The American police have a long history of mistrust and strained relations with minorities, in particular African Americans. Minority communities feel both over-policed and underprotected; minorities have a lower trust in the police and often feel they are being unfairly treated. Community policing models have been introduced to improve police relations with minority communities; yet, black citizens who encounter police (whether as a victim or as a suspect) continue to have less chance of receiving civil and fair treatment than whites (Donziger 1996).
The problems related to policing racial minorities are likely to be exacerbated when communities contain large numbers of foreign-born minorities (Davis and Henderson 2003, 565). Just as there are some well-known examples of police abuse of American-born blacks (for example, Rodney King), there also have been several well-publicized incidents of abuse by the police of immigrants. Two notorious allegations of police misconduct in New York City threw a national spotlight on police dealings with immigrants. In the 1997 Abner Louima case, New York police officers were accused (and convicted) of brutalizing a Haitian immigrant held at a Brooklyn precinct house. In the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, four special unit New York police officers faced grand jury charges of second-degree murder in the shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant. The two incidents tapped into deep-seated frustrations that immigrants and established minorities have harbored concerning their treatment at the hands of the police (Davis and Henderson 2003, 565).
The growing importance of large and diverse numbers of immigrants, combined with the threat of terrorism, and the perceived growing problems of ethnic gangs has forced law enforcement agencies to reexamine their relationships with hard-to-reach immigrant communities (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005). There is no doubt that many new immigrants have been reluctant to work with the police as witnesses to a crime, to report their own victimization, or to apply as new recruits. A number of barriers exist between immigrant communities and police to explain this:
• Imported negative perceptions of police, crime, and justice systems. Many immigrants come from corrupt, violent, and undemocratic countries, where they have had bad experiences with the police. They fear and mistrust the police. Immigrants who have experienced the police in their country of origin as ineffective or dishonest are unlikely to have confidence in the effectiveness of the police when they migrate to the United States (Davis and Henderson 2003, 565-566). These perceptions are often reinforced after they enter the United States where the police— whose actions are often seen at a distance and can appear arbitrary and bewildering—are made into an object of ”mystery and local urban legend” (Ibarra 2003, 147).
• Fear of deportation. The 2005 Report of the Vera Institute of Justice (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005) states that immigrant groups often cite fear of deportation (their own or that of family members or friends) as a major barrier to building trust and partnerships with the police. Even legal immigrants from regions that produce many undocumented immigrants avoid police contact for fear of endangering their undocumented associates. As local and state law officials have begun to work more closely with federal immigration authorities in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, immigrants have had even more difficulty distinguishing among these agencies (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005, 3). Because they assume the police will inquire about immigration status (although many cities prohibit these practices), they are reluctant to contact the police.
• Linguistic isolation and cultural differences. Limited or no English language skills are an everyday reality for many new immigrants. In many cities, 911 operators do not speak or understand other languages. Immigrants may have negative contacts with the police because of misunderstandings arising from language differences. The language barrier prevents immigrants from receiving information about policing from mass media or officers themselves to the same extent as English speakers (Henderson and Davis 2003, 655). A nationwide study found that cultural misunderstandings and language barriers lead immigrants to access public safety and justice services less often than native-born citizens do (Davis and Erez 1998). Although language is very important, cultural differences represent an even more challenging obstacle to smooth relations between police and immigrants.
• Community norms against seeking help from outsiders. Immigrants often come from countries that are accustomed to resolving disputes informally; there is a sense of interdependence and reliance on one’s own rather than a state-run police system. Immigrants may also have ”relatively thick skin regarding what is truly dangerous or police relevant” (Ibarra 2003, 140). Making direct contact with the police is often viewed as a last resort to deal with trouble. Some new immigrants have little experience with modern technology, such as using the phone to call the police.
• Fear of retaliation. Because of their relative isolation from mainstream society in the host country, and their reluctance to rely on the police, new immigrants are favored targets of criminals. Often, immigrants are victimized by members of their own nationality (including those involved in the illegal trafficking of immigrants). Many immigrants are victimized by organized groups involved in prostitution, extortion, and fraud. These criminals are likely to know the victim and where he or she lives and are often ruthless in retaliating against victims who seek redress through the criminal justice system (Davis and Henderson 2003, 567).
