Jan. 4-Got an email from Jason Lacsamana asking me to come in to the OCAPICA office Friday. Mary Anne Foo or as the OCAPICA staff call her “Mafoo” asked if I wouldn’t mind helping out with their fundraiser dinner this March as well as other grunt work. So yes people, Jen has a temp job (and a paying one) for now at Oh-Cap-Peek-Ah and don’t call it Oh-Caw-Pee-Kah. Yes, they get really mad at this. ;p

Jason also wanted me to go to diversity training/cultural awareness for the Orange County Police department with him on behalf of OCAPICA. Man, that was an interesting experience. The Orange County Human Relations (OCHR) was helping hosting this one-day diversity training session. Bob Cerince from OCHR was there to facilitate w/ the training. There were about 30 cadets from various police departments in OC and even some from LA, as well some people from the OC Sheriff’s department.

All the guys’ heads were shaved and they were all in uniform. You could feel the testosterone in the air. I couldn’t believe that a good bunch of them were probably around my age. Geez, am I that old already? Most of them were white males a few females, one Black guy, a few Latinos and one Latina, 2 South Asians, one who spoke in a British accent, one Southeast Asian woman and one East Asian man. Jason remarked how this was the most diverse bunch he had worked with.

So we talked and worked with a couple of the cadets and explained what OCAPICA was about as well as give them a very brief crash course on APIAs in a few minutes, which both Jason and I agree isn’t enough. The Orange County police departments needs to have longer diversity training sessions at least more than just one day. There needs to be a continuation throughout their line of business.

There were other groups to assist with the training such Ra’id Faraj, Public Relations Director from Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as well as various LGBT groups.

So Jason and I talked about the diversity of the APIA community. We also talked about the how they need to get to know their community so they can earn their community’s trust. Because with some APIA groups they need to take account that some APIA groups have had a bad experience back in Asia with corrupted police so they may not trust American police. Also they might have a negative view of cops due to skewed and hyped portrayals in the media.

Most of them actually seem really receptive and paid close attention to what we were saying. We just hope they don’t become jaded later in their field because it happens and being a police officer is a tough job, but that’s no excuse for them to lose their fire and open-mindedness they had in the beginning.

I wanted to learn more about what rules there were in the police department for bilingual assistance being that the APIA police is a largely immigrant community. I know in the health care system there are rules and they need professionally trained translators and if it’s a family member I believe they must be 14 years old at least. I remember reading in my public health class terrible incidences that health care personnel were insensitive to this notion. So I’m curious in learning what kind of laws, if there are any, in the police department. True, there not as many technical terms as there are in the health care but I’m curious to know what the rules are. One of the cadets told me there is this AT&T operator program that provides bilingual assistance.

Bob wanted us to use Sundeep’s case as a scenario. The 2 cadets from Anaheim in our group were embarrassed to hear what a terrible job the Anaheim PD had done with the case. I mention how even though Sundeep’s case was an Asian on Asian hate crime, it was hate crime nonetheless and to keep in mind what a hate crime can be as opposed to being an assault.

I was curious to see on the board that someone had given an Asian Cultural Awareness course. Both Jason and I were curious in finding out who gave this because it had happened before we had arrived and from what I heard from Bob, who was a concerned that the guy, whoever gave the workshop, had passed out a big packet on Asians and when Bob was glancing thru the packet, he noticed that there was description on how to tell what a Cambodian looks like, which seemed insensitive, stereotypical and very damaging. Something OCAPICA and OCHR plans to look into.

Afterwards went back to the OCAPICA office to help out Susan with scanning photos and didn’t leave the office til 8. Being that I wasn’t planning on goin out that Friday night because I was broke and had originally thought I was goin to Mammoth for the National TACL retreat that Friday so made no plans. But for some strange reason at the last minute Rob cancelled it because too many ppl had scheduling conflicts or something. Ah well. Nothing wrong with a quiet chill night at home.