At 94 percent white, police try to connect with Fall River's changing communities

According to numbers provided by Government Center, the Fall River Police Department has 281 full-time employees. Of those, 264 - about 94 percent- are white.

FALL RIVER — Policing a city where demographics are changing requires sworn police officers who reflect the community.

Though more people of color are joining its ranks, the Fall River Police Department - like its host city, which is 85 percent white - is still predominantly Caucasian. Ninety percent of its sworn patrol officers are white men.

But as the city evolves and becomes more diverse, the police department is also changing, albeit incrementally.

According to numbers provided by Government Center, the Fall River Police Department has 281 full-time employees. Of those, 264 - about 94 percent- are white.

The department has eight black employees (2.8 percent), three Hispanics (1 percent), six Asians (2.1 percent) and one Hawaiian.

Police Chief Al Dupere said his department has three Hispanic police officers, a black female officer and a black male sergeant. Another black female police recruit is currently going through the hiring process.

“As the community becomes more diverse and the concerns of the community change, we find out what those concerns are by maintaining our community relationships,” Dupere said, adding that the police department keeps a pulse on the community by attending monthly neighborhood group meetings.

Officers assigned to the police department’s Special Operations Division, as well as on the walking beats and bicycle patrols, also regularly interact with the community, including its growing population of Hispanic and Spanish-speaking residents.

“When you talk about crime, day-to-day crime and the concerns that people have about that, it doesn't really change. It kind of goes across the racial divide,” Dupere said. “People are still concerned about people dealings drugs in their neighborhood, robberies and kids hanging around on the corners damaging property.”

Responding to calls in a city where more people speak Spanish or a language other than English poses various challenges for the police department.

A handful of the city’s police officers speak Spanish, and they are commonly dispatched to a scene if a language barrier exists. In situations involving lengthy interviews or interrogations of Spanish-speaking suspects, Dupere said the police department uses interpreters from the Massachusetts Trial Court.

If Dupere wanted to increase the number of bilingual or Spanish-speaking officers, he would need to contact the state’s Civil Service Unit to request a special list of Spanish-speaking candidates. He would also have to make the case for why the department needed that list. In normal circumstances, a police department cannot hire someone over another candidate higher on the Civil Service list because they are bilingual.

“And we're not in a situation right now where we have that need where we could justify requesting a special list, either for African-American officers, Spanish-speaking officers or female officers,” Dupere said. “We're not there yet, but we watch it, and if we get there, then we'll do that if we see a need for it.”

In a May 2017 letter from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights, the federal government advised the Fall River Police Department that it was “underutilizing” - had low numbers of - Hispanic male and female officers, as well as white female police officers. Certain federal grants include civil rights requirements and require the department submit Equal Employment Opportunity Plan Utilization Reports.

Dupere said the department sought to address the utilization report’s findings in its recent hirings.

“As we go through our hiring process and we have openings, if we found ourselves where we couldn't find qualified Hispanic or other officers, then yeah we may consider a special list from Civil Service,” Dupere said.

Besides addressing language barriers, having a more diverse police department can also benefits its relationship with the community in having officers who understand and can relate to local cultures. Having police officers of Portuguese descent who also speak that language has helped foster strong ties with the Portuguese community over the last 20 years.

Dupere said the Fall River Police Department has similarly sought to develop its relationship with the city’s Cambodian community, which over the years has tended to be insular and to not report crimes.

“We might find out from neighbors or from someone else after the fact that something happened,” Dupere said, adding that the police department has not had much luck finding officers who speak Khmer, the language spoken in Cambodia. He added that the department in previous years printed pamphlets in Khmer to urge business owners and people in the Cambodian community to report robberies, domestic violence and other crimes to police.

Ricky Tith, president of Fall River's Cambodian American Rescue Organization, said older members of his community, who were already adults when they immigrated from Cambodia, did not trust the authorities in their native land, and are thus often wary to call law enforcement. He said those attitudes are changing as younger generations of Cambodian-Americans grow up here.

“If you respect police officers in a good manner, they respect you back,” said Tith, adding that he has never had a negative experience with local police.

“But if you’re drunk, acting lousy, then when they do something, you cannot blame them,” Tith added.

Trottjoseph Lee, a black Fall River resident who is the executive director of the Veterans Association of Bristol County, said he also has not had any negative interactions with local police officers. Despite the police department being predominantly white, Lee said the racial and cultural gap can be bridged a bit by a police officer who makes a sincere effort to talk to people in a respectful manner.

"Whether you're in the black community or the Cambodian community, I think no matter what color that cop is, if that cop comes over to the guys, and just says, 'Hey how you're doing today?' on a regular basis, and just talks to people and acts like a human being, plays basketball with them, I think you'd be surprised at how far that can go," Lee said.

Email Brian Fraga at bfraga@heraldnews.com