¡Ayúdeme! ¡Párese! ¡Cuchillo! Do these terms sound familiar to you? Probably not, but they could save your life. Translated from Spanish they mean help me, stop and knife respectively. In an emergency situation are the members of your department prepared to deal with the fastest growing segment of the American population?
Police, Fire/EMS and other first responders more and more are coming into contact with Spanish speaking individuals while on duty. The US Census Bureau advises that there are approximately 40 million people of Hispanic origin currently living in the United States. This number is expected to balloon to 102.6 million by 2050. At that time Hispanics will constitute 24% of the nation’s total population. People of Hispanic origin are already the largest ethnic minority in the United States, currently making up 13.7% of the total American population.
This inevitably brings up the, “They should learn English if they live in America,” outcries from the close-minded. However, the part that they are not realizing, or worse yet refusing to realize is that in being an emergency responder their life may be on the line here. Please, allow me to explain by giving an example:
Paul is a 5-year veteran on the city police department. Paul and his partner make a routine traffic stop (which of course there is no such thing) on a side road at about 3AM. As the vehicle pulls to a stop, Paul can see that there appears to be a male subject in the driver seat and a female subject in the passenger seat. The female passenger looks as if she is struggling to pull away from the driver. Seeing this, Paul and his partner call in the license plate and exit their cruiser. Once outside they confirm that there is a struggle going on in the cab of the suspect vehicle, and the female passenger is yelling and screaming. As they approach the vehicle, they hear the female screaming, “¡Tiene una escopeta! ¡Tiene una escopeta!” Not knowing what the female is saying, Paul quickly approaches the driver side of the vehicle. BANG!
What Paul and his partner did not know was that the female was screaming, “He has a shotgun! He has a shotgun!” They did not know this because she was speaking Spanish. In this example it did not matter how Paul felt about learning Spanish, as it was his life that was in jeopardy by refusing to properly prepare himself by learning the language. Is stubbornness worth putting your life on the line?
How about the paramedic dealing with a gunshot patient who is unconscious and his Spanish speaking brother is the only other person there with him? I bet that paramedic would like to be able to understand the brother who is trying to tell him that the victim has Hepatitis or HIV. Or how about if the witness is trying to tell the paramedic that the suspect with the gun is still hiding right around the corner and is reloading his weapon? Wouldn’t this be useful information to know?
Now that we can all agree about the seriousness of this issue, let’s talk about some more ways that training in the Spanish language will help out in our daily duties. A language barrier can greatly hinder the entire process of an emergency call.
A dispatcher who cannot communicate with the person on the other end of the line will likely be unable to gather an address, name, description or even the nature of the call. How can a responder be properly prepared without having any information?
How can a police officer get a description of the suspect vehicle if they don’t know how to ask the question in Spanish? How much easier would it be if a paramedic could ask a victim for his medical history? How better prepared could responders be if the dispatcher was able to advise them that they are going to a shots fired call?
Emergency responders who have a grasp of the Spanish language also greatly benefits the Spanish speaking residents of America. How can someone expect to receive appropriate help from someone who can’t understand a word they are saying. If they can’t tell the EMT what is wrong, how can they possibly expect to receive care for their ailment?
As first responders, we are obligated to do everything we can to help out the people whom we are sworn to serve and protect. Learning the Spanish language is no different than any other type of required training. Emergency personnel are quite knowledgeable in many aspects of safety and preparedness. It would be an outrage to overlook such an important new facet of our duties.
Departments and training academies need to step up and make an important addition to the current curriculum. This is not a situation that is going away anytime soon. All emergency personnel need to be properly trained and provided products and tools to effectively communicate in the Spanish language.
It’s time to open our minds and take these changes in stride. Education and training are the key ingredients of safety. Spanish language training will only become more and more important as time goes on, so why not get started on it now? Lives will depend on it.
