ve been injured and need medical attention.

Carpenter made the class open to anyone in the department interested in taking the course. Along with Cook and his partner, Deputy Mike Rowland, the soon-to-graduate class includes Mary McConville, a stenographer, and Jane Mineo, a records specialist within the department.

“I want as many people as possible speaking Spanish in the department,” Carpenter said.

A graduate of Emporia State University with bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and Russian, Dees went on to earn his master’s in Russian at the University of Wisconsin and another master’s in Spanish at Marquette University. Dees lived in Spain for seven years before coming to California, where he’s made a career as an educator and author.

Dees recently published two books for McGraw-Hill entitled “Quick Spanish for Law Enforcement” and “Quick Spanish for Emergency Responders.”

For more information on Dees and his Spanish courses, visit www.spanishforpoliceandfire.com