Lee and NYPD staff discuss language access for DV reporting
Lee asks about language access for domestic violence reporting in immigrant communities. NYPD staff explain they have language line services, crime victim advocates in precincts, and coordinate with Family Justice Centers for culturally specific organizations.
So I want to be clear that all of that work with all of those officers, with all of those offices, including on the executive level, commissioner to commissioner, that continues.
Okay.
And also, because I know that in order to report that, they have to go through, a lot of it is underreported because especially in communities of color, immigrant communities where there's different languages, cultural barriers, those types of things,
are there folks within the precincts that would be able to appropriately help a lot of those folks that are more language specific?
Aside language line, because I thought about that.
Alex, do you want to answer that?
So part of creating the...
Domestic violence investigators is really to have investigators whose sole job is investigating domestic violence.
So that wasn't the case before.
When you've got a detective investigating a domestic violence crime, they could be investigating lots and lots of different crimes.
So there was no specialization there.
We do our best that we can to put people in communities who are able to speak the languages.
And if we need to, of course, we can borrow from one precinct to another.
If there is a real need there, it does come up from time to time.
And the inspector who is doing a brilliant job running our new domestic violence unit can add to that answer.
So in addition to just the officers there, we have the language line, but we also have crime victim advocates that work inside of the individual precincts.
And we work closely with Family Justice Center, who has, you know, gender-based, not gender-based, but culturally specific organizations that we can always link our survivors to.
Okay, perfect.
I just want to make sure that you guys are all in communication.
I know some of the precincts I overlap with are very great about working with the community groups.
One of the offices that we have the closest coordination to is the Office to End Gender-Based Violence.
They are involved in the development of our training in the selection of and oversight of some of our closest partners, even people who work within our precincts.
And so the coordination there has been and continues to be seamless.
Great.