Summarizes resources and programs available to law enforcement officers to avoid language and cultural problems during community policing. Boise, Idaho’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program builds an understanding of cultural diversity into its orientation sessions for refugees. The Outreach to New Americans program, a collaboration between the National Crime Prevention Council and the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement, among other initiatives, sponsors an annual best practices conference on police-refugee partnerships. Davenport, Iowa’s Working in Neighborhoods to Gain Security (WINGS) effort works to promote trust of the police in the refugee community and involve the community in solving refugee-related crimes. Phoenix, Arizona’s Refugee Advisory Council on Crime (RACC) and Portland, Oregon’s Asian Law Enforcement Advisory Council (ALEAC), both emphasize mutual cross-cultural education. Other ideas are offered for police-refugee collaboration on crime prevention, including recruiting refugees and immigrants into the police department as a step to bridging cultural barriers, establishing community resource and social centers, and providing mentoring and employment opportunities for at-risk refugee youth. Common to these programs are improved refugee relations as a result of police outreach.