A number of additional factors explain why immigrants regard the police with suspicion, or why they are reluctant to call on the police for assistance. Many immigrants have suffered some form of trauma, in war or as a result of persecution or economic collapse; for many, relocation to a new country is itself a deep trauma. Traumatic experience breeds distrust that not only affects immigrants’ relations with the authorities (especially the police) in their new country of residence, but also alienates members of an immigrant community from one another (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005, 3). Also, many immigrants tend to settle in impoverished, high-crime urban neighborhoods— exactly the kinds of communities likely to promote apathy, a lack of social cohesion, and a sense of helplessness (Davis and Henderson 2003, 567). And last but not least, many immigrants have encountered discrimination and prejudice since they entered the United States: from stores, landlords, potential employers, and the police. Ibarra (2003, 150) summarizes the predicament of immigrants very well: “[Interactions with the police have a very unpredictable quality to them in their neighborhood. If you call the police, you cannot be sure that the police will respond; if they do respond, you cannot be sure that they will treat you courteously; and, even if you are treated courteously, you cannot be sure that you will not be considered a ‘rat’ by neighbors. . . .”
Police-immigrant community relations are not a one-way street, of course. The police themselves—with its preconceptions, its policies, its practices—also play a crucial role in how immigrant communities interact with law enforcement. Individual police officers are not exempt from the more general prejudice and hostility that permeates American society’s attitude towards immigrants. Aside from the possibility that explicit prejudice influences officers’ behavior, the police may also have very different interpretations of ”problems” in immigrant communities. The police often act on misconceived ideas about what represents a sign of crime and disorder in need of being ”nipped in the bud, ideas which are not shared by the residents themselves” (Ibarra 2003, 157). For example, police may view young men hanging in an immigrant neighborhood as ”gang bangers, taggers, drug dealers, or people who are on their way to becoming the same” (Ibarra 2003,139), ideas that are not shared by the immigrant community members themselves, who view the police treatment of their youth as unduly harsh.
Community Policing and Immigrant Communities
Law enforcement agencies across the country are having unprecedented levels of contact with immigrants—as victims, witnesses, suspects, and potential recruits. Immigrant communities are becoming more prevalent and diverse; because of association with terrorism and crime, they are becoming very important to the police. At the same time, immigrant communities typically are very averse to contact with the police, who have a bad record in their dealings with immigrant communities.
A very popular approach used to improve police-community relations is community policing because of its mandate to build bridges between the police and the many different types of neighborhoods. ”The importance of building such bridges represents recognition that effective and productive police work is contingent on the ‘input’ of residents concerning both the needs of the community and the best way in which the police can meet these needs” (Skogan and Hartnett 1997, as cited in Ibarra 2003, 155). Through consulting with residents on their beats, police departments gain insights into neighborhood problems, and they can adjust their policing strategies street by street and thus be viewed as ”responsive to local concerns and worthy of the community’s confidence and trust” (Ibarra 2003, 155).
However, when residents are mistrustful of the police, as tends to be the case in immigrant communities, it is very difficult for the police to establish a working relationship with the people in the neighborhood. The police cannot function effectively in communities where tensions are prevalent; community outreach is essential for gaining trust. Gaining trust is especially challenging in light of the long history of strained and often volatile relationships between the police and minorities (Fridell et al. 2001, 99). Community policing relies on an ingredient that is in very low supply in many immigrant communities: trust in the police. Immigrants’ strained relationship with the police is evidenced by low levels of contacting the police in order to report a crime, reluctance to serve as a crime witness, and little eagerness to join the police force. However, a number of recent promising community policing efforts have attempted to rebuild this trust (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005; Fridell et al. 2001).
Those who design programs to try to improve police-community relations must realize that a particular neighborhood context not only influences the way the residents perceive the police, but also how the police interact with the residents. The ”locality” provides the police with cues on how to act appropriately, given the neighborhood they are in. Police must realize that immigrant communities are made up of ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically, and often linguistically diverse subgroups (Khashu, Busch, and Latif 2005). When police work with immigrant communities, they must realize that immigrant communities differ not only in size, but also in how recently they have arrived in the United States, and the degree of integration in the larger society. Some immigrant communities are quite homogeneous (that is, they consist of one particular ethnic group, with one shared language, strong interdependence, and mutual reliance); others are very heterogeneous (that is, there are several different immigrant groups with different native languages and religions, with high degrees of internal conflict). Effective, efficient, and humane policing of non-native communities requires a genuine understanding of the dynamics, culture, and composition of a particular immigrant community or neighborhood. There is no such thing as a ”one-size-fits-all” community policing model for immigrant communities.
