Our police department brought me in as a cultural liaison to help bridge relationships with the Latino community, but the other officers keep asking me to explain or defend community members' reactions during encounters, and I'm caught between being seen as disloyal by my colleagues or ineffective by my community. We're all supposed to be working toward the same goal of better policing, but it feels like I'm being asked to translate trauma instead of address its causes.
More people experience this than they realize.
A cultural bridge-builder in policing finds themselves translating between worlds rather than transforming the system they were meant to improve.
“Where Are You with Policing across cultures?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.