¿Habla español? Bilingual police, city workers can now get a bonus in Durham.
The city of Durham is responding to complaints that police are not doing enough to protect and serve Latinos by boosting the pay of officers who speak Spanish.
At a community meeting, city leaders announced a new $2,000 bonus they hope will encourage more bilingual people to become police officers, emergency workers and other local government employees
“We have listened to the concerns of many who are victims of crime and feel unprotected because those that are supposed to protect them are unable to speak their same language,” said Gonzalo Torres, a priest at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, during a meeting at the church Sunday afternoon.
The N.C. Congress of Latino Organizations, which organized the meeting, said there have been about 300 complaints from the members of different Latino groups it represents. Residents have said they felt ignored, looked down upon from some officers for not speaking English well, or have not bothered to call 911 due to a lack of Spanish-speakers.
The NCCLO previously told Durham officials that bilingual officers were leaving the police force to work in other cities that paid employees more for speaking Spanish on the job.
More than 40,000 Durham residents are Latino, according to the most recent census, but only 1 in 14 police officers can speak Spanish.
Just 33 officers, or about 7% of the police, were bilingual as of May, police department data requested by The News & Observer shows.
“We must do better as a police department to better serve all of you, and the only way for us to do that is to put a priority in our (Hispanic community) liaison in our department,” Police Chief Patrice Andrews told the roughly 150 people at Sunday’s meeting.
“We also want to be able to recruit officers that look like you, that look like our entire immigrant community, our Hispanic population,” she said.
More pay for bilingual cops
Andrews responded “Sí, sí, sí!” eagerly when asked during the meeting if she would commit to hiring more bilingual officers in the next five years.
She asked the crowd to look at officer Rut Avila, who sat in a pew near the church altar where people spoke. Andrews said she was Durham’s only Hispanic Liaison officer, which was not enough.
Bilingual city employees previously were eligible for a $1,000 salary bonus if they proved their Spanish competency. The city, in talks with the NCCLO, previously discussed the possibility of a $1,500 bonus.
“This now means Durham, one of the top cities in the state, works towards incentivizing folks that are bilingual, and keeping them,” said Mayor Pro Tempore Mark-Anthony Middleton.
Eligible employees can receive a $1,500 bonus for using either written or verbal Spanish fluency in their jobs, and $2,000 when they use Spanish speaking and writing skills on a regular basis, Middleton said.
Durham has $160,000 in its 2022-23 budget to pay for bonuses of city employees bilingual in Spanish.
“We have been witnesses today to important changes and fulfilled commitments,” said the Rev. Daniel Robayo of El Buen Pastor Episcopal Church, speaking in Spanish. “Today it has been shown that unity creates organization and that organization creates power. Our power is demonstrated by the number of people of faith in this place with the same goal.”
New HEART pilot program
Ryan Smith, director of the city’s new Community Safety Department, also spoke at the meeting about the launch of HEART, or Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams.
The new HEART pilot programs are answering some non-violent emergency calls with unarmed responders, and also placing mental health professionals in the city’s 911 center to direct callers to resources.
HEART responders are currently able to provide assistance in Spanish through LanguageLine, an on-demand Spanish translation service, he said.
This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 5:59 PM.
