Document text
By Thomas Moriarty Mail Tribune November 07. 2014 2:00AM Latino relations with Medford police get mixed reviews The Medford Latino community's perception of the city's police department isn't terrible, but there's a lot of room for improvement, researchers told the City Council during a work session Thursday night. According to survey results from the Latino Police Relations project, authored by Oregon Health & Science University nursing students Liz Jacobson and Kevin Roberts, 48 percent of respondents reported feeling the Latino community had a "somewhat" positive relationship with the Medford Police Department. Eight percent said they thought the relationship was very positive, and 37 percent felt the relationship was "not at all" positive; 7 percent had no opinion. "What (the results) say is, it's not good, but it's not bad, either," Roberts said. "The vast majority of respondents felt somewhat safe in their community." Roberts and Jacobson, who both previously worked for Jackson County Community Justice, said one of the things that inspired the project was the Latino community's reaction to the 2012 police shooting of 18-year-old Elias Angel Ruiz during a domestic disturbance call at his home on Pennsylvania Avenue. The police department partnered with the OHSU team in spring 2013, with the first surveys administered last fall. Medford police Chief Tim George said the agency is still coming to terms with how fast the city's Latino community has grown in recent years, climbing 76 percent between 2000 and 2010. "This is 14 percent of our population we're trying to reach out to and do a better job with," he said, referring to 2012 population numbers. Jacobson said researchers took care not to scare off their study group, administering the surveys in comfortable settings at Medford high schools and through the La Liga del Sur de Oregon soccer league, and speaking in Spanish to the best of their abilities. They also limited the number and scope of their questions. "If we asked too much information of the respondents, they didn't want to have anything to do with it," she said. Roberts said that many respondents indicated they wanted more Spanish-speaking officers to deal with complicated situations. George said the department has 14 native Spanish speakers on staff and is looking to hire more, having just recently processed a wave of applicants for open officer positions. Charlie Bauer, the migrant education coordinator for Southern Oregon Education Service District and another contributor to the project, said many Latino women also fear reprisals from reporting domestic violence or gender-based crimes. One of the recommendations the OHSU team included in its summary Thursday was for cultural competency training for officers to handle those complicated scenarios. George said one of the biggest misconceptions police regularly confront in the Latino community is the belief that local law enforcement is out to find and deport undocumented immigrants. He pointed to results from the department's door-to-door Operation C.A.R.E. surveys that showed 8 percent of residents surveyed were aware of a crime they had yet to report. Many of those were undocumented immigrants, afraid that filing a report could draw unwanted attention to their status in the country, he said. But George said law-abiding community members shouldn't worry about deportation when considering calling the police, who are specifically restricted from enforcing immigration law. "State law in Oregon says I can't do that, I won't do that and I don't want to do that," he said. "I want to provide them services." Reach reporter Thomas Moriarty at 541-776-4471, or by email at [email protected] . Follow him at @ThomasDMoriarty . (Correction: This story has been updated to correct the project authors' previous job positions.) http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141107/NEWS/141109731 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->